Use Your Imagination 7
Magical Mystery Tour

Classical style music is un-matched in portraying atmosphere and mood. There is a huge array of rich acoustic sounds, variations in dynamics (loud & soft) and changes in tempo (fast & slow). It has a third dimension that is sadly lacking in the 'flat-out' music of electric guitars, drum machines and amplifiers.

We have heard a lot of tuneful music, with clear melodies and accompaniment. However, composers have also been good at capturing the 'abstract', the 'metaphysical', the 'spiritual'.

Here is a selection of atmospheric music that skirts the outer reaches of the neo-cortex, the subconscious, dare I say it again, the spiritual...

1. Debussy - Préludes, Book 1 - 10. La Cathédrale engloutie. Profondément calme. (The Engulfed Cathedral)

Underwater, a cathedral, engulfed? Debussy captures the image brilliantly.
2. Honegger - Pacific 213
   A grating, metallic portrait of the journey of a steam train from its slow beginning chugs thru to its screeching halt.
3. Ives - Central Park in the Dark & The Unanswered Question
   Two 'miniatures' from the father of modern American music. Both have background sheets of beautiful sustained strings. Central Park in the Dark is a strange place of shifting shadows, where strange, incongruous scraps of sound float in from the surrounding city. In The Unanwswered Question, a trumpet keeps asking probing, existential questions only to be answered by jeering and raucous laughter from a group of flutes.
4. Ligeti - Lux Aeterna ('Eternal Light')
   Using a large choir, this music is made of large blocks of sound that are static, yet ever-changing. It is definitely space music.
5. Nielsen - Suite 'Den Luciferiske', FS91 ('Luciferian') - 2. Poco Moderato
   As if out of the ether, the piano tinkles into your consciousness, descending mysteriously, metamorphosing, reaches a climax and disappears back into itself.
6. Rachmaninov - Suite for Two Pianos no.1, op.5 - 3. Les larmes ('Tears'): Largo di molto
   Slowly but surely, the descending lines of this music build hypnotically into a huge, claustrophobic climax before expiring.
7. Scriabin - Vers la flamme, op.72 ('Toward the Flame')
   This meditative music seethes and slowly burns before it ignites in an incendiary climax.
8. Stravinsky - Greeting Prelude (For the Eightieth Birthday of Pierre Monteux)
   For that special someone, why not try this bizarre, distorted, modernist take on "Happy Birthday"!
9. Varese - Ionisations
   This compelling music uses instruments that produce 'noise' rather than distinct notes. There are great waves of sound that rise and fall like waves on a beach, and then the piercing wail of sirens!
10. Vaughan-Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
    Luscious string chords resonate as an aural cathedral. Ethereal!