It was almost a month into the walk that I remembered it was in my backpack. I hadn't missed it. It weighed nothing and was not in the way, stored away in one of the backpack's inside pockets in its own little zippered pouch made from cannabis fiber with an embroidered cannabis leaf on one side. The type of pouch and embroidery that would get any custom official's attention at a border crossing and cause a lot of questions. It has never been near a cannabis leaf and was given to me for this unlikely purpose: store the nano.
I pulled it out of the pouch and was pleased to see that its battery was still almost fully charged. I hesitated for several minutes. I had always thought that people walking around with earphones sticking out of their ears looked silly. And this place, these trails were almost sacrosanct. Would it be blasphemy to listen to music while walking the Camino and trying to understand and getting into the spirit of ancient pilgrims' arduous journeys?
According to my guidebook the first almost three hours of today's walk from El Burgo Ranero would be "by modern senda running alongside an asphalt road parallel to the motorway." I had only walked for about 20 minutes and was already slightly irritated by the traffic noise. So the guidebook's warning about another maybe 2 1/2 hours of motorway noise was all I needed to know to pull out also the Klipsch earphones from my backpack and attach them to the nano. Blasphemy or not, shutting out the noise from the motorway with the Psalms of David would be completely appropriate.
For the next 50 minutes the world's most amazing electronic device, the Apple iPod nano and a set of very good Klipsch headphones transported my mind and thoughts to King's College in Cambridge, England, for some of the most sublime, sacral text and music ever written - in superb, stereophonic sound. As a child of the 78 rpm shellac phonograph record era, this was close to a miracle. Besides the practical aspect of shutting out the motorway noise, the music relieved the monotony of hearing my own footsteps, and I knew it was not at all insensitive to the spirit of the sacred pilgrim way.
As if to justify more listening to the iPod on the Camino that same day and the following days, I began to think about the music’s origin. Where did the composer write the music? Why did he write it? What was he trying to illustrate? And soon I was convinced that not only was listening to classical music on the Camino not blasphemy or inappropriate, but it was highly relevant and very appropriate.
The Psalms of David, with which I started almost every day thereafter, are mostly Old Testament praises of God and nature. Remembering that the Camino's vast space and beautiful nature have been called God's cathedral, my favorite was "I was glad when they said unto me, we will go into the house of the Lord." The music in the King’s College Choir's rendition is of much newer date, of course, but compliments the text beautifully. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony could have been inspired by landscape very similar to what I walked through. A lot of J.S. Bach’s music was undoubtedly written (if not on paper, then in his mind) on his famous walk to Lübeck to meet Dieterich Buxtehude and listen to his music. Some of the finest music by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Aaron Copland, Edvard Grieg, Franz Joseph Haydn, Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert were inspired by or written during journeys into the countryside, some of it abroad. Though Mozart didn’t write music with titles from nature, he traveled a lot and was undoubtedly inspired by those many journeys.
Mozarts piano concertos seemed to compliment my walks best. It is light, sunny, and uncomplicated music and quickly became my favorite music together with J.S. Bach's keyboard concertos and Orchestral Suites. To add some lightfootedness on more strenuous days, I liked to play the French jazz pianist Jacques Loussier's renditions of Bach's music. Reminded again about God's cathedral, I liked to listen to the great organ works by J.S. Bach, Louis Vierne, and Charles-Marie Widor.
What I learned from listening to my classical music – other than getting to know some pieces I had not heard much before – was, well listening. As a solitary, not social pursuit. Listening to music, except in a concert hall or church, is almost always done while doing something else, which is really an insult to both composer and the performers. Like reading a book with background music is an insult to the author. A very long walk like El Camino is the next-to-perfect setting to listen to one's favorite music with the concentration its composers and the performing artists deserve.
