Thoughts pulled out from musical notes | Song: Ludovico Einaudi “I Giorni”

Tuesday afternoon. I get a text from a friend asking me to explore Ludovico Einaudi’s song “I Giorni”, insisting me in making  a brief analysis from it.

Wednesday night. I get my headphones ready, Spotify ready and a small cup of vanilla ice cream I love (I usually eat this Blue Bell vanilla ice cream when I really want to deepen into music, it is pure delight!).

I hit play: “hmm……well, nice.
What? ….is it over?..
Oh!hmmmmm, interesting…. I see now”

I realized the song would be interesting just by looking at the name. The Days? how is this piece going to represent days? how can a day be portrayed in a song? Is it going to be all happiness, rainbows, fairies and jumping unicorns? No, not really. It portrays a real, original day.

This song anticipates subtle changes, but constants. The music cuts off, changes and starts again. This might be the change between days. Day and night. Opening and closing, over and over. The song starts slowly, as the morning. The time passes, we engage into  the afternoon and its peculiarities, moving fast but steady. Suddenly the night arrives and rests upon us with remarkable smoothness.

Interestingly, the night continues and we walk into a “dream”, as I see it. Which deepens, it has its own powers, its own life. Then, it becomes hard to tell when the dream ends as it blends with the dawn. The emphasis of this well done combination reminded me of “La Vida es Sueño” by Pedro Calderón de la Barca  (Life is a Dream). The confusion between a mixture of a daily routine and pragmatism of human beings, the surrealism and fate expectations revolve around the possibility that, all of this indeed, is a dream. Every day, every night might be a dream.

Then, does these “days” and “nights” in the song represent changes? Because if it is so, the song might as well represent life. Not being able to tell apart from life & dead, day & night, real & dream.

 

“All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.”
– Jack Kerouac