Ryuichi Sakamo­to died last March, three months after his final live per­for­mance, and two months after the release of his final album 12. It’s safe to say that life, for him, was more or less syn­ony­mous with music, and indeed he pre­pared music to extend even beyond his life’s end. A pro­lif­ic record­ing artist, both solo and in col­lab­o­ra­tion, he no doubt left a great deal of unre­leased mate­r­i­al in the vault (or so his fans all hope). He also curat­ed the music of oth­ers, an occa­sion­al pur­suit that cul­mi­nat­ed in the new­ly released playlist that Sakamo­to cre­at­ed to be played at his own funer­al.

“The 33-track playlist fea­tures some of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s favorite music,” writes NME’s Surej Singh, “includ­ing works from Bach, Debussy and Rav­el, and opens with an 11-minute piece ‘Haloid Xer­rox Copy 3 (Paris)’ from Sakamoto’s fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Alva Noto.”

Its two and a half hours of music also include the work of oth­ers with whom Sakamo­to worked in life, like David Syl­vian, as well as oth­er com­posers and per­form­ers span­ning var­i­ous eras and gen­res: Ennio Mor­ri­cone, Bill Evans, Lau­rel Halo, Nino Rota, and Erik Satie.

What­ev­er the obvi­ous dif­fer­ences between all the pieces Sakamo­to chose to play for those who came to pay their respects, the seri­ous lis­ten­er can hear res­o­nances both between them and with Sakamo­to’s own oeu­vre. As those who’ve lis­tened to his discog­ra­phy under­stand, Sakamo­to worked in an ever-widen­ing range of forms — pop, dance, ambi­ent, orches­tral, and many more besides — yet always came up with music that was imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able as his own. While he lived, he nev­er stopped assim­i­lat­ing new influ­ences. Even though he’s now gone, the influ­ence of his work will exert itself for gen­er­a­tions to come, as will its pow­er as a gate­way to vast and diverse musi­cal realms.

You can hear the playlist above, or via this Spo­ti­fy playlist.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ryuichi Sakamo­to, RIP: Watch Him Cre­ate Ground­break­ing Elec­tron­ic Music in 1984

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances by Yel­low Mag­ic Orches­tra, the Japan­ese Band That Became One of the Most Inno­v­a­tive Elec­tron­ic Music Acts of All Time

Infi­nite Esch­er: A High-Tech Trib­ute to M.C. Esch­er, Fea­tur­ing Sean Lennon, Nam June Paik & Ryuichi Sakamo­to (1990)

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

62 Psy­che­del­ic Clas­sics: A Free Playlist Cre­at­ed by Sean Lennon

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

In his role as a kind of clas­si­cal music pro­fes­sor to the tele­vi­sion audi­ences of Amer­i­ca, Leonard Bern­stein came across as supreme­ly genial and patient. But that does­n’t mean he ded­i­cat­ed his own career as a con­duc­tor to agree­able­ness above all. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the occa­sion in 1962 when he con­duct­ed Glenn Gould’s per­for­mance of Brah­m’s First Piano Con­cer­to, but not before offi­cial­ly declar­ing his lack of “total agree­ment with Mr. Gould’s con­cep­tion” of the piece. Anoth­er notable moment of dis­cord arose a decade lat­er, between Bern­stein and the late mez­zo-sopra­no Christa Lud­wig, and it, too, has been pre­served for all time.

It hap­pened dur­ing rehearsals for Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. “Lud­wig, seen in this clip in her first rehearsal, begins to sing a verse from the fiendish fourth sec­tion, ‘Von der Schön­heit’ (Of Beau­ty), but strug­gles to fit in all the words at Bernstein’s break­neck tem­po,” writes Clas­sic FM’s Mad­dy Shaw Roberts.

“She shakes her head and walks over to his stand, telling the mae­stro: ‘I can’t keep up.’ The pair then launch into a delight­ful­ly awk­ward, bilin­gual dis­agree­ment. ‘This is so much slow­er than I ever do it,’ Bern­stein retorts. They try one more time, but Lud­wig is still forced to stop as she runs out of breath.”

What­ev­er dif­fi­cul­ties arose in the prepa­ra­tion, Bern­stein and Lud­wig more than acquit­ted them­selves in the final per­for­mance, which you can see in full in the video just above. (The key moment comes at the 26:15 minute mark.) And accord­ing to Lud­wig, their artis­tic rela­tion­ship was far from dif­fi­cult. “With Bern­stein it was true love, I must con­fess,” she told the Ital­ian mag­a­zine Musi­ca. “When singing with Lenny there seemed to be an elec­tric cur­rent com­ing from the orches­tra, the con­duc­tor and the singers on the stage which went out into the pub­lic, form­ing a cir­cle in which love, sen­su­al­i­ty and eroti­cism became mixed. Bern­stein did­n’t just con­duct the music but he seemed to live it phys­i­cal­ly as though he was com­pos­ing it at that moment.” It could hard­ly be much of a stretch to sup­pose that, on the deep­est lev­el, she agreed with him that there are times — as in Das Lied von der Erde — when clar­i­ty must give way to pas­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Awk­ward­ly Turns the Screws on Tenor Jose Car­reras While Record­ing West Side Sto­ry (1984)

Hear the Famous­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Con­cert Where Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces Glenn Gould & His Idio­syn­crat­ic Per­for­mance of Brahms’ First Piano Con­cer­to (1962)

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

When Leonard Bern­stein Turned Voltaire’s Can­dide into an Opera (with Help from Lil­lian Hell­man, Dorothy Park­er & Stephen Sond­heim)

Leonard Bern­stein: The Great­est 5 Min­utes in Music Edu­ca­tion

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.