On the Nature of Daylight

I probably could have made this a Facebook post but just as many people will care if I put it on my blog.

Anyway, I heard this song called "On the Nature of Daylight" on my Pandora "Nighty Night" station that I usually play at night.  When I heard it I thought it sounded like something from a movie because my station plays some soundtracks like Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, etc.

It turns out it's originally from Max Richter's album The Blue Notebooks in 2004.  But when I looked it up, I found out it has been on the soundtracks for Arrival, Shutter Island, and Stranger Than Fiction so you might have heard this song without realizing it.  I think it seemed familiar to me more because of Arrival than the other two because I've seen that one more recently.  And re-watching that movie the song is featured in both the beginning and the end of the movie; I was pretty sure it was in the end but not the beginning so I was half right.

Anyway, in my research I found out there was recently a new video made for it starring Elisabeth Moss of The Handmaid's Tale show, though not as that character.  I'm not sure if the link above is for that but here's another link if that doesn't work.

If you have Amazon Prime you can listen to the whole album on Amazon Music.  None of the other tracks are quite as good though one "Written in the Sky" is like a short piano version of this.  Actress Tilda Swinton provides vocals on some of the other tracks, but not this one.  By vocals I don't really mean singing; it's more of a spoken word kind of thing.

Anyway, to me this song feels like a sort of spiritual sequel to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" which has also been featured in a number of movies like Platoon and Prince of Tides.

They both start off slow and build to a finish, though Richter's doesn't quite build to the crescendo of Barber's.  And they're both inspired by nature:  Barber's Adagio was inspired by the flow of a river and Richter's is about daylight and entropy.  They're both really beautiful, at least to me.  Just take a listen and decide for yourself.  Though if that version of Barber's Adagio is too slow for you, look for the William Orbit version that's like a club mix of it.