The Wedding Bop.

by pugflavoredsub

One of my favorite pieces of music is Bedrich Smetana’s “Die Moldau” from his Ma Vlast suite — if I have one favorite memory of myself from when I was a teenager, it’s the total of every night I spent falling asleep to “Die Moldau”, along with a few choice Erik Satie pieces. If you’re wondering why it sounds so familiar, “Die Moldau” was featured pretty heavily in Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” just this past year.

“Die Moldau” is the musical narrative of a trip down the very river it’s named after; over the course of ten minutes, it takes you from the mouth of the river, past a rustic wedding in the country side, around ghostly nymphs bathing in the moonlight, and tumbling over rapids — all before triumphantly making its way into Prague.

I used to skip past the “Peasant Wedding” section, which begins at 4:04 in the version I posted below. I suppose used to think it lacked the dramatic power of the rest of the piece, but this sprightly little polka’s grown on me considerably over the past few years. While listening to it at lunch today, this was all I could draw.