No doubt the most famous to use music as a weapon was Beethoven. Beethoven had intended to dedicate his Symphony No. 3 to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he believed at the time to be a creator of a new republic, a liberator of the common man, but when he learned that Bonaparte had proclaimed himself Emperor,  Beethoven literally tore the dedication off the top of the page. The symphony was given the title “Eroica” and became a symbolic gesture toward the spirit of liberation. You cannot help but feel the pulse of freedom when you listen to parts of it.

This revolutionary spirit pervades much of Beethoven’s symphonic output, notably in the famous finale of his Ninth Symphony, the “Ode to Joy,” which Leonard Bernstein used to celebrate the tumbling of the Berlin Wall and is employed regularly when people need to lift their spirits against forces of oppression.

Another fantastic composer who used music to channel feelings about the intensity of his political reality was Dmitri Shostakovich, who endured being a creative spirit in Stalinist Russia. Because wordless music is ultimately abstract, there has been endless speculation about what the ‘real meaning’ is behind some of Shostavovich’s most famous symphonic works. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Is it possible to listen to these famous works except as a soundtrack to question authority? The final movement of his Symphony No. 5 begins almost unquestionably as a battle, a race of opposing forces. By the end of the movement, you know whose side has won: ours!

As with Beethoven’s symphonic works, much of Shostakovich’s symphonic output inspires and resolves these intense universal, geopolitical feelings. Listening to them, you find yourself working through the many emotions of protest and the quest for liberty, and in the end, you understand that music really is a weapon to focus and inspire the spirit that will not be dominated.

Whether you believe in a spiritual component, the practice of meditation is universally accepted as a great thing for body, mind and soul. The object of any meditation practice is to clear the chatter of your mind, to calm your mind in a way that is different from sleep. This process can have innumerable benefits, and music can help.

First, set aside 10 to 30 minutes in a place where you can listen undisturbed. Put away all reading materials, knitting or whatever else you usually do while you listen to music — during Ecstatic Meditation, you are just listening.

Focus on the music and let your mind relax. When the chatter starts up, just recognize it for what it is and let it go, gently bringing your focus back to the music you are listening to. Anyone who has been instructed in meditation will recognize this technique, though the practice is traditionally to bring your attention back on your breath. With Ecstatic Meditation, bring your attention back to the music.

Virtually any music can work for Ecstatic Mediation, but in the beginning, focus on chamber music of a maximum 30-minute duration. Chamber music is particularly effective, because you can focus on the individual parts (e.g., the violin, the piano, etc.) or how the instruments blend together. Initially, it’s much more difficult to do this with larger-scale works.

Something that may seem counterintuitive is that you’re not just looking for relaxing, mellowing music. No way! While it’s fine to nod off during Ecstatic Meditation (which means you’re just exhausted!), the aim is to remain engaged.  So the music can vary from soft and gentle to wildly energetic.

While you are listening, you can let go of your own feelings and sensations and focus on the emotion of the music — the joy, the brilliance, the melancholy, whatever qualities you find meaningful in the piece you are listening to. Your problems will not go away, but when you return from your meditation, you’ll be in a better, stronger frame of mind to resolve them.

Practice Ecstatic Meditation either alone or with friends (group meditation is a common and very beneficial practice) any time of day. You’ll not just understand the music you are listening to more profoundly; you’ll likely learn more about yourself.

Here are some examples of music to start you on your way. We’ve chosen to focus on the chamber music of Johannes Brahms because his music is accessible, and so much of it occupies that middle ground between calm and ecstasy, which is the place you want to be.

Brahms 3 Intermezzi, op. 117 - These short, beautiful and enchanting works are a great place to begin your Ecstatic Meditation. Listen to them individually and then group them together to have a longer meditative experience. Eventually, you can build up to the following Ballades.  One of my favorite recordings of the Intermezzi is a Deutsche Grammophon disc by the German pianist Wilhelm Kempff, which is available both on Amazon and on iTunes.

Brahms’s four Ballades (Op. 10) are ideal for Ecstatic Meditation individually, but all together clock in just under 25 minutes.  Here is the legendary Emil Gilels playing No. 4. As thoughts appear in your mind, let them float on by, and refocus on the beautiful melodic lines.

There is a wonderful DG recording by Gilels on which the Ballades No. 4 is coupled with Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1, another great, albeit more “intermediate,” work for Ecstastic Meditation.  This album is also available on Amazon and on iTunes.

Brahms’ Piano Trios are also excellent as your Ecstatic Meditations get longer. The first trio is a great place to start for a near 30-minute musical escape.  Here is a short YouTube clip of Eugene Istomin, Isaac Stern, and Leonard Rose playing the first movement.

As for recordings of the complete Brahms’ trios, there is a great DG disc from 1993 by the Beaux Arts Trio.  I also like a more recent Virgin Classics release by the Capuçon brothers and Nicolas Angelic.

Check out this YouTube clip of André Previn and the NHK Symphony Orchestra performing the first part of the third movement of the second symphony.  I don’t feel bad that I don’t get it, because I know that if I am not getting my ecstatic experience from Rachy, I can get it elsewhere.

For me Rachmaninov (to paraphrase Bugs Bunny) made the wrong turn at Albuquerque after Tchaikovsky.   Tchaikovsky had gone far enough in the direction of sweet indulgence.   For me, we did not need to go further.  So I have found myself taking the other turn with Schoenberg and Shostakovich.

Curiously, I am able to find a parallel with my personal experience with rock music history.  Just as I felt rather sickened by the early 80s rock of groups like Foreigner and Toto (the Rachmaninovs of rock, if you will) I found my way in their diametric punkish counterparts, Black Flag, the Butthole Surfers and Dead Kennedys.  Bands who felt and expressed angst darkly both with radical sound and the occasional touch of humor.  This is how I found Shostakovich and my way into the angst-expressive side of the classical music tradition.

I realize that I am swimming against the tide here.  Rachmaninov is music for the people, as is proven over and over again by the borrowing of his melodies by pop and soundtrack composers and was demonstrated again that night at the New York Philharmonic when the audience jumped to their feet with ecstatic applause.  My ecstasy happens to lie in the grit.  The clouds that threaten the sunset.  The bitterness in that chocolate cake.

This is strictly a matter of taste as Rachmaninov was not expressing an easy life through his music.  Quite the contrary, he was expressing what he felt was the antidote to hardship.  Yet many of us seek a more homeopathic (“like cures like”) approach to our antidotes.  And the chief procurer of alternative music at the time was Arnold Schoenberg.

Around the time Rachmaninov wrote his second symphony (1906-7), Schoenberg wrote his Chamber Symphony No. 1, which is a work that takes the left turn at Albuquerque.  It emerges strongly from the world of romantic music, lush and large minded, but rhythmically and tonally it begins to stray and quest, to murmur and complain that we need change to face the challenges of a new era.

This brief segment of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 played with ferocity by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic might just get you on your feet and wanting more:

Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 turns the sound world of Mahler in upon itself almost jazzily playing off of Mahlerian seriousness.  Yet it is not without its great climatic moments.   The work has five movements, but is meant to be played without pause and near the end of fourth movement Schoenberg creates a beautifully balanced apotheosis, which tracing its way back through the humor and lightness of the works beginning opens the way to a triumphant finale.

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 is characterized by its sweeping and saccharine (to me) melodies and is thus a very different work than Schoenberg’s funky Chamber Symphony.    But Schoenberg can ‘do lush’ as good as anyone and better than many, although his hues tend much more to dark red and indigo than light blue and pink.  One of the greatest examples of lush Schoenberg is his famous tone poem Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night), which happens to sit very high on my personal list of ecstatic masterpieces.

Verklaerte Nacht is an earlier work written when Schoenberg was even more under the influence of the Romantics, particularly Wagner.   At the time he composed it, Schoenberg was caught in a romantic spell with Mathilde von Zemlinsky, whom he would later marry.   Verklaerte Nacht conveys all the uncertainty and swelling thrill of new love.   Yet even as it ends happily there are the strains of suffering that cloud and color that happiness.

In this YouTube clip from a Live From Lincoln Center telecast, Arnaud Sussmann, Erin Keefe, David Kim, Teng Li, David Finckel, and Priscilla Lee give us a nice sampling of the piece:

In the early 1920s, Dmitri Shostakovich began to compose some of the most exciting, radically charged symphonies of the 20^th century.   His symphonies will find many places in the Ecstatic Livingroom, but I will just sight his first symphony here as an antidote to Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2.

Shostakovich’s works are very lyrical, but he deploys force and atonal wallops like no other composer.    It is perfect transitional music from hard rock to symphonic music, if you are so inclined.    Shostakovich’s first symphony is a great introduction to his symphonic output.  At around 30 minutes, it’s a relatively brief listen and offers many of the trademark Shostakovich elements.    It begins innocently and easily enough with a few hummable tunes, but by the second movement those tunes have begun to morph into huge, explosive expressions of awe and fear.  It is a journey through beautiful lyrical moments and unspeakable fear, which ends in a thrilling climax. Shostakovich was only 19 when he completed this symphony and it is relatively easy going, compared to what was to come.   Even so, I cannot imagine what the first audience to have heard his Symphony No. 1, must have felt.

Here is a clip of Valery Gergiev, one of the world’s greatest interpreters of this repertoire, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in the finale:

This is music that gets me jumping up and down and often when I hear it live in concert halls, I look around and wonder how everyone can just sit there so apparently calm and not feel the need to get up and move!   This was of course, one of the reasons we created the Ecstatic Living room.  So we could just let go and do what we want to the music that we love.

This post was inspired by my personal inability to find the ecstatic experience in Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2, but it’s not meant to be a full-on put down of Rachmaninov.  He wrote some great ecstatic works, including his final piece, the Symphonic Dances, which is absolutely rocking.    But we’ll leave that for another time…..

And in case you’re interested, here are a few recommended recordings of these pieces:

Download on Amazon

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Buy on Amazon

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Here is one of the tracks from the album, titled “Air Pour Les Guerriers”:

I sensed the bit of jest in Albert’s question, because perhaps the idea of us two guys listening to harpsichord music to unwind might seem a bit, well, fey.   Not that we have anything against fey, of course, but more because we had had a long history of unwinding with drinks to classical music.   In fact, the idea of the Ecstatic Living Room was launched, right where we were sitting, in Albert’s living room, many years ago where we would convene regularly to relax and explore music….though typically more muscular stuff.    We spent hundreds of hours listening to classical music, but in our 20s and 30s we seemed to gravitate to the music of Shostakovich, Beethoven, Mahler and new music that had, at least for me, supplanted much of the rock music I had been listening to.

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