Adagio

Last week when I was getting my massage, I noticed some familiar music playing. I asked my massage therapist the name of the CD. It turned out to be "Classical Healing" by Tom Barabas, but the track I recognized was listed simply as "Adagio," with no composer credited. It started to bug me, like when I was obsessing about Katie the Cleaning Lady. But the more I thought about it, I knew that I had heard the music on a movie soundtrack and that it was playing during a tragic scene, maybe during a war. So I got on the internet and went to my trusty friend, IMDB. There I searched movie soundtracks for "Adagio" and amongst the many hits I found a movie that I had seen, "Gallipoli". Looking at the movie's soundtrack listing gave me the name of the composer, Tomaso Albinoni, and a more exact title of the piece of music, "Adagio in G minor for strings and organ."



I saw "Gallipoli" for the first time in a high school history class, when we were studying World War I. Directed by Peter Weir and starring a very young Mel Gibson, it was a scathing idictment of the British role in the loss of life of Australian soldiers, as well as a general anti-war piece. Weir is a great craftsman of film and one of the things that makes his movies even more compelling is his selection of music. I think that the music is what made this movie stay with me for so long, even though it isn't my favorite movie by Weir. "Adagio in G minor" is one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard: aching, poignant and compelling.