I recall reading somwhere that John Gorka (American folkie), sets his alarm for say, 3 am every night so he’ll wake up in the middle of REM sleep and write down what’s happening in his dreams, some of which lead to songs.
I’ve had music dreams, but usually the music only sounds good in the dream itself. When you wake up and go to the piano to record it, you realize it sounds silly in real life.
Occasionally, though, the music is solid stuff. A few weeks ago I had a dream about a space shuttle launch accompanied by background music, and the music brought me to tears so that my face was wet when I woke up. I then recorded it and it is semi-decent.
Since the zombie awakened from his/her dreams, and I get a second whack at this after a decade:
Does anyone know of composers/compositions where some part was remembered, in some form or other, according to the composer or reliable secondarry source?
For all of us who do dream music, we experience–at least I do–a tiny version of the tragedy of Coleridge–you know, this one, Kubla Khan:
- Kubla Khan
- Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree: […]
[that was the dream, and as Coleridge he further explains in his introduction to the poem, that’s when somebody came in the room and woke him up. The poem ends:]
[…] And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
[full poem: Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Poetry Foundation
[please forgive me about formatting: I too am something of a zombie here, and havent figured out that part yet.]
Leo
Whoops, I see Stravinsky Octet and Tartini Devil’s Trill was mentioned upthread by DearestDane and Knorf.
Some zombies never learn.
The Devils Trill wasn’t really the music heard in the dream. It was inspired by a dream, but Tartini said that it never captured the music of the dream. It was just his attempt at creating some approximation to it.
This is the problem with dreams. We can dream we have heard fabulous music, or all manner of other things, up to and including the meaning of life. But the dream just contains the emotional response, not the concrete thing that elicited the response.
On the other hand, I did once, while dreaming that I was flying, design some experiments to help determine how I was flying. I’ve thought about that subject while awake, too, but at least one of the experiments, I designed entirely while dreaming.
There was also a time when I woke up with a tune in my head, and it seemed surprisingly catchy, and I was pretty sure that I hadn’t actually composed it myself, because composing music isn’t something I ever do when awake, either. It took me about an hour to realize that I was finally remembering the tune to “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. Which was a huge relief to me, because for months prior to that, I’d had the song stuck in my head, except set to the tune of “Stairway to Heaven”, which I knew was wrong.