Music: Going Home

Summer Vacation has taken on a new meaning in my college years. For years, the two and a half months represented pure, unproductive, lazy bliss. Of course, it's an even longer three and a half months in college. Yet as the vacation's duration has stretched, so too have my expectations associated with it. I've been home for two weeks now, and I feel a constant pressure to re-organize my life, create impressive personal projects, and in other ways define my professional identity.

For the first two weeks however, I've taken a break to relax, read, and relearn the piano, which I had stopped playing in college. I've also been reminiscing about older shows and games I played, perhaps longing to experience the same pure wonder and engrossment I once could achieve on a daily basis.

The most recent memory of absolute engrossment I have is from about exactly one year ago, in the summer of 2015. In that summer, I watched the anime "Shin Sekai Yori" or "From the New World" in the span of around a week. The show was highly thought provoking and I give it my highest recommendation. As I recalled my enjoyment of the show, one song kept rising to my memory. It captured the essence of the series for me: its emotional depth, contradictory nature, darkness, and stunning beauty.

The song is named "Ienikaeru" (Going Home):

This song could be described as the main theme of Shin Sekai Yori. The show opens its first scene with the piece, and evokes it in key moments of character and plot development. I won't be analyzing the piece's importance in the show, as doing so would be impossible without giving the plot away. Rather, I'll be discussing the piece from within the larger context of art in general, as it is a significant artifact of Western culture.

Did I just claim that an anime song was a significant Western cultural influence? Well yes, but not quite in the way one may expect. For those more musically inclined, forgive me if the following does not come as a surprise to you.

The main theme of "Shin Sekai Yori" (From the New World) comes from a symphony of the same name, composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893. "Going Home" is a well-known piece of classical music, often presented in beginner's books in a simplified version known as "Largo". I looked in my first piano book, and lo and behold there it was. I had played this song in 3rd grade and simply forgotten it.

As I researched the song in its original form and viewed its choir renditions, I was overcome with awe. It is a simple, nostalgic piece evoking the spirit of returning home after a long work day. And yet in the context of "Shin Sekai Yori", the piece had come to take on an unfathomable new significance to me, simply by virtue of its associations to the show's plot and themes. By listening to the original version and studying its history, the piece again gained a new dimension of meaning to me. Words cannot explain the sort of wonder I experienced in that moment.

I often like to ponder what makes a work of art, well, art. I feel this experience has made my understanding clearer in some mysterious way. This simple melody, played by many a beginner piano student, not only holds a time transcending emotion in its notes, but it also evolves with new artistic mediums and themes, lending its historical legacy to modern expression.

Truly wonderful! "Going Home" has grown from its origin to modern day media, maintaining and iterating on the emotions contained in its notes. Finally, after all this the piece has found me as I have, interestingly enough, returned home. What new meanings will I give those notes in my mind as I now play it myself, in this lazy summer evening as I relearn the piano? Perhaps this is but a small part of the wonder that drives the professional musician or composer...