In Memoriam, In Vita: An Update to My Final Playlist
It’s been several years since I first shared V’s Final Playlist. At the time, it was a small side quest inspired by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s parting gesture. I called it a playlist, but in truth, it was a meditation on death, no doubt inspired by my reading of the Stoics.
Over time, the playlist grew. I kept refining it. Listening back. Moving pieces around. Noticing what held up and what didn’t. And somewhere along the way, it began to feel less like a mixtape, more like a score.
I now call it In Memoriam, In Vita: in memory, in life.
Recently, I stumbled across a copy of Aaron Copland’s What to Listen for in Music while browsing the used bookstore tucked inside our local library. Having just listened to Appalachian Spring, I couldn’t resist when I saw COPLAND in large white letters against a red dust jacket.
How lucky are we to be the privileged students of masters in virtually any subject imaginable?
Copland gave me new language. He helped me appreciate how much of a piece’s power comes from its architecture. Not just the rhythm or melody, but the form; how it repeats, transforms, builds, and resolves. How it invites you to listen through time, not just in it.
One of Copland’s great insights, which I hadn’t fully appreciated, is that form creates meaning. It is what allows return to matter. It is what makes surprise possible. Without structure, you don’t get tension or release.
We don’t talk about this much anymore. Most modern listeners aren’t trained to hear form. We skip, we shuffle, we play things once. We have music in the background, an accompaniment to our other activities. But music, to be fully heard, asks for time. And form rewards those who give it.
Simone Weil said attention is the rarest form of generosity. Maybe form is the thing that gives our attention a place to land.
So, I decided to give my playlist some structure; nothing overly rigid. Five movements emerged:
Emergence
Becoming
Weight
Reckoning
Coda
Each points toward a phase of being: the miracle of arrival, the thrill of unfolding, the weight of memory, the reckoning with finitude, and whatever lingers after. A few selections from each are below.
Movement I: Emergence
The first stirring.
Goldberg Variations: Aria — Bach
Spiegel im Spiegel — Arvo Pärt
Mono No Aware — Florian Christl
In Praise of Dreams — Jan Garbarek
Movement II: Becoming
In full bloom
Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra in E Major: II. Andante — Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Idle Moments — Grant Green
Wave — Antônio Carlos Jobim
Piano Concerto №3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale — Sergei Rachmaninoff
Movement III: Weight
When time accumulates.
Adagio for Strings — Samuel Barber
Molto Adagio (String Quartet №15) — Beethoven
Violin Sonata in A Major, M. 8: I. Allegretto ben moderato— César Franck
Mélancolie, FP 105 — Francis Poulenc
Sicilienne, Op. 78 — Gabriel Fauré
Movement IV: Reckoning
The cosmic turn.
On the Nature of Daylight — Max Richter
Night Wind Sonata, I — Nikolai Medtner
Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten — Arvo Pärt
Movement V: Coda
What lingers.
Gabriel’s Oboe —Ennio Morricone
The Swan — Camille Saint-Saëns
I Remember Clifford — Art Farmer
Mass in B Minor: Cum Sancto Spiritu — Bach
This project started as a reflection on death, but it’s become a discipline, a self-curated canon. A way to mark time.
We tend to imagine lifelong projects as grand undertakings. Tomes. Masterpieces. But anything approached with care and sustained attention over time becomes consequential. A playlist. A garden. A blog. A daily practice.
And what strikes me now is how everything begins to converge. Reading Copland reshaped my listening. That listening reshaped the playlist. The playlist, in turn, continues to shape my life.
That’s the quiet secret of long attention: the deeper you go into one thing, the more everything else begins to glow.
So here it is , for now. Life in five movements: In Memoriam, In Vita.
