Maybe we should look this week at some favorite pieces of music paired with some writings that have the shared attribute of making us think. We’ll cover preludes, swan songs and a number of things in-between; all choices are related to ways one might make sense of what is going on around us and put it in some historical context.

I want to start with Carl Sandberg’s poem in the link below, published in 1920, shortly after WW I had ended. Four preludes on playthings of the wind is a cautionary and repetitive tale about the fleeting nature of past, present and future, faith in nations; it is also a dire warning against nationalistic pride that comes before the fall.

The last stanza claims:

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a doorsill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/four-preludes-on-playthings-of-the-wind/

(PS For your laugh of the day: the poem hunter site that displays the poem has it categorized as: about girls.)

The matching musical prelude can be found here, from Glass’ opera about the pharaoh Akhenaten: a pharaoh who was one of the first founders of a monotheistic religion, oblivious to the country falling apart around him. It did not end well. Blind nationalism and blind religion never does.