If you have never heard Mozart's Requiem, then you need to. I just did. Live. And I cannot do it justice. I loved it. It drowned me, like the best music does. This alone is reason enough for me to accept that Mozart, whatever his faults, was a musical genius. I feel full, fed, covered, wonderful. It's the sort of thing that is beautiful pain. I forget to breathe. I cannot move. I just stare and drink the sounds. Especially the massive choruses, with the timpani and everything else. It fills the room, swallows me, is just plain wonderful. I hate the clapping at the end - it spoils the moment. After that last chord, there should be silence, to honor it, to drink it in. No clapping, at least not for a while. No clapping to cloud the memory. No clapping to ruin the feel, to throw the soul back down to the ground. Just silence, still ringing with the echoes of beauty and power. Just silence, filled with nothing but a memory of ecstasy. Just silence, to do homage to something glorious. Just silence, in which to draw in a slow breath to remind oneself that one is still on earth.
Too bad people wouldn't like the idea of a Requiem at a wedding. They use it for funerals; they should use it for mine, except then I'll be dead, and won't be able to hear it. So it should be at my wedding - not all of it, only some. But enough.
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