Expressions of Beauty

If I could take the liberty of telling you what to do, please watch the video below. It will probably be familiar to you, but take a minute to yourself, take a deep breath, and put it on.



If you've done as I said (and if you've stuck with me this far I can only assume you have), you should feel better now than you did five minutes ago, because you've just heard something achingly beautiful. What fallows is my garbled attempt to explain why.

I'm actually going to concentrate on the famous bit (that is to say, the bit that's from 1'35") in this post. That's because I think it's the closest thing I've heard to a perfect tune.

I've been thinking a lot recently about what makes a good tune, without achieving much clarity on the subject. And what clarity I thought I'd achieved was removed this week, when I re-familiarised myself with this piece.

I thought, through what I've seen and read in the past, that the tunes our brains tend to like best are based on two intervals - fourths and fifths: In other words, tunes which incorporate jumps of four or five whole tones (C to F or A to E, for example). This tune, though, starts with a minor third (A to C).

This would seem to defy what I believed was received wisdom, but on further reflection, I believe it might be the first clue as to what makes it so perfect, so moving. That's because the minor third (a sad, melancholy interval) if followed by a normal, major third (F to A) - a happy, uncomplicated sound. I'd often wondered why this piece can make me feel overwhelmingly happy, sad, in love, and full of longing all at the same time. But perhaps those emotions are in the tune's DNA.

Other parts of the piece conform more to what I expect from a good tune. There are straght runs up the scale. There's a brilliant simplicity to it - strings of all sizes in unison, with a little plucking underneath. No frills. (This is, perhaps, the real basis of a good tune. If there is a great song that's had a complicated or unusual melody, I certainly can't think of it.) But when it comes to what I think is the piece's most exquisitely, agonisingly beautiful moment, there's another unusual interval.

The moment in question is at the 2'05"/2'06" mark. The swell from the low note to the higher one is a sixth (F to D). The obvious thing to do there would have been to jump an octave (F to F) (as happens later on). But there's a beautiful imperfection in the leap of a sixth. To me it's a reminder that you can't always get what you want straight away, but that the wait is worthwhile. And there can even be beauty in the waiting. That's something I'm having to remind myself of a lot recently.

Analysis, of course, has its limits. I doubt that there's one mathematically perfect melody. And there'll be many tunes that fit all the "good" parameters, but which aren't remotely memorable. It comes down to emotions. And this tune moves me in ways I can't begin to express.

Time for another listen, I think...