Sunday, November 06, 2011

Yeah, This is Pretty Sad

As I was watching Platoon for the 297th time last night, the background music finally prompted me to find out more about it. Turns out it's Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. I wanted to hear it again, so a video search brought up this video as the top result:


link

Wow. The background of this piece is that it was performed by the BBC Orchestra on September 15, 2001 at The Last Night of the Proms at The Royal Albert Hall in memoriam for the terrorist attacks on the eleventh. This selection was unusual because it replaced normally upbeat and patriotic songs.

The author of the video mixed shots from the performance with visuals from ABC's Report from Ground Zero. I know we've all been through the anniversary of 9/11 earlier, and this is kinda late as far as that's concerned, but I challenge you to watch this video and remain unmoved.

7 comments:

drjim said...

That's a very popular piece. It's been used many times for movie incidental music.
And you're right, I was wiping my eyes....

Anonymous said...

I listened without watching the video. No need. It seared in my brain, my own video, running, no air in my lungs, along the empty 10th avenue downtown, to catch my son

Jeffro said...

Wow. That sounds like a story.....

Anonymous said...

one of thousands, nothing outstanding

Jeffro said...

Maybe it seems that way to you, Tatyana. That sounds very significant to me, even if I wasn't there.

Truly I am sorry you had to endure that.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Jeffro.
He is seemingly OK; he was barely 14 at the time (his BD is in August) and all he was talking about when I finally fetched him was that he saw FBI guys with bomb-sniffing dogs while he and his classmates were walking uptown from Stuyvesant H.S. He doesn't like to share, especially at that time it was impossible to make him talk about "emotional stuff", so I can't be sure if he is really affected. If it was me, standing for several hours in the glass-fronted lobby of the school with hundreds of other students and watching people jumping from above, among rain of flying paper...then walking the silent streets by myself, no adult supervision, in the midst of clouds of concrete dust, and having no way to call my parents for 3 hours - I would most definitely was having nightmares afterward. He denies it.

Jeffro said...

Poor kid.Hell, I'd be affected if I had to see that today. Of course, when I was fourteen, I expect I'd have said the same.