The 19th-century composer John Field was the first to name his gentle and delicate piano pieces ‘nocturnes’. The word – and the genre of ‘sleep music’ it presaged – is ubiquitous today
One of the most familiar topics of our time is the trouble many of us have in winding down at the end of the day. Insomnia is rife: crossing the threshold between day and night has become a challenge for many of us. Music is often recommended as a way to help us relax, and there are countless sleep music playlists on streaming sites to lull us into unconsciousness and bear us towards morning on a current of soothing sounds. Max Richter’s Sleep, “an eight-hour lullaby”, a set of musical episodes that mirror what’s happening in our brains during the various phases of sleep, is, 11 years after its release, currently No 2 in the official classical artist albums chart. It’s been performed all over the world, with audience members provided with camp beds, blankets and pillows and gently serenaded through the night by live musicians playing Richter’s meditative score.
Musing over photos of slumbering audiences, I started to wonder about the history of music being used as an aid to sleep. The lullaby must be as old as humanity, but lullabies are essentially vocal. Their words often work against the grain of the music, sometimes conjuring up some very non-soothing images: “When the bough breaks, the baby will fall / Down will come cradle, baby and all.” Lullabies are a strange hybrid, musically comforting yet often expressing a vein of underlying anguish. Sleep music, on the other hand, tends to be purely instrumental. The absence of a voice makes it more abstract; without words, the meaning of the music remains open and listeners are free to connect however their imagination suggests.
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