Imaginary

Visual Arts

• Max Beckman, The Argonauts (1949-50)
• Vasily Perov, Self-Educating Caretaker (1868)

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Johann Sebastian Bach, Solo Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major, bwv 1009: (5) Bourrée, (6) Gigue

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Hector Berlioz, Harold in Italy: from the viola’s first entrance, we hear a joyous expression of personal freedom and exploration. Follow the links denominated “First movement” through “Fourth movement” for the greatest recorded performance, with Rudolf Barshai on viola.

• First movement: Harold aux montagnes (Scénes de melancolie, de Bonheur et de joie)
• Second movement: Marche de pélerins chantant la priére du soir
• Third movement: Sérénade du montagnard des Abruzzes á sa maltresse
• Fourth movement: Orgie de brigands (Souvenirs des scenes des présédentes)

Many Finns referred to Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 (1902) as the “Symphony of Independence”. Though musicologists generally reject the suggestion that Sibelius harbored any such intention, there can be no doubt that the stirring melodies in the final movement justify the label. Top recordings were those conducted by Barbirolli in 1962, Abendroth in 1951, Beecham in 1954, Paray in 1959, Szell in 1964, Järvi in 1993 and Mäkelä in 2021.

Richard Strauss was notorious for his ego. Fortunately, music offers us other ways to interpret this brilliant composer’s expression of personal autonomy. Several of Strauss’ concerti offer similar treatments of the solo voice as in Berlioz’s “Harold”: great freedom in the solo voice, surrounded but not encumbered by the orchestral accompaniment.

• Oboe Concerto in D major
• Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 11
• Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major, TrV 283

The early music of Louis Armstrong, icon of American music, exudes many positive emotions and values, among them the value of independence. Louis paved the way not only for himself but for many other musicians, and for an entire musical idiom.

• Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five
• The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens
• complete Hot Fives and Sevens
• Louis in the 1920s
• Other early recordings

“Classical” composers and some of their works:

• Many of George Enescu’s works for violin, including his Violin Sonata No. 2 in F Minor, Violin Sonata No. 3 in A Minor, dans le caractère populaire roumain, Op. 25 (1926), and short pieces for violin
• Miram Hyde’s music for flute and piano, including: Sonata in G Minor for flute and piano (1. Allegro giocoso; 2. Andante pastorale; 3. Allegro con spirito); Five Solos for Flute and Piano (1. Beside the Stream; 2. Wedding Morn; 3. The Little Juggler; 4. Marsh Birds; 5. Evening Under the Hill)

Albums:

• Geri Allen, “Flying Toward the Sound”
• Don Braden, “The Fire Within”

Film and Stage

• Marty: a young man stands up to his peers and his motherto pursue a young woman – she may not be everyone’s idea of a beauty but he likes her
• Spirited Away, a Japanese anime about a young girl who is separated, for a while, from parents who just don’t get it, and “must go it alone to rescue them”; “the story of a girl's voyage into the spirit world to rescue her parents, who, in typical idiotic adult fashion, drive on a road where they shouldn't drive, eat food they shouldn't eat and end up getting turned into pigs”
• The Little Mermaid: Disney’s transformationof an Andersen fairy tale
• Kazoku gêmu(The Family Game), about a child’s emergence from a family with “a house so small you virtually have to go outside to change your mind”
• Beasts of the Southern Wild: this film about a six-year-old girl and the people surrounding her “is animated by the same spirit of freedom it sets out to celebrate . . . a bracing reminder of the meaning of independence”

Poetry

My life more civil is and free / Than any civil polity.

Ye princes, keep your realms / And circumscribèd power, / Not wide as are my dreams, / Nor rich as is this hour.

What can ye give which I have not? / What can ye take which I have got? / Can ye defend the dangerless? / Can ye inherit nakedness?

To all true wants Time's ear is deaf, / Penurious states lend no relief / Out of their pelf: / But a free soul — thank God —
Can help itself.

Be sure your fate / Doth keep apart its state, / Not linked with any band,
Even the noblest of the land; / In tented fields with cloth of gold / No place doth hold, / But is more chivalrous than they are, / And sigheth for a nobler war; / A finer strain its trumpet sings, / A brighter gleam its armor flings.

The life that I aspire to live / No man proposeth me; / No trade upon the street / Wears its emblazonry.

[Henry David Thoreau, “Independence”]

Other poems:

• Charles Bukowski, “Mind and Heart”

Fictional Narratives

Independence of spirit:

The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in a house all the time . . . so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again . . . and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable.  So I went back. [Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1906), Chapter I, “I Discover Moses and the Bullrushers”.]

Novels:

• Elisa Shua Dusapin, Winter in Sokcho (Open Letter, 2021): “An atmospheric novel about an independent young woman in a South Korean beach town.”