Beyond romance: Valentine’s Day playlist that celebrates beautiful music

A few years ago, with Valentine’s Day looming, a friend asked for examples of what I felt qualified as “beautiful music.” Before the brain cells went to work came a qualifier to the query: Beautiful music, in this instance, did not necessarily have to translate into love songs. Those are commonplace. What was requested what music reflecting a beauty that reached beyond romance, although it could still be romantic. The beauty, though, needed to be reflected in the music itself — a composition or song as emotively graceful and striking instrumentally as it was lyrically.

This fascinated me, although choices did not come readily. So, a list was started. When a particular piece of music came to mind that met such criteria — be it one I’ve been drawn to most of my life or one that surfaced recently, usually the result of a recording I came across or performance I attended — it was added. Two years on, the list — now full of 15 titles from fields of pop, folk, jazz, classical, soul, country and more — is ready to be shared.

Consider this a valentine of sorts — not a sentimental reflection of what popular culture often peddles as music for Valentine’s Day, but one that hopefully expresses and reflects more expansively human expression. As such, a few of the selections are, dare I say it, sad. Then again, sadness is part of beauty too, isn’t it?

So, this year, let some extra-large beauty into a holiday usually contained by the limits of marketable romance. True beauty recognizes no such limits.

Claude Debussy: “Clair de Lune”

This is one of the first classical pieces I heard as a child— a patient, haunting melody with an immense and arresting luster. Composed by Debussy as the third part of the four movement “Suite Bergamasque’’ for solo piano, “Clair de Lune” has been orchestrated and even synthesized many times, but its beauty remains brilliantly luminous. Ah, what a little moonlight can do.

The Beatles: “She’s Leaving Home”

Another reason for the magnificence of 1967’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album was this bittersweet saga of a runaway girl, her uncertain future and the parents she leaves behind. Paul McCartney and John Lennon are the only Beatles on this track with the lone instrumentation coming from another exquisite George Martin string arrangement.

Fairport Convention: “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”

American audiences know this lovely tune from a 1968 single cut by Judy Collins. But “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” was first recorded by its composer Sandy Denny — first with The Strawbs and again, in its definitive version, with the vanguard British folk-rock band Fairport Convention. Denny wrote the tune while still in her teens, yet its poetic grace possessed the worldliness of a schooled artist.

Linda Ronstadt: “Heart Like a Wheel”

Armed with operatic clarity as a vocalist, Linda Ronstadt was also a master interpreter. “Heart Like a Wheel” was written by the brilliant Anna McGarrigle. The combined potency of singer and writer here make a song of doomed romance sound both endearing and empowering (“My love for you is like a sinking ship and my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean.”)

John Coltrane: “Naima”

This jazz ballad, an early calling card of John Coltrane’s more meditative compositions, is like an aural exhale. Piloted by Coltrane’s hushed conversation on tenor saxophone and Wynton Kelly on piano, the music is then propelled ever so gently by bassist Paul Chambers and the brushed drumming of Jimmy Cobb. Written in 1959 for Coltrane’s first wife, “Naima” remains a valentine of pastoral beauty.

Emmylou Harris: “If You Were a Bluebird”

Everything about this 1988 recording is gorgeous— the fanciful mandolin chorus that ushers you in, Butch Hancock’s lyrics of stately romanticism (“If you were a hotel, honey, you’d be a grand one”) and, of course, the way Emmylou Harris’s country soprano carries the tune’s breezy beauty before fading into a coda of understated but indescribably beautiful wails.

Carly Simon: “I Get Along Without You Very Well”

A problematic choice, perhaps, as the list of champions who have covered this Hoagy Carmichael classic is vast (Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone for starters.) But Carly Simon’s overlooked 1981 version differs from all others. Backed only by piano and discreet synths, the crystalline stoicism Simon summons in her singing turns the song into a dark, but alluring incantation.

The Chieftains: “Mná Na hÉireann (Women of Ireland)”

A mid-18th century poem by Peadar Ó Doirnín served as inspiration for a melody composed as an Irish air by Seán Ó Riada in the 1960s. It has been recorded many times with myriad arrangements, but it was Paddy Moloney and The Chieftains in 1973 (with the then-new addition of harpist Derek Bell) that best highlighted the ancient longing and beauty of Ó Riada’s music in an instrumental setting.

Keith Jarrett: “Answer Me”

“Answer Me” was originally penned with German lyrics as “Mütterlein” by Gerhard Winkler and Fred Rauch in 1952. Dozens of versions have surfaced since then, the most popular American one coming from Nat King Cole in 1953. Keith Jarrett used the tune as an encore piece for his improvised solo piano concerts many times— a serving of compositional beauty after performances focused on invention.

Joni Mitchell: “Shades of Scarlet Conquering”

She created recordings of greater poetic depth, but Joni Mitchell never made a more musically beguiling album than 1975’s “The Hissing of Summer Lawns.” Coming a year after the commercial popularity of “Court and Spark,” Mitchell expanded her music’s cinematic breadth. “Shades of Scarlet Conquering,” detailing a woman engulfed by fantasies pulled from vintage movies, is Mitchell’s sonic masterwork.

Al Green: “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”

Another reason why Al Green’s 1972 album “Let’s Stay Together” is an essential document of American soul music (outside of its jubilant hit title tune, of course) is his version of a Bee Gees song that was all over pop radio the previous summer. Producer Willie Mitchell’s attention to keys and strings highlight the arrangement’s inherent warmth, but Green’s vocal urgency ignites the tune’s gospelesque beauty.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2, Third Movement (“Adagio”)

Credit where credit is due: It was the Lexington Philharmonic that introduced me to this piece’s rhapsodic beauty when it played the entire symphony at a November concert. Admittedly, the abundant grace on display is enforced by the fact it is sandwiched between movements of far greater intensity. Regardless, this is music that positively floats for 14 wondrous minutes.

Roberta Flack: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”

Another tune that went through numerous incarnations before Roberta Flack turned it into a meditation that defied its volcanic romanticism in 1969. Even then, it took three years for the song to become a hit. That came when Clint Eastwood included Flack’s version in his directorial debut film, “Play Misty for Me.” Seldom has a career been ignited by music so poetically hushed and slow.

Miles Davis: “Flamenco Sketches”

On paper, this is an embarrassment of jazz riches: Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley exchanging solos and modal explorations on the front line with pianist Bill Evans maintaining the music’s unending state of grace (the tune’s melody grew out of an earlier Evans composition, “Peace Piece.”) “Flamenco Sketches” closes Davis’ landmark 1959 album “Kind of Blue.” Pure sonic bliss.

Alison Krauss and Union Station: “New Favorite”

One of the emotive traits Alison Krauss has retained from bluegrass as her music evolved into a sound of her own is the ability to quietly, but convincingly, sing a sad song. And “New Favorite,” penned by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, is a heartbreaker-and-a-half. But Krauss’ whispery vocals and the echoing colors of Jerry Douglas’s dobro playing give the song an understated, atmospheric beauty.