Professors' Pods: Academics Share Their Favorite Anthems

Professors' Pods is a recurring segment in which a professor names five of his or her favorite songs and discusses what makes these particular pieces so good.

Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy Thomas Nightingale's love for music is evident from a glance at his syllabus. He names weekly essays after types of Chopin pieces (this semester they are called "waltzes") and peppers his lectures with references to jazz works and Dylan lyrics. "I love music in a very privileged sort of way because I am not a musician," Nightingale said. "I took a really serious interest in music in an academic way in my college years. Before that I listened to pop music like anyone else. My main interests now are jazz, folk and blues." Nightingale's love for jazz manifests itself in a weekly show on WKCO, so people who enjoy the songs he names here can tune in and hear more of his favorites from 1:00 p.m. to 3: 00 p.m. on Sundays.

"Azure" by Duke Ellington

"I don't think it is an especially well-known tune. It has a kind of Latin sensibility to it. It has a unique swing that I don't think any of those actual 'swing' bands could have touched. It's very understated; it's not verbose swing. Very 'Ellington-ian,' it has all the sort of missing notes and so forth. But it's a happy sort of Latin blues thing. It makes me smile, and sometimes it makes me cry. I just think he is a genius."

"Mood Indigo" by Duke Ellington

"A much more catchy and well-known tune. What I like about it especially is the way Mingus [Charles, bassist] plays it. He plays it with the utmost respect for Ellington. He doesn't monkey around with it at all, but he plays it with a very kind of lyrical, almost romantic sensibility. He's directing his own group, so they're playing the way he wanted them to play. It's almost a way that Ellington never would have played. It really brings out a kind of romantic aspect without overstating it, which is quite a challenge."

Mahler's Six Symphony, Third Movement

"It's quite long, about 17 minutes. The strings get so high, they just keep going up and up and up. It's almost like a heavenly choir kind of effect. And then they sustain that for the longest time, and at the end there is a single harp pluck. A little humorous thing, almost like a little joke at the end. At the same time, it works because you need to release that tension, and it does. I like this symphony and I like lots of Mahler symphonies, but more than some of the symphonies as a whole, I think that some of the movements stand alone as just being utterly remarkable creations. I would listen to this over and over and over again and pay attention to the development. It is just a remarkable piece."

Mahler's Third Symphony, First Movement

"I think this is still the longest single symphonic movement in the repertoire. It's over 30 minutes long. It's longer than Beethoven's symphonies, longer than almost any symphony by Hayden or Mozart. It's really interesting because he's managed to find a balance between a shtick-y programmatic approach on one hand and a really standoffish let-the-music-speak-for-itself approach. The symphony as a whole is thematically devoted to the idea of creation; it is very metaphysical. He was sort of responding to Darwin. So there is a lot of philosophy and spirituality that went into his composition. It's very programmatic in that way. The initial performances of the Third Symphony also involved publishing his programmatic notes, but I think he realized he would be classified with the syrupy romantics of the late 19th century, so he withdrew those and those aren't published anymore with the symphony. Enough is known about the thought that went into it that it's really a very unusual piece of music. He uses all sorts of wild idioms in the first movement: marching bands, folk sounds and traditional symphonic sounds. The whole first movement is basically about the act of creation. The other movements are devoted to other aspects of nature, culminating in the final movement, which is about the end of things. That whole symphony is actually quite interesting, it's just so long. … I prefer the first movement in and of itself."

"Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael / "Simple Twist of Fate" by Bob Dylan / "Come Sunday" by Duke Ellington (three-way tie for fifth song)

"I'll go with a song in the more or less conventional sense. Each of them is sort of a perfect pop song. I think 'Simple Twist of Fate' is actually a little more perfect than 'Stardust.' It starts and it ends there isn't anything missing, there isn't anything in there that shouldn't be in there. It tells a wonderful story.

As for 'Stardust,' I like the story of the composition of that. He was staying up all night in a little coffeehouse in Bloomington, Ind., trying to think of a melody. Whoever wrote the lyrics wrote that into the lyrics: 'Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely night dreaming of a song.' With its lyrics it's a perfect pop song.

'Come Sunday' is a sacred tune from one of Ellington's pieces of sacred jazz. You can hear it played instrumentally, but the recording I like best is him recorded live at the Newport Festival in 1958 with Mahalia Jackson singing the lyrics. It's very profound and it's not a church tune at all, it's a serious jazz composition. It, too, is very understated and humble. Once you listen to it and get into the groove, I find it very, very moving. It's a very simple statement of faith."