Live music performances really do ease our journey into that great good night

My colleague Susan Pigg has an excellent article in today's Star on the benefits of music therapy for the dying.

The beauty of the evidence is that it's based on 371 patients, and the musicians were members of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra. The article on the study was written by Sandi Curtis of Concordia University, and is published in Music and Medicine.

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This made me wonder about what I would like to hear on my deathbed.

Most of us have thought about music for a particular fastive occasion, like an anniversary or birthday or wedding. Some of us have thought about music for a funeral -- in some cases, our own.

But how many of us have thought about what we would like to hear in our final hour or two?

My guess is that it would have to be something very familiar and very dear. It would also, as the article describes, need to be able to reconnect us with a better time and place somewhere earlier in our lives.

It may sound like a bit of a depressing thing to do, but I put on one of Schubert's Op. 90 Impromptus, with which I have a long connection, and it felt really nice.

So, here is Alfred Brendel, playing the Op. 90 Impromptu in G-flat Major, D. 899. I've also added Marie-Nicole Lemieux singing A Chloris, by Reynaldo Hahn (the poem, by Théophide di Viau, dates back to the 17th century).

Let me know what your candidates would be, either here or via email: jterauds@thestar.ca

Comments

[Bill McBirnie]

Hi, John:

There a lots of possibilities, of course, but off the top of my head, I would suggest: (1) John Coltrane's Ballads (...anything or everything from that album...) or (2) Morten Lauridsen's, "O Magnum Mysterium".

(...Very interesting query, John!...)

Sincerely,

Bill McBirnie

[Tom O'Bedlam]

'Sleep' by Eric Whitacre, although that might also have the congregation in tears! 'Soave sia il vento' from 'Cosi' or Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now.' A shame I wouldn't be around to hear them as well, though!