My Favourite Piece of Music

As a stereotypical Gemini it is hard to single out any one thing as a favourite. However, one piece of music has stayed with me since I first heard it as a student and never ceases to move me: the Adagietto, 4^th Movement of Mahler’s 5^th Symphony. The music has, thanks to its use at Kennedy’s funeral and the movie “Death in Venice”, often been associated with mourning. In actual fact it was a love song to Mahler’s future wife. It leaves me breathless at the way Mahler gently weaves through an abstract melody tune with just strings and a harp gliding from minor to major, resolving lines of a melody only after stretching the anticipatory note, instructing the orchestra to switch gently from soft to sonorous, melancholic to passionate. A wonderful expression of Romantic longing.