Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too.
Vincent van Gogh
A simple melody I came up with while seeking to evoke a feeling of serenity, arranged here for piano and strings.
Ray Manzarek explaining how the introduction for “Light My Fire” came to life. The background music is Invention No. 8, BWV 779 by Johann Sebastian Bach, which served as an inspiration for Manzarek.
The song’s distinctive organ intro has been characterized as “one of the most recognizable sounds in the history of rock music”.
Ray Manzarek (1939-2013)
In Ray’s words: “It just came out of, you know, fifteen or twenty years of music practice”.
This is the first recording I’ve made in quite a while. I came up with the main theme (which opens the piece and appears again in the end with a slight variation) several years ago and I started working on it again recently, adding a middle section and arranging the strings.
I always thought of this piece as the background music of some -yet unrealized- film. The title was inspired by Jack Bruce’s Theme for an imaginary western from his wonderful album Songs for a Tailor.
While also connected with the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Paul McCartney’s Blackbird is said to have been originally inspired from the experience of being woken by a blackbird’s song just before sunrise.
Musically speaking, McCartney was influenced by J.S. Bach’s Bourrée from the Suite in E minor for Lute (BWV 996), a piece often performed on the classical guitar. George Harrison and Colin Manley had taught him how to play Bach’s Bourrée at Liverpool Institute. As Sir Paul later put it: “I bastardized it, but it was the basis of how I wrote Blackbird.”
In this recording I’ve tried to bring the two pieces together, accompanied by the singing of birds on a sunny day…
Music & Lyrics: The Muser
“The souls of men are like flowers, each rooted to its place. One can’t go to another because it would have to break away from its roots… A flower can’t do anything to make a seed go to its right place; the wind does that and the wind comes and goes when it pleases.” (Hermann Hesse, Knulp)
Uprooted flower
They say that love makes two become one
but who could dare to share his soul?
We come together, we join, and have fun
but in the evening when the sky is dark
we feel so lonely as the stars
No reason why, a pointless cry and despair
Each one is on his own, all alone,
staring at a fountain full of tears
A man must bear the pain without an aid
A heart is like a flower rooted up
How nice it would be if the two became one
but could this happen for real?
We like to think it is a short and straight path
but there are crossroads where we break up
and left so lonely as the stars above
No reason why, a pointless cry and despair
Each one is on his own, all alone,
staring at a fountain full of tears
A man must bear the pain without an aid
A heart is like a flower that’s rooted up
carried away by the wind
The Muser 