I was speaking to my neighbor a short while ago. She is a bit at sixes and nines as she lost her husband 2 weeks ago after a long illness. I wrote about him here. She talked about yesterday - viewed from her kitchen window - the houses alive with visitors - big parties of folks enjoying each other, the day, the laughing kids and the green grass going down to the bay/ocean.
Back in music school I had a professor who taught a horrible course on musical philosophy...the value of the musical art in society. It was one of those "oh brother" courses some ivory tower guy dreamed up...a real ivy league hair raiser of time wasted. I quit going after 1 class. 1 class. We were to come back the next week and tell what music we wanted to have at our funerals and why and then pick a famous person and figure out what to play at his/her funeral and why. For this Columbia was charging the then unheard of 90 bucks a credit hour. I failed to appear luckily so as I got an"A"...if I would have shown up and opened my mouth I would have flunked.
This topic or discussion usually took place after 7 beers in a frat house on Saturday night when no one had a date. You could program your passing for effect and have cerebral Bach, or so to show your piety, some gorgeous renaissance choral piece, or to demonstrate your love of the sublime and some amazing folk song setting by Cantelaube. I'm rewriting my last dictates...give me the sound of kids...laughing, hooting, and generally giggling themselves into side aches...play that....best music ever written.