It amazes me how music will tuck itself away in your brain for years, and then pop out to remind you it is there. I have snippets of music going back to primary school in my head, and I often don’t know they are there until something reminds me of them and I realise they’ve been crouched there, waiting all that time.
I was reminded of this when I was (very dedicatedly) doing my homework for next term’s choir concert, by listening to the pieces on Naxos. As I started listening to Faure’s Messe Basse, I realised ‘I know this!’ and not just know it… ‘I’ve sung this!’ But when?? I’m thinking the most likely situation would be either in Junior Choir, or maybe with the Bach Choir. Maybe. The only memories it brings back is of singing it in a church – very helpful considering most of my choral experience has been in churches.
Usually my musical memory gets quite specific with feelings and memories that it brings up when I hear a tune. In fact, there are some songs that I’ve had trouble re-listening to, because they remind me of bad times. It’s only in the past year or so that I’ve been able to listen to that song ‘More than Words’ by Extreme, because it was constantly playing when we moved to Wellington and I had to start a new intermediate school midway through the year. *shudder* It used to give me this horrible stomach twisting feeling whenever I heard it. Now I can listen to it and I’m fine. Hurrah for eventually working through 18 year old issues !
The reverse of this situation is when you remember a piece of music but have no idea what it is or where you heard it first. Incredibly annoying. And google has no search function (that I know of) that lets me hum into my laptop so it can go searching for me! But then, on Bones last night, Sweets said he had an Iphone app that let him hum music into it and it would identify the song!! Would it work for classical music?! I MUST HAVE THIS APP!!
Any music that gets stuck in your brain from years ago? Or provokes a severe reaction?
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