Funny old autumn. Never ending rain, floods, relatively warm temperatures. And Friston Forest’s best mushroom and toadstool season for years. But now winter’s arrived, the birds have ceased singing, the leaves have fallen, the days are getting colder and fellow dog walkers, normally quite chatty, are keeping their heads down.
Reason enough to don the headphones, switch the iPod to shuffle and let the music do the talking while I do the walking. And the random selection that shuffle comes up with is often quite bizarre: an aria from Don Giovanni, a song from Ella, Edith Evans expostulating about a handbag, I Was Glad alongside Strawberry Fields, Cretan dances on the heels of the Hallelujah chorus…I’m sure you get the picture.
And so often the conditions coincidentally match the music: Wagner and muddy paths, Vivaldi and breezy days, Mozart and sunlight, Bach when I’m counting my 10000 steps, Beethoven when it’s freezing cold.
Shuffle’s best when the goosebumps strike, the times when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your spine tingles. When Maria Callas as Mimi dies and Rodolfo (di Stefano) screams in horror, the moment when the soul of Gerontius passes into purgatory, the concluding chorus of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, the fireworks at the end of part one of Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand and especially Solti’s version of the Chorus Mysticus at the very end of it, liebestod from Tristan & Isolde, Freddie Mercury’s Barcelona, the Sanctus from Berlioz’s Requiem sung by Michael Spyres…just a few of my nipple hardening moments.
I almost forgot: Beethoven’s Emperor concerto. That wonderful music, together with the headphones, is a sure-fire way of keeping out the chilliest winter weather. Who needs a scarf?