The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Do you have trouble sleeping? Try listening to composer Max Richter’s new eight-hour lullaby.

By Jacob Stockinger

Not many days go by where you don’t see, hear or watch stories about how far too many Americans have insomnia and are sleep-deprived.

In fact it sometimes seems like sleep research and insomnia cures are two of the big payoff fields in contemporary American medicine. The Ear wonders: Is it the same story elsewhere in the world? Why or why not?

Of course, there are drugs that can be used and behavioral changes that can be made.

But maybe some music can help.

Especially the eight-hour lullaby by the London-based German composer Max Richter (below, in a photo by Rhys Frampton for Deutsche Grammophon), who last found fame for his minimalist reworking of “The Four Seasons” in “Vivaldi Recomposed.”

Richter’s mammoth lullaby is called – what else? – “Sleep.” A shorter version will soon be released on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.

You can hear a sample of “Sleep” in a YouTube video at the bottom. Is The Ear the only one who thinks that this sample owes something to the famous Prelude No. 1 in C major of “The Well-Tempered Clavier” by Johann Sebastian Bach — the same prelude that was later reworked into a popular setting of “Ave Maria” by the French composer Charles Gounod?

Here is a link to the story about the work and an interview with the composer that appeared on NPR or National Public Radio:

http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/09/03/436963414/trouble-sleeping-a-composer-wants-to-help