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KeyZ for Readers, Thinkers & Dreamers

Sixty-three pieces of solo piano and small-ensemble music for reading, thinking, and — as the title cheerfully admits — taking a nap. No apologies required.

Music that gets out of the way

There is a large and growing world of contemporary piano music made for exactly this purpose: gentle, largely tonal, mostly short pieces, played on close-miked pianos with the mechanism audible — you can often hear the felt of the hammers and the release of the sustain pedal. It descends from Erik Satie by way of minimalism, and it exists because a great many people want music that occupies the room without occupying the mind.

It gets dismissed fairly often, and the dismissal misses something. Writing music that holds attention loosely without becoming irritating is a real skill, and the best of this material has genuine harmonic interest for anyone who chooses to listen closely.

What to listen for

The titles tell you the intended use, and they are unusually honest about it: "Reading By A River," "Lets Out A Breath," "Take One Deep Breath," "Disappear for a while," "Quiet Hours," "A subtle joy," "When it drizzles."

The genuine surprise on this playlist is Clint Eastwood, who appears twice. Eastwood is a serious jazz enthusiast and has composed music for several of his own films — "Doe Eyes," the love theme from The Bridges of Madison County, written with Lennie Niehaus, is the best known and is a properly lovely piece of writing.

Francis Lai is the other name worth stopping on — the French composer behind A Man and a Woman and Love Story, and one of the great melodists of European film music. "L'arbre" comes from Bilitis.

Jiří Horák appears twice and is among the more harmonically interesting composers here. Luca Mazzillo and Jacopo Croci's "Slowdance" is the standout duet.

Go deeper

If this world appeals, the canon is worth knowing. Erik Satie's Gymnopédies are the founding documents — he coined the phrase "furniture music" a century before anyone needed a playlist for it.

Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert is the improvised solo piano record that everyone owns, and deservedly. Harold Budd, Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds and Hania Rani are the contemporary composers doing the most interesting work in this space.

And for film music specifically: Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas, Ennio Morricone's quieter scores, and anything by Michel Legrand will do the same job with considerably more happening underneath.

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