Running with Music

As I mentioned in a previous post, I almost always run with music. I suppose I’m unusual in that I listen mostly to classical music as I run. Yes, I’ve listened to other music while running—The Doors, The Police, Led Zeppelin, to name a few—but, as even my choices in rock suggest, I don’t choose music for a specific beat or pulse. For me, music serves as a some-time distraction, a place for my mind to go when it’s not focused on the run itself or when I’m not simply day-dreaming.

This isn’t to suggest that I’m not occasionally influenced by the pulse of the music. I recall once listening to Leonard Bernstein’s wonderful recording of Brahms’s First Symphony that he made in the 1980s with the Vienna Philharmonic. Unfortunately, the symphony begins with such a strong, steady pulse (especially in Bernstein’s performance) that I found it interfering with the pace I was attempting to set.

Even the pulse of the exposition (at 3'24" in the video), although not reinforced by the pounding timpani, got in the way of my running. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that some music works at cross-purposes to running.

I've also run with music that's almost totally devoid of a steady pulse. One favorite, which I realize places me at the extreme end of musical geekdom, is Pierre Boulez's Pli selon pli:

Usually, though, my choices are a little less geeky: in the last week, I’ve been listening to Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex in performances by Bernstein and by Karel Ancerl and to the legendary Karajan recordings of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci. And, since I have tickets to heart the Philadelphia Orchestra play the piece on June 10, I’m also going to be listening to Mahler’s Third Symphony on my long runs just to get myself thinking about the work before I get to the concert.