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The Longing Lab
Do you ever find yourself so fixated on longing that you can’t enjoy the present? Longing for a lover, an exotic destination, a lost loved one, or a past time in your life? The Longing Lab takes a deeper look at the science of longing and the culture that drives us to long for what we don’t have. You can expect insightful conversations with individuals uniquely qualified to talk about longing. Host, Amanda McCracken, has written or spoken about her own addiction to longing in national publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, & the BBC. The goal of the Longing Lab is to inspire individuals to make positive changes in their lives. Look for her book, When Longing Becomes Your Lover (Hachette), in fall of 2025!
The Longing Lab
Columbia Professor Walter Frisch on the musical language of longing
Episode 36 Columbia University Professor of Music Walter Frisch explores how longing is expressed in 19th and 20th-century music, particularly in the works of composers like Schumann, Wagner, and Arlen. Frisch also shares the lesser-known historic details on the development of the iconic song of longing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
Walter Frisch is the H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert von Tilzer Professor of Music at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1982. He has lectured on music throughout the United States, and in England, France, Spain, Germany, and China. Frisch is a specialist in the music of composers from the Austro-German sphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and in American popular song. His books include German Modernism: Music and the Arts (2005), Music in the Nineteenth Century (2012), Arlen and Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” (2017), and Harold Arlen and His Songs (2024). He is currently working on a book about the classic French film musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Frisch has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and Columbia’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. Learn more about Frisch at: https://music.columbia.edu/bios/walter-frisch
In this episode, (in order) we talked about:
*How Robert Schumann’s infatuation for pianist Clara Wieck inspired his music composition
*The unresolved harmony in Richard Wagner’s Opera Tristan and Isolde
*How Henri Berlioz’s object of longing, Irish actress Harriet Smithson, inspired his piece Symphonie Fantastique
*Terms of longing used in music composition like “vague de passion"
*Why “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” almost got cut from the movie The Wizard of Oz
*How Harold Arlen composed the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
*Why MGM hoped “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” would outshine Disney’s “Someday My Prince Will Come”—both known as an “I want” song in musical parlance
*How “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” made it out of MGM and was recorded and released (1938) before The Wizard of Oz (1939) by big band singer Bea Wain
*What the song meant to Judy Garland throughout her life
*The introduction to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that is often not sung
Quotes
“Sometimes we call it dissonance and consonance, or things that are unstable and stable, and very often, that pattern can sort of be linked to, or feel like it's connected to longing, a state of tension that longs for resolution."
“There's a melody [on top of this Tristan chord] that creeps upward in very small intervals, and it seems to be going somewhere, but not quite getting there…So that becomes part of this musical language of longing.”
“Wagner's view of longing and passion was influenced by the philosopher Schopenhauer, who, in turn, was influenced by Buddhism. There is this sense (that) you can never really overcome the suffering within this world. It's only in another world or in another sphere that you can find satisfaction.”
“In the middle section of the song, called a bridge, where Dorothy sings, “That's where you'll find me,” and before she goes back to the opening melody, on “find” that chord is the most dissonant, most kind of unresolved chord in the song, at the moment of greatest tension, so sort of like Schumann or Wagner.”
“The two composers that I've written the most about are Brahms from the 19th century and Harold Arlen from the 20th century. They never knew each other. They were totally different kinds of people. But in both their music, there is a sense of longing and yearning, even melancholy….it really speaks to me.”
In this very moment, we are all longing for something. In fact, neuroscience proves our brains are wired to crave what we don't have. Longing can be a comforting distraction and a catalyst for creativity. It can also become a debilitating crutch when it leads to idealizing other times, previous lovers, lost loved ones, and unknown destinations. Welcome to the Longing Lab, the podcast that explores the science of longing, the culture that teaches us to long, and our relationships with longing. I'm your host, Amanda McCracken. I'm an internationally published writer and a recovering longing addict. Let's get into today's episode. Welcome to the Longing Lab. Today we are speaking with Walter Frisch, the professor of music at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1982. He has also been a guest professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany, Yale University, Princeton University, and the New University of Pennsylvania. He has lectured on music throughout the United States and in England, France, Spain, Germany, and China. Frisch is a specialist in the music of composers from the Austro-German sphere in the 19th and 20th centuries and an American popular song. His books include German Modernism, Music and Arts, Music in the 19th century, Arlen and Harburg's Over the Rainbow, and Harold Arlen and his songs. He is currently working on a book about the classic French film musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Frisch has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, the Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library, and Columbia's Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. Welcome to the Longing Lab, Walter.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's an honor to get to speak with you. And I came across your research on Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and that's how originally I had come across you, particularly the book, Arlen and Hamburgs Over the Rainbow. And I'll uh start with asking the question I ask everyone, which is how do you define longing?
SPEAKER_00:Great question, and I'm sure you get many different kinds of answers. Uh I define longing as a feeling, uh as a feeling that makes one think of something that one doesn't have and that one wants, or maybe something that is close to within reach but not yet there. And so it's a a feeling that that propels one in that direction of desire. And I guess I can go either forward or backwards. Longing can be related to nostalgia, longing for something in the past, or something you had, or something you've experienced, or wish you had experienced, or for the future, something that you would love to have, or a person you would love to love, or have that person love you. So I see it as a multi-pronged uh emotion or set of emotions.
SPEAKER_02:And do you see that in music, do you see it more often being where does longing take place in in most of in most music that you've uh analyzed? Like is it in the past? Is it nostalgia or is it something else?
SPEAKER_00:I think it can really be both. A lot of music, uh excuse me, a lot of music um has a nostalgic feeling. A lot of music uh uh songs that you know have the idea of long, long ago, or uh looking for a style or uh an emotion that's in the past, that's certainly the case. So there's also I think music, songs, other pieces that uh long for a brighter future. The song that we'll probably get to talk about uh Over the Rainbow has a bit of that for sure, uh longing for a better place. Um in terms of um the techniques or the elements or the building blocks of music, I think there are ways in which composers, both from classical popular traditions and probably from many different cultures, um, can build or use the techniques to sort of communicate alonging certain techniques of harmony or of melody or the instruments they choose to use.
SPEAKER_02:Your specialty is specifically uh you said Austro and German music.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I I have worked a lot on on the sort of composers from Beethoven, um Schubert, Mendelsen, Schumann, Wagner, on into the 20th century. And um in many ways, it's it's fascinating that for some of them, I I can think of at least French and German composers, the idea of you could really say, I mean, starting with Beethoven, classical composers tried to develop musical techniques that were uh could communicate longing, or to some extent, um built into music are are uh processes of uh tension, building up tension, and then release, or sometimes we call it dissonance and consonance, or things that are unstable and stable. And very often that pattern uh can sort of be linked to or feel like uh it's connected to to longing, uh uh a state of tension that longs for resolution. So a lot there's a lot of big things about the basic Western musical language that that have that in it and that um com composers um exploit. I'll give you one example uh from the period of Romanticism, which we often associate uh romanticism with longing. In fact, there's a whole category of romantic longing that uh writers and poets uh talked about in the 1820s, eighteen thirties in Europe. And there was composer Robert Schumann, who lived in the early part of the 19th century, and um who uh particularly loved uh the person that he was first um introduced to early on and then eventually married Clara Schumann, Clara Vieek, who was uh the daughter of uh one of uh place where Schumann lived and somebody um and uh the music that uh Robert Schumann wrote for Clara often has that um strong sense of longing uh built into it. He wrote um some songs, or leader as we call them in French, and they were set to texts by the German romantic poet Heinrich Heine. And um the very first song in a group of songs that he wrote, it's a cycle of songs called Poets Love or Dietz-Liebe. He writes, I'm I'm just reading from the a little bit of the poem by Heine, I'll read it in English, in the wondrous month of May, when all the birds were singing, then it was I confess to her my longing and desire. And um, that's in the words of the poet, but Robert Schumann was clearly thinking of Clara and in German the terms and they're there are two interesting terms or two two words, mind Zenen und Felangen, often translated as longing and desire. They're they're two different words that uh are often used in German, not interchangeably exactly. Zennen, S-E-H-N-E, and Felangen, B-E-R-L-A-N-G-E-N, can both have this sense of of desire or of longing. Uh, they have different nuances, but they appear together in this poem. And then the music that Schumann writes to, he sets this poem to music, he uses certain kinds of harmonies, certain kinds of melodies that really capture this sense of longing because they sort of hang unresolved. It's like they want to resolve to a stable sonority, but they hang uh for a long time unresolved. So it's a kind of musical language of longing that he developed um in his work. And then a little bit later on, the famous German opera composer Richard Wagner, um, he wrote this opera in the late 1850s called Tristan und Isolde. Tristan und Isolde, based on a medieval legend, and that whole opera is really about longing and desire between these two people who fall in love uh through a magic potion, supposedly, and but their love is sort of doomed because uh she's married to somebody else and he's shouldn't be doing this and so on.
SPEAKER_02:I think he's sent to be, isn't he sent to get her is not the right description of the case?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, to bring her back, bring her back to his boss, who is is uh he's a vassal of King Mark, and King he's he's sent to bring Isolda uh from Ireland to Cornwall to King Mark, but or along the way, or actually it turns out that previously they had met each other, and even though they hadn't realized they'd fallen in love, so and their passion takes over and eventually uh dooms them, even though King Mark forgives them at the end, but they're dying or dead at that point. And it's interesting, Act Two of the opera, which is where their big love scene, which is not quite consummated, takes place um in the libretto or words of the uh opera. I checked it today. The word Zenin, that same word for longing, appears no short, no less than 15 times as they talk about their desire, their love. So it and again, and Wagner in his way too also um developed uh even more than Schumann, or continuing from Schumann, uh musical language. There's one particular harmony in Tristan and Isolde, which is very famous, a collection of notes that has come to be called the Tristan chord. And this is a harmony that is very unstable. It's a dissonant harmony uh that Wagner uses, and it it remains sort of unresolved, actually, throughout most of that, throughout most of the opera, but certainly throughout that act as the the lovers are singing and singing of their love for each other. And so that particular chord, the Tristan chord, is a wonderful emblem of longing.
SPEAKER_02:And why in what way?
SPEAKER_00:Because it because it has that's that tension in it, yes, because it has the tension in it, and also because the way the melody goes on top of it, because uh it's not just a harmony, there's a melody that creeps upward in very small intervals, and um it seems to be going somewhere, but not quite getting there. So on top of this Tristan chord, there's a melody that is inching up and inching up quite slowly, often, and yet it it never seems to reach its goal. So that is also becomes part of this uh musical language of longing.
SPEAKER_02:Kind of like almost like suspended in hope, but not ever quite getting there.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And in fact, suspension is the technical musical term for these kinds of techniques. A note is suspended when it's not uh resolved, and a suspension normally, in normal musical rules, the suspension resolves to a note, to the next note. But Wagner managed manages to keep them rolling for a long period of time, which is why he's such an innovative composer.
SPEAKER_02:So so um, you know, she's there's there's a quote I want to pull bring in. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about it. I might I'll have to cut the time that I'm looking for it. But I don't know if you've ever heard of this book, A Natural History of Love, by Diane Ackerman.
SPEAKER_00:I have heard of it, yeah. I haven't read it, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:She just does an amazing job of just pulling in, you know, all kinds of um interesting history from music to literature to you name it. And there's this piece in here where she talks about this aggravating desire, basically just talking about how like there's this like almost Tristan motif that you see in other places where it's just based in suffering.
SPEAKER_00:I'm not gonna maybe I'm not gonna find it, but well, certainly uh Wagner's view of longing and passion, which was influenced by the philosopher Schopenhauer, who in turn was influenced by Buddhism. Um, there is this sense of suffering. You know, you you can never really overcome the uh suffering within this world. It's only in another world or in another sphere that you you can find satisfaction. So Tristan is older will never find happiness, or that's not even the word, you know, fulfillment in this world. There's a kind of pessimism, so famous called Schopenhauerian pessimism, which is based to some extent on Buddhist thought that Schopenhauer read. And Wagner absorbed Schopenhauer, read him intently. And many people feel that the opera Tristan in his old is almost like a musical uh well, a presentation, or it's infused with the Schopenhauerian ideas of the futility of life and of passion and uh the suffering, uh Leiden, the German word. You get that a lot too in in uh in Tristan.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, it is uh it's it's um very frustrating for yeah, and I forgot that Tristan was like French for like sadness, right? Trist.
SPEAKER_00:Trist, yep, it's built in, and then that was originally, I think, a French uh romance, and Trist is is is certainly built into that, and that's um a play on words. I might mention just one other thing before we move on, which is um a French composer, since we're talking about French, Hector Berlioz, sort of a contemporary of Schumann and Wagner, and he too, uh in his way, uh was very uh you might say obsessed with longing. And he wrote a piece, and in his case, the object of his longing was an Irish actress, Harry Smithson, who uh he had several people that he became, women that he became obsessed with and loved. Um Harry Smithson, an Irish actress who had appeared, uh Romeo and Juliet in uh and Hamlet in Paris, and he fell in love with her and did eventually marry her, but he sort of loved her from afar forbid. In one of his pieces, the Fantastic Symphony or Symphonie Fantastique, um, he sort of embodies that in a motive that also, sort of like Wagner's, but written well before Wagner's, has this kind of sense of longing and yearning and moving in ways that you can't be quite sure where it's gonna go. And um and Berlioz, he wrote a kind of text to accompany the Symphony Fantastique, or meant to be read, it's called a program. Uh, and in this program he talks about uh it it's it's almost not quite a French word for long, but it's a specific term, the vague des passion, the sort of emptiness of passions. Um, it was a term from the French writer, Chateaubriand, and it means a kind of longing. You don't even know what the at this point you don't even know what the object of the longing is. You sort of feel this uh longing, this yearning, this desire, and it eventually gets attached to uh an object or a person. So there and that's part of, yeah, so it's part of that tradition too.
SPEAKER_02:Like vague, like a wave, like a wave of passion.
SPEAKER_00:Like a wave of passion, yeah. Although I believe that the French word le vague and la vague are different, and um I think vague in this sense means something that's um uh more an emptiness. I have to check that actually. But um, but yes, that is the term vague de passion.
SPEAKER_02:And uh it sounds a lot like limerence. I don't know if I talked to you a little bit about that and when I emailed you what I've been researching, but limerence where you have that kind of romantic obsession with somebody you've put on a pedestal that seems just out of reach enough to keep you keep your hope alive, which I'm it sounds like really helped generate a lot of beautiful music for some of these composers.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and even if you mentioned that putting people on a pedestal, if you go back to the Middle Ages in music, the troubadours, we're talking about the 12th century now, poets and musicians who in the art of courtly love, which was the set of conventions and chivalry that they were writing about, they love a woman from afar. It's a passion that probably is not going to be realized because often the woman is a noble person who's married, and but they write this poetry and this beautiful music of longing, really, uh, that um uh that uh yeah, it's sort of out of reach, but it but it's it's uh strongly felt by the poet and uh and received by the the woman. Mostly occasionally there's a troubadour who's a woman who loves a man, uh uh who writes the poetry and the music. But yeah, so even dating back to the Middle Ages, the poetry and the language of love has built into it uh much of this longing.
SPEAKER_02:So on to the uh the song of most interest for me um is the somewhere over the rainbow. Um in what ways, like, how did that become, if you agree, this like iconic song of longing, at least for the 20th century?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. It it certainly did. Um, that song, which appears near the beginning of the film The Wizard of Oz, was written for Judy Garland by uh Harold Arlen and Ian Parker. And it's interesting how even how that developed just very quickly, because uh, as they were planning the film, uh the the producers and the writers knew they wanted some kind of song in Kansas before she gets to Oz. That's the only number, musical number that's in Kansas. And originally they thought of something kind of simple and bouncy, you know, like I have a nice home in Kansas, I'm really happy to be here, blah, blah, blah. Uh and uh there was an earlier composer who was involved in the movie before Arlen, who even drafted something like that about my little home in Kansas. But when Harburg and um Arlen got onto the scene, Harburg, particularly the lyricist, said, No, no, that's that's not what this is about. She wants to get away from Kansas. I mean, uh her aunt and uncle are mean to her and you know, sort of don't want her around, she falls into the the the animal pen and they say, Can't you find something else to do? And then Miss Gulch, of course, takes her dog. And so at that point, um, even though, in fact, in this musical score of the Wizard of Oz, you often hear the song Home, Sweet Home, or there's no place like home. And in fact, that's what she says when she clicks her heels at the end to get back. But at the beginning, as Harberg quite rightly realized, she wants to get away. And he persuaded the producers and so forth. And so he wrote these um these lyrics, and the melody came along with by Harold Rowan, uh somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, you know, to to get away from this situation. And so it it developed uh into this, yeah, sort of iconic song of longing. And it actually, when it was slaughtered into the film, and this is a famous story when it was uh there was a preview in uh I think Pasadena or something, early in 19 or the middle of 1939, and Louis B. Mayer, as in Metro Golden Mayer, was there and he saw it and he said, Why is she singing this ballad, this slow song in a barnyard? Cut it, get get this out of the film. It moves too slowly.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god, they cut it, they cut it that day.
SPEAKER_00:And um, when Arlen and Harbour heard about this, they were furious and upset. And they they went in and they said, Look, you can't cut this song. And I mean, it's it's it it's so important at this point in the film.
SPEAKER_02:And they were doing all the songs for the film.
SPEAKER_00:They did all the songs uh for the film, about eight or nine songs, and this was one of the last to be written because they were sort of figuring out what it would be. And so the producer of the film, Arthur Freed, who was the man who actually produced most of the great Hollywood musicals, um, sing it in the rain and so forth in later years, he went on their behalf to Louis B. Mayer and said, Look, this song has to be in either the song Stays or I Go. And you couldn't make that film without Arthur Freed. And so Louis B. Mayer said, Oh, okay, let's leave it in. And so the rest is history, of course, over the rainbow is there. And and it did become iconic. I think one of the things, of course, it's very specific in a way to that moment in the film, but in a way, she's not the the the way Harburg wrote the lyrics, it could be lift, it could be a song of longing and desire to get somewhere else, anywhere. I mean, it she doesn't mention Kansas, she doesn't mention a farm, she doesn't mention her aunt and uncle, she doesn't mention the land of Oz, of course, she doesn't know about the land of Oz yet. So it's become a kind of iconic song. In fact, many people have interpreted uh there's a a wonderful book by Salman Rushdie, the writer. He wrote a book about the movie The Wizard of Oz back in the 90s. It was a very important film for him when he was growing up in India. And he interprets the song as an anthem for exiles everywhere. I mean, he eventually, of course, did go into exile. Um uh and he says it's sort of a you know an anthem for those people who who are in a situation that they don't want to be in, and it's a yearning for elsewhere. And so he gave it that kind of political social meaning.
SPEAKER_02:Um uh yeah, so because the lyrics were so maybe not vague is the right word, but they weren't so rooted in the actual story that it was really people could take it and apply it in a lot of different ways.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, which isn't so much true of the other, you know, like ding dong, the witch is dead. I mean, or you know, the other the other wonderful songs in the Gris of Oz. But uh yeah, Over the Rainbow could could take that on. And and for Arlen, so usually when they worked together, Arlen wrote the melody first, maybe based on a thought of what it would be. And so, and he was a very great craftsman. He usually would go off for a couple of hours, a couple of days, and work on it. Then he'd come back and present the melody to Harburg, who would then you know work the lyrics. And so Arlen did this, and he he he really had trouble. He knew that he needed a melody for this spot. It was going to be a ballad, probably the only ballad or slow song in the thing. And he was really having trouble coming up with it. It's a story he told often that he was driving with his wife, Anya, in on Sunset Boulevard uh in Hollywood, and he said, Wait a minute, pull over, pull over here. So she pulled over in front of Schwab's drugstore. He told the story, and he often kept little pieces of paper in his pocket, uh, jots, he called them. And he said, Wait a minute, I, you know, and and he wrote down the tune that then became Over the Rainbow. I mean, he and he'd been struggling over it for days. And so he comes back and he presents it to Harburg, and he was a very fine pianist, and Arlen is playing this song, and Harburg is listening to it. He said, I don't know, that sounds more like opera or operetta, like that should be sung by Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, these were these were operetta stars, and it has the it's it's the wrong spirit. So Arlen was really discouraged. And so they called in a friend at the time.
SPEAKER_02:Because they were going for more bouncy childlike.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I I mean, I think I I'm not sure that at that point they were thinking bouncy childlike, but Harberg was didn't think that this what he thought was, you know, too grand uh would work. And they called it in Ira Gershwin, their friend, the lyricist, the brother of George Gershwin, who by that point had died, unfortunately, and Ira Gershwin was still living in Hollywood. He was a lyricist. And he came over one night and he well, where he suggested to Arlene, he said, maybe play it in a style that's a little less grandiose, you know, sweeping. So Arlen did that, and um, that persuaded Harburg, and then Harberg starts to write the lyrics, but he had he had real trouble. Um uh the the song begins with a um a very wide leap, an octave somewhere. That's a that's a big leap, not that easy to sing, and that's a kind of trademark of Harold Orlando. A number of his songs begin to say it's only a paper moon. He he often used octaves. So anyway, he presents this to Harburg, and Harburg is thinking, Oh my god, what kind of words can I put to that? You know, he he tried Harburg in his memoirs, he says, Oh, I tried I'll go over the rain bar. He tried various things and he thought, I just don't know that I can make this work. He said, I think I'm gonna ask Harold to take that first note off, or you know, change the opening of the melody. Well, fortunately he didn't, or if he did, uh Arlen said no. And and then eventually um Arbor came up with somewhere, which is a perfect course setting of that melody, and then the rest evolved from there. And the uh, but the song, you know, we took we were talking earlier about the musical language of longing developed by people like Berlioz and Schumann and Wagner. And Arlen, he wasn't classically trained, but he had he was a master of harmony in his way, very very gifted musician. He had spent years as a jazz musician. I mean, he really met many popular songs like Irving Berlin, never learned how to read music. Arlen, I mean, he was a great, great composer, but Arlen had a background as a uh jazz pianist, a jazz arranger, a vocalist. So he came to this with a lot of technique and craft. And and so when he's writing over the rainbow, it means it's clear that he's thinking, you know, in a different way, but similarly to to Schumann. So uh somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high. It's a very uh kind of he he starts with this octave leap and then he brings the melody down. So that creates a sense of desire or longing, somewhere you might say, and then over the rainbow, way up high. There's a land that I've heard of once in a la. He comes back to the note that he started with earlier, and so it's like desire, longing, some resolution. So he's thinking in those terms, and then even with the harmonies, um, there's the middle section of the song uh called a bridge, um, and uh where Dorothy sings, That's where you'll find me, and before she goes back to the opening melody, on Find that chord is the most dissonant, most uh kind of unresolved chord in the song at the moment of greatest tension. So sort of just like Schumann or Wagner.
SPEAKER_02:It's what does it mean by that when you say like it was the most unresolved, or what was the other word you use to describe it?
SPEAKER_00:Uh well, dissonant is a technical because a lot of musical harmony is based on an opposition between dissonance and consonants, and a consonant is a chord where you can end a piece, often begin a piece, whereas a dissonance is something that needs to be resolved. Not until the 20th century did people ever try to end a piece on a dissonance, because by its nature it has to resolve to a consonance. So those are kind of technical terms, but um tension, release, resolved, unresolved. And so Arlen plays this chord on where you'll find me, and and then comes the rest um of the song. And yeah, so he you know, built into the musical language of that song, just as with the classical composers, is a kind of uh musical language of melody and harmony, um and uh longing. And you might even say rhythm, which is the more surface pattern of the music. The middle part of that song, the bridge that I mentioned, begins with someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up. It's this very simple, just going back and forth between two notes. There's not much longing there. Right. And um Arlen supposedly based um based or you know, was thinking of a child like a child's piano exercise, you know, when a child is playing a piano, often at the beginning, they're doing very repetitious things. I mean, it's not much of a melody if you're thinking of the beauty of the opening of the song, but Arlen intentionally is giving it this kind of simple quality, you know, like Dorothy at that point. It's not that longing has left her, she still has it, but she's thinking. You know, someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. And then the longing builds up again until she gets to that's where you'll find me. And that's you know, that beautiful chord that Arlen does. So it's so he was such a great craftsman, and Harburg, you know, follows him right along with these lyrics. Um and then the very end of the song, it's interesting. Arlen adds what we in music we call a coda, which is something that happens after the end of the formal part of the song. So um uh and in that part of the song she sings, if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh, why can't I? She climbs up. So the longing comes back. The song actually um technically or formally the song ends a little bit before that, back down where it ended before. But then there's this extra section, if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh, why can't I? So it ends it's ends high, like uh like they're ends high with hot with some hope, kind of, I guess.
SPEAKER_02:It doesn't drop down again.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. So another beautiful touch on the part of uh of the composer and lyricist. So yeah, I mean, what it's like a three-minute long song, but it's it has so many of these qualities. And as I say, because it, or as we were saying, because it is not specific to Kansas or the farm or whatever, it has become this, and actually it's also because of hope, but also of solace. It's been used many times, or I I know several instances. Uh, for instance, during the pan height of the pandemic, Yo-Yo Ma and um I think a violinist or another musician, I can't remember her name, um, they they made an album, an online album called Songs of Solace and uh something like that. Uh Songs of Solace and Hope. Uh Yo-Yo Ma the Cellist did, and they played um Over the Rainbow there right at the height of the pandemic, or um when that terrible tragedy happened where the school children were murdered in Connecticut uh back in I think 2012. Um kids from a neighboring school along with their teacher, you can find this on YouTube, made a video recording singing Over the Rainbow, um, you know, as an expression of solidarity and hope. And you you find it there was an instance uh just a few years ago where Ariana Grande was singing a concert. Oh no, there had been in Manchester, I guess, a terrorist attack that killed some people at a concert. And when Arya Grande came on, I guess a bit later, or maybe for another concert, Ariana Grande sang rather spontaneously, or pretty spontaneously, over the rainbow as a way of um marking, you know, expressing hope and sorrow, sorrow and hope after this terrible tragedy. So you do find it cropping up uh still today. And then perhaps the most famous version of the song, is that in some ways to a younger generation more familiar than Judy Garland's, is by the Hawaiian singer Israel Kamaka Wahole. Yes, which you've heard everywhere on commercials, in films. Um he accompanied it on his ukulele, he had this gorgeous high tenor voice, and uh he he recorded it, I think, in the 1980s, and it became the worldwide-selling hit for many years.
SPEAKER_02:Uh and his version's a little bit different, right? I read somewhere of it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It is different. I mean, he he does a sort of mashup of the lyrics on purpose. I think he knew what the lyrics were, and he he combines it in a mashup with What a Wonderful World, the song that Louis Armstrong wrote. So he combines Over the Rainbow and Uh What What a Wonderful World. Um, and uh yeah, accompanies himself on the ukulele and occasionally changes, seems to mess up the lyric. Apparently, he did it quite spontaneously. He just told his producer one night in the middle of the night, I guess, he said, I want to go to the recording studio and record something. So they dragged themselves in and he just did this. Uh, he had it in mind, and he did it quite uh spontaneously, perhaps even improvised. And it's interesting, but uh again, talking about hope and longing, this has often been written about. And he himself said that um the for him, the lyrics of the song, as well as what a wonderful world, were connected connected with Hawaiians' desire, the desire of Hawaiian people for independence and autonomy, or it's the state, it's a state of the United States, but we didn't own it always or have it always. And there's a strong uh independence movement still in Hawaii that wishes Hawaii were an independent nation uh again. And so self-determination is a big thing. And and so he was his for him, this song became a kind of uh yeah, sense of longing for greater independence and autonomy for Hawaii. So again, you know, a totally different context from Dorothy and Oz or in Kansas, or you know, children in Newtown, Connecticut, or Salman Rushdie uh in his land, or being exiled from his land, you know, that this sense of longing for a better place, hoping for a better place, thinking that it's not impossible. Right. Uh, that same song, that same set of lyrics, you know, can mean so many things to so many people. And I I've I've had this experience where um where I've talked about the song, or people have read my little book about the song, and they come up to me and they say, That song, you know, my mother sang that song to me as a child, or that song, my parents had that song at their wedding, or you know, so many stories where that song had such a personal uh appeal, or a personal relate, they had such a personal relationship with the song.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, my friend, one of my college friends actually um recorded herself singing it. She passed away from breast cancer when her kids were really young. And at the funeral, I might get choked up thinking about this, but her father um took the recording, put it on CDs, and gave it out to everybody too. And then they played it over, you know, at the at the memorial too, which is just heart-wrenching, but also gives you it's heart-wrenching, but also gives you this sense of hope or peace that there's there's more to potentially to to life and and so on. Um but um one thing uh one other thing I was thinking of was um I heard that somewhere I read that it was it was uh MGM was in uh like in competition with Disney. And so this song was supposed to be um rival Snow White's um Someday My Prince Will Come. Um that is true.
SPEAKER_00:In fact, when when uh MGM was gonna make Wizard of Oz, they viewed it as they wanted to uh make a movie that they thought a live-action movie that they thought would be better, or at least rival uh Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which had come out, I think, two or three years earlier, maybe 1936 or 1937. And yes, um it's true that uh the producer of Wizard of Oz, Arthur Freed, the man I mentioned, who was the the uh genius behind so many of the MGM musicals, did say that he wanted something sort of like Someday My Prince Will Come, uh a song of longing. And uh excuse me, uh it's sometimes in the parlance of musical theater and musical film, we they call them the I Want song. It comes right at the beginning of a movie or a show. Um and it the protagonist is is sort of looking for something or expressing a desire for something that he or she might or might not have later later. I mean, in Wicked, for example, the Wicked and Me that uh that Alphabet sings, or in if you think of the opening of My Fair Lady, where they sing uh uh All I Want Is a Room Somewhere, the uh that uh Elias Doodlittle sings. It wouldn't it be lovely? That's an I want song. Uh that fall and and uh Someday My Prince Will Come, though those kinds, that kind of songs. So yeah, so that was definitely part of what um, and that's I think what helped Harburg and uh uh Arlen turn away from the idea of a more bouncy song that you know that the I Want song uh at the beginning of Wizard of Oz would be something more serious. And you know, what they turned in, of course, was quite amazing. I mean, someday My Prince Will Come, or um actually uh Arthur Fried had a little bit wrong because I'm someday My Prince Will Come comes a bit later in the film, and at the very beginning of the uh Snow White and the Seven Droars is um I'm Wishing, where she's by the well and the little birds. That's that's that's sort of her I want song, at least the one at the beginning.
SPEAKER_02:But both a lot of I want in there.
SPEAKER_00:There's a lot of I want. And so they uh so that was something that they were seeking to do. And yes, this film was intended to be kind of in competition with with with Disney in a in a sense. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I also read somewhere um in an article where you were quoted too, where that that how this the song actually got got out before the movie did, and it was another woman, I don't know, Beia or B or something like that, who kind of sang a jazzy version of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, B Wayne was her name. Uh she was a jazz singer, uh quite a popular and a good jazz singer of the 1930s. And yeah, when MGM was um creating this film and the songs had been written, they were really trying very hard not to let anything get out. Um they wanted for it to sort of come out in the summer of 1939.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then the sheet music, because MGM had its own sheet music arm, sort of, you know, uh called Leo Feist and Company. And uh so they were keeping very tight lid on it, but apparently not tight enough because that song made it out somehow of MGM and made it into the hands of a band leader named Larry um, just forgot his name, and he worked with a number of different singers. He was a prominent band leader, and so he gave it to her, and they yeah, they per they performed it on the radio and they made this recording uh with B Wayne, made this recording with him, and uh NBC Records uh was gonna put it out, and and and when and this was in the spring or the winter spring of 1939. The film was gonna come out in the summer of 1939. This recording was made in December of 1938, and it's interesting that um Judy Garland had already pre-recorded the song in the FGM Sound Studios, but it was still in the can can. Nobody had heard it. So B Wayne, the singer who I actually had the opportunity to interview, she died a few years ago, close to 100 years old. And I didn't speak to her personally, but through her butter, I passed some questions on to her, B. Wayne, and she said, Yeah, you know, this song came across my desk, or and I thought, wow, what a nice number. She had no idea. I mean, she probably knew who Judy Garland was, but she had, of course, never heard the Judy Garland version. And she so she and and um the band leader doing this quite kind of up-tempo version, and it's you know, had that been all we ever knew, it probably wouldn't have become the hit that it did, although it's a good recording of the year, very typical, where the band plays several verses and then she comes in for one, and then the band continues in. But um when this record came out in yeah, February or March of 1939, MGM went ballistic and they sent cease and desist orders to NBC and they said you have to collect all unsold copies of the disc or whatever, you know, and it didn't work because the disc was already radio stations and oh gosh, what a nightmare. And um, you know, in the end, I think it's it all turned out okay. It all turned out okay, and and their legal department, you know, went frenetic. But yeah, it's so interesting that uh that that happened. And then of course Judy Garland. Um, and she also recorded it right around the same time as the movie released, Judy Garland recorded it in a studio. So we have her soundtrack recording, which is wonderful, and then a different band leader, um, Victor Young, his name I remember now, uh was a very prominent composer and bandleader. And so he did a set of recordings for Decker Records with some of the songs from Wizard of Oz. Uh, or I think it was a single that had the Jitterbug song, which was cut from the film on one side and Over the Rainbow on the other. So that came out quite a different sound. I mean, it's the same Judy Garland at that amazing young age. Uh, but so we have the soundtrack recording and then Judy Garland in the Was she how old was she like 17 or so when she recorded that? I think she was maybe 16 or so, 15 or 17. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I read somewhere where she said something about like every time that she had to sing that song, it was like an adult in pigtails or something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It's it's interesting because it followed her throughout her life. She mentions that in that quote, and she became her, but but it she felt uh a bit resentful, but it also she she really viewed it as as her song and became associated with her. And and as she uh went on in her career, she changed her interpretation. I mean, she went through a lot of difficulties, of course. She was very poorly treated by MGM, to put it mildly, and she was finally fired by MGM in 1950, and she had difficulties with substance abuse, with her relationships and her marriages and eating disorder, I think, too. Yeah, she remained a great artist throughout. And and as she she continued to sing the song right up to the end, there's recordings from the late 1960s. Um, but her interpretation changes. There's one amazing, you can see it on video. She did uh after she left MGM, she started to do one woman shows uh at the Paramount Theater and across the country and various places. And the one and she did it with various arrangers and she had various assisting artists, and she uh the the show at the Palace Theater, and there is a video because it it was televised at one point, or she did a televised version. It's it's from 1955. So she was, you know, um uh well close to 20 years, you know, 15 years after uh having sung it in the film, and her voice, her voice is still, I mean, she had still had amazing technique, but of course it got darker, a little more uh throaty, uh a little grittier. But she uh she interprets the song through that uh way, through that uh spirit, and and some of it, sometimes it's really uh wrenching in in that uh her show she she comes out as a hobo, as you might call it, or a tramp. She's just done this number uh with another singer. Um it's an Irving Berlin number. Um I'm uh she's in this hobo costume painted um uh Wear a Couple of Swells. Um it's an Irving Berlin number. But then after that, the spotlight moves onto her and she moves to the front of the stage and she sort of leaves that character ostensibly, and she sat at the edge of the stage and sang over the brain bow in this truly amazing way. And and it's not as melodic as it used to be. She she stops more often between phrases. I mean, she had great breath control as an artist if you listen to the original recordings from 1938-39. I mean, she could sustain a long line, and she probably still could do that, but she's there's more sobs sort of built into the and we sings, Why, oh, why can't I at the end? I mean, not the way I'm doing it, but it's uh she and and and you know, anybody who knew Judy Garland, what she'd been through, uh, it it's so moving because it's so that song really remained part of her um throughout. Uh so even though she you know might have been a little bit resentful. Um yeah, she she had a television special in the early 1960s for a couple of years. Then there's some um the Judy Garland show. And it was one point during the making of that show that her music director, I think who was Mel Tourmay, pretty prominent singer and writer herself, suggested doing a kind of comic version or something of Over the Rainbow or something upbeat or and I think he reports this in his autobiography. He's he says, she said, No, that song is like a sacred song. You can absolutely not treat it that way. It will never work. I would never do it that way. So, you know, it had that kind of almost holy quality for her.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you can understand why she wouldn't want to do a a parody of it, so to speak. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. That's interesting. Yeah, I wonder if anybody's ever like put somebody through an MRI listening to that song or singing the song too, and just see how that plays out and they're how that I mean, I certainly feel it in my body. It'd be interesting to see what science shows, how it really impacts people too.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you people have done neuroimaging of people listening to music and various kinds of music, and there's no question that not only does it activate certain parts of the brain, but uh and I'm not an expert to speak on this. Oliver Sachs wrote a little bit about it in some of his writings. Um others have too. Um, but you know, not only certain parts of the brain, but certain parts of that part of the brain that that are affected or that reflect that. Yeah. So I'm I I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case for people either singing it and or and or listening to it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Have you do you off the hand, do you can you think of anything, any research you've read that does relate to particularly music that has these this longing quality, like how that impacts the brain? Anything offhand?
SPEAKER_00:I can't think offhand. I could uh I could find that. I mean, I even have some colleagues I uh where I teach at Columbia University who who are interested in the sort of neuropsychology of the brain, of course, and and the music's effect on it. One call it works more with motion, kinetic motion than specifically with emotion or in the brain. But yeah, no, I I think you know that's certainly true, or l listening to a you know, a piece by Wagner or some very uh uh romantic piece. Um yeah, I I heard a paper once where a guy that was interesting, he he had he did that, something like that with uh certain pieces from Grieg's Pyrene suite and particularly the uh the very sad Asa's um with this one very slow piece in that collection by Edward Grieg, and I think he did see certain things in the brain that reflected the sadness or the the kind of tragic sense in some of the music. So yeah, I am. Maybe grief even grief, yeah. Uh I'm I'm not one of probably one of your other uh interlocutors would would have more to say about that. But yeah, you know, I think we all when we listen to the music we love, or when we sing the music that we love, or when we play the music we love, we have uh, you know, our brains definitely reflect that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, there's an interesting study out of uh Toronto, um, that was written about like in the past like two years or so, where they found that um langu or that songs had increasingly gotten more avoidant and less secure since the 50s. Um, and so it was kind of looking at like, do these songs that you listen to, if you find yourself listening to, you know, a lot of Adele, for example, are you do you have this kind of anxious, anxious attachment? Um, is it because of the music you listen to, or do you listen to the music because you already have that kind of anxious attachment? Um, so with you know, the chicken or the egg, is it are you drawn to that music because you're already that way, or is the music making people more um anxious or avoidant, you know? Um so that was interesting. And I was wondering how or if you see um like in culture and history increase or decrease the number of songs written with longing elements? Like, are there certain eras defined by music that depict a language of longing? It sounded like certainly there was during the romantic you you were for in the 19th century, the romanticism. But do you feel like in your research you've seen that certain eras there there is more production of this kind of music that has that language of longing you described?
SPEAKER_00:I haven't uh done you know a lot of well, much any really research on that sort of transhistorically in a way, but I suspect that always, there's always music written and I, you know, even across cultures that that have that has that, whether it's music of protest, you know, which isn't the same as longing, or you know, music related to political or cultural uh or social, uh both popular music and maybe uh various classical pieces that that will have some aspect of longing for a better world. Um, I I if we define longing most broadly as as really wanting something else, you know, the civil rights movement or which generated a lot of songs, we shall overcome. I may I'm being oversimplistic here, but I think that um one thing I will say is that in the 20th century, in classical music, a lot of classical music, you know, sort of high classical music, if you will, became more dissonant. I mean, we think of the composer Arnold Schoenberg or Bela Bartok or Igor Stravinsky or Shostakovich or, you know, some of the great composers of the 20th century. Um, this sort of became more dissonant all around. And often in the music of Schoenberg, for example, there aren't very many consonances. Uh you know, I talked about dissonance being unstable or may often, like in Wagner, reflecting desire a longing, and consonance as the fulfillment of longing, or at least the acceptance that maybe the longing won't be realized. And uh yeah, when you when you get to say Arnold Schoenberg, the composer, he spoke of what he called the emancipation of the dissonance. So everything can be dissonant, but that doesn't mean that uh you you know he can't create a sense of longing within that. Uh uh sometimes it has to do with nostalgia. Arnold Schoenberg, the 20th century composer, wrote a a set of uh they're kind of songs, not really songs because they're more spoken than sung in 1912 called Pierrot Lunaire, about uh based on the character from Commedia dell'arte, Pierrot. And uh at the very end, he goes through all kinds of weird adventures in the set of lyrics written by a French symbolist poet and then translated into German. But um at the very end, this character longs to go home to his sunny home in Bergamo, Italy. And um, there's definitely a sense of longing in the final number or two, have that longing, and it's a kind of nostalgia. And what Schoenberg does is he references tonal music, music of the past, such as the kind he wasn't writing anymore. So that could be a gesture of longing. You find that a lot in 20th century music if people we we started our thing talking or conversation talking a bit about nostalgia as a as an important kind of longing. And you certainly find a lot of that in well everywhere, but uh, you know, certainly in 20th century music uh and it's communicated different ways uh in in in terms of longing. The composer Brahms, well going back to the 19th century, the German composer who worked at the end of the 19th century, he often there's often the sense of longing, nostalgia in his music communicated through some of the same techniques as Schumann and Wagner, but uh handled in even a different way. So I I I I sense that it's kind of universal in one way or another. But it takes different forms in different eras and a lot of contemporary popular music, you know, you you uh reference to Dell and a lot of other singers, composers, many of whom I'm not familiar with. I don't follow them as much. Uh, you know, that is a basic component of I sometimes have my students write about the I mean I teach mainly Western classical music, but I have them write sometimes short things about the pieces that they love and listen to, which are different from the ones that I love and listen to. Contemporary songs, singers, and uh it's fascinating. And I ask them always to include a little clip so that I can listen to it from Spotify or YouTube, and it's really interesting. Uh sometimes the music doesn't really speak to me in terms of I don't know, it's musical language, or it seems kind of repetitious, uh, the same chord over and over again, or a few chords, but in a way that's not what that music is about. And very often, yeah, of course the lyrics have a particularly the lyrics have, you know, a strong sense of belonging uh built into them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And um there was I I read also somewhere where there was a there was a lyric or there was a section. I'm not I'm not good at saying the right kind of musical word here, but like a stanza perhaps that was cut out of the Wizard of Oz that kind of described not the Wizard of Oz, somewhere over the rainbow that described like the storm that was happening.
SPEAKER_00:Um do you think about there were some alternate lyrics that um Harburg considered uh different metaphors. I can't recall exactly at that point about a storm, but um I mean there is an introductory section that is rarely sung. Um uh that that was written. It's not sung by Judy Garland in the movie. It's it's called a verse or an introduction in in technical in in popular music parlance. Many songs have these before the song formally begins. And there is one for over the rainbow. Judy Garland rarely sang it, most singers don't. And there it refers to, I think it begins when all the world is a hopeless jumble and the raindrops tumble all around.
SPEAKER_02:That's what I'm talking about, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right, heaven opens a magic gate. Um, and so on. There's a better world to be found just beyond the rain. Um that second part in paraphrasing, and so that uh is a wonderful. I I wish people performed it more often, uh leading into the song. Um because that that yes, it sets it up in a way that you know things are bad. It's like uh and they wrote it at the time of the film, but I don't it was never recorded for the film. But then I think Judy Garland only sang it once or twice on a radio show. Ella Fitzgerald, the great singer, she would perform that and a few other singers performed that that introduction before getting into the song. I mean, I do think it yeah, because uh then you know where the rain, you know, what precedes the rainbow, the raindrops and the storm. So it wasn't exactly cut, wasn't cut, so to speak, but many singers don't sing it. As they don't sing many introductions, many popular songs have verses or introductions that singers don't sing. But uh yeah, that that is a beautiful one, and it should be heard more often because yeah, it is part of the narrative, it it aids the narrative of the song, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, this is a question I should have asked you at the very beginning, but I'll have this be our uh last question. And that is what drew you to this sort of research and and this kind of music, like um something you've always been interested in, even you know, as a young boy, or how how did you do you develop this this passion for this like really unique um area?
SPEAKER_00:So do you mean like the over the rainbow that specifically?
SPEAKER_02:Uh or over the rainbow, and you've mentioned Wagner's Tristan, and there's there's and the parallels between that kind of like language of longing, it sounds like you have you have studied.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I would say that. I haven't studied as specifically, is that it comes up in the music that I tend to like most or love most. And so maybe I mean I grew up uh just to to make briefly, I I grew up, I wasn't didn't listen to or pla play that much classical music as a young child. I grew up in New York City and my parents and grandparents took me to a lot of Broadway shows. So I heard a lot of the great, the great uh popular music of that era, you know, from the late 1950s into the 1960s, through Fiddler on the Roof, through, you know, Sondheim, through uh Hello Dolly and great shows. So I always loved that repertory. But then I also came to love um classical music. I began to study the piano and then began, uh did my career mainly in research into classical music. Uh at the time that I was beginning my graduate studies in musicology or music history, nobody was writing about Over the Rainbow or that kind of, you know, Hollywood films and Broadway musicals were considered, you know, sort of beneath the sort of thing that a serious music historian would write about. Well, that's really different now. There's a lot of great writing on Broadway shows, on popular composers, on Hollywood musicals, on other musicals. So that has sort of led me uh more to this. But what I will say uh specifically is that the two composers that I've worked on are so different from each other that I guess I've written the most about are Brahms from the 19th century and Harold Arlin from the 20th century. They never knew each other, they were totally different kinds of people. But in both their music, there is a sense of longing and yearning, even melancholy, which is different, uh, that you know, some people it might turn off some people, and you don't want it all the time, every time, but it it really speaks to me, and uh uh and that that I, you know, sort of settled on these two composers in particular to write about and to analyze. Um I I think that their uh their music, yeah, just it's never superficial. It's highly well crafted. And inside that craft, I mean some people used to accuse Brahms of being too academic, too stodgy, but no, inside that, you know, sort of craft is this strong sense of belonging and um of uh yearning uh that is is beautifully carried out. Um uh Brahms, uh yeah, Brahms has has that quality and and uh Harold Arland, the composer we've been talking about, he was the favorite composer of Stephen Sondheim, the uh the songwriter and music, or along with Jerome Kern, another great uh person from Arland's era. But Sondheim really loved the music of Harold Arland, and he says it in his writings again and again. He says that in fact in each show that he's written, Sondheim, that he wrote, there's a song that's inspired by or modeled on an Arlen song. And he says, and so the interviewer asks him, Well, well, you know, what does he like about Harold Arlen? And he says, his heart is always breaking, says Sondheim of Stephen Arlen. Now, Sondheim know knows how to write heartbreaking songs for sure, but he got some of that from Arlen and and yeah, Arlen's heart is not always breaking. Uh, you know, there's there's upbeat songs uh that you get in The Wizard of Oz and elsewhere, but there is a sense of of longing and even melancholy, uh sadness. And yeah, yeah, you get that. And the same is true of the composer Johannes Brahms. There's plenty of fun pieces, dances, and this and that. But uh so maybe as a long-winded answer to your question, it's it's it's composers that seem to and of course Schumann and Wagner as well, and the other people I've mentioned, but composers that can really embody longing into their music without being Maudlin or sentimental. I don't think Brahms or Harold Arlen are ever really sentimental in a way that's mockish or artificial. I mean, it really comes from them, and I feel it sort of comes from them right to me, uh, and other people. I mean, plenty of people love Brahms, and plenty of people love Harold Arlen, but there's a special uh appeal.
SPEAKER_02:So I yeah, I guess I would say that longing, I don't I don't spend all my time, you know, moping about longing for something, but when I encounter There's a complexity, I think, to longing that you don't feel with just a flat out sad song, I think, perhaps. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:No, I think you're right. And I think a really great composer and lyricist or whoever is writing that can communicate the longing without just making it sad. Or and often in the longing there's hope, you know. Uh I mean, the same is true of the the classical music that we've talked about. Um I mean, Tristan and his old ends very sadly, but they it ends in a major chord on on a consonance, and they found their peace elsewhere. I mean, they're both in some other realm at the end of the opera, hopefully where they'll uh have their their love and their union. And and so, yeah, longing should have or often has um an you know, a strive well strives toward and perhaps sometimes realizes a goal that is satisfactory and and not just pessimistic or you know in a down spirit.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right, yeah. Yeah, I find myself tending to want to listen to that kind of that kind of music when I'm writing. Um interesting, yeah. But I also have to turn it off to keep myself from, you know, I guess wallowing in it too.
SPEAKER_00:So well, you can't have it all the time, but you know, if it's music that really speaks to you and inspires you, that that nourishes you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think Susan King kind of talked about that in her book Bittersweet. I don't know if you're familiar with that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:She talks kind of about like certain people that that are drawn to that that music. And it doesn't mean that there's they're they're sad people, it just there's something that there is that's nurturing about that kind of music for for certain people who are drawn to it. So but thank you so much for your time and uh all the history and um and research and sharing all that information. It's really fascinating and and fun. With somewhere over the rainbow being one of my favorite songs. Right above me on my desk here, I have this picture of um Dorothy with Glenda when she's kind of like with the munchkins in the background, but um like a black and white picture, but wonderful image to have yes, it's a very helpful image before she heads off on the elevator.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly, yeah.