My favourite songs by Ludovico Einaudi

Music · 
15 mins read

A list of my personal favourite Ludovico Einaudi’s songs of all time.

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Ludovico Einaudi is by far my favourite composer, and the more I listen to his songs, the more I struggle to find the best one. It’s hard to choose just one, but among all those he created the list above represents what I personally consider the bests. For each song, I also analyse it explaining why it is special and what aspects I like the most.

music_note 1. Experience

Experience is a very minimalistic piece, in terms of melody, but it slowly develops into the perfect harmony between piano, violins, cellos and all the other instruments. This song is Einaudi’s masterpiece par excellence, a plethora of emotions, a concentrate of multiple layers of refreshingly simple, steadily intensifying melodies that fits perfectly with each other. Over time, they all progressively enter to form the backdrop for Daniel Hope’s violin, which pushes the emotional involvement of this song to its maximum limits.

Experience is part of the album In a Time Lapse, probably the pinnacle of the composer’s prowess. The design is circular, it ends the same way it begins, with just a little inversion of some notes, and the symphony of the song truly meets brilliance. This song, more than any other, hits great heights of spellbinding emotional richness.

Album: In a Time Lapse. Year: 2013.

music_note 2. Nuvole bianche

This song is very special to me. It’s the one that instantly touched my heart and brought me closer to Einaudi’s music. Under this point, Nuvole Bianche can be seen as the entry point to Einaudi’s music (which is a whole new and unique genre), since it is already enjoyable at the first listen. It’s also one of his most popular songs together with Experience, and for good reasons. A big part of the beauty of Nuvole Bianche is its simplicity, which extends throughout the song with just four piano chords and simple but effective melodies, and it’s the reason why it is so peaceful, charming and touching. There are no words to properly describe this song. Just listen to it!

Album: Una Mattina. Year: 2004.

music_note 3. Petricor

Starting from the title, “Petricor” (or petrichor) is the distinctive earthy scent produced when rain falls on parched earth. The word comes from the Greek words ‘petra’, meaning stone, and ‘ichor’, which in Greek mythology refers to the ethereal fluid that flows in the veins of the gods.

The introduction is made up of 5 different notes (A2/C3 - C4 - A3 - E3) where the 1st one is an alternation between two notes (first A2, then C3, then A2 again etc.). They are played slowly and consecutively in conjunction with the soft cello harmonics, which give a sense of mystery and unpredictability to the atmosphere. Then a violin enters timidly and gradually acquires confidence, prompted by the echo of the cello. A bass in the background comes in, then other violins at 2:06 and the piano finally changes melody.

The time signature of this song is 12/8.

The way the piano notes are arranged in the song creates a sense of limp in the rhythm and the beat seems almost like delayed. The rhythmic accent is technically on the lowest of the three repeating notes in this new piano ascending melody, but we hear the accent in the third note, the highest in terms of pitch (almost like in syncopation). This characteristic (at least this is what I perceive) suggests a sense of suspension, as if the ground is missing under your feet. The lower chords and the bass help the listener not to confuse these two different timings and they clarify the right way to interpret the beat. See this score of a little piece of the song:

Petricor sheets music Each first beat of the rhythm is represented by the blue arrows indicating the corresponding notes. The red arrows indicate the perceived accent on the notes in the third position of every repetition. The image depicts only a little part of the song, but the same principles apply also in the other parts of the song, where the piano is playing this ascending repeating piano melody.

Another interesting hallmark of Petricor is the hardly distinguishable descending arpeggios played by the violins (together with piano and cello) which start at 2:41 and at 4:45.

To hear them more easily I recommend turning up the high frequencies because it’s the range where violins produce their sound. It’s also better to use good quality headphones. For demonstration, I’ve specifically made a high-frequency version of the violin part so that you can easily listen to it here:

report_problem Warning: Check if the volume is too high or too low before listening.

You can also listen to just the violins with no piano thanks to the separation of instruments made with LALAL.AI:

This type of melody is particular because it takes advantage of the fact that the total beats (pulses) for each measure (4 bars in this case) are 12 and this number is not only divisible by 3 (remember the image of the accents, where the notes are grouped in three), but also by 4. Combining repeating melodies or 3 and 4 notes (so different lengths) creates the effect present in Petricor. This is a common technique in music and it’s technically called polymeter. It means playing two melodies at the same tempo but different length phrases (if you don’t understand, it may be useful to watch this great explanation by Andrew Huang).

Petricor rhythm The lines in the top row can be seen as the repeating eight-note triplets in the melody of the piano shown in the previous image (we are considering just one bar), whereas the lines below represent the 4 melody notes of the violin. They both encounter each other at the end because 3×4 and 4×3 (notes × times-repeated) is 12 (total number of lines). The red arrow indicates the accent that the violin creates with a high strident sound every 4 bars and you can hear that very easily because it stands out a lot in the melody. This produces a sort of symmetry and correlates the two different rhythms (piano 🆚 violin) together in a common meeting point. The vertical red lines indicate the start and the end of the repeating melodies, and as you can see they perfectly match every four beats (look at the thick black lines).

I find this technique truly clever and the effect on the piece is simply wonderful. This song hides a lot of techniques and they are used very expertly.

Album: Elements. Year: 2015.

music_note 4. Night

Night begins with a couple of distinctive echoing-pulsating digital sounds, soon followed by the soothing sound of the Steinway piano. It introduces the melody and iterates it until the end of the song with just some little variations. As seen in other Einaudi’s songs, a crescendo of violins slowly and progressively takes over, but it suddenly vanishes and gives the voice back to the piano. This structure repeats two times and the second one, once the melody has taken a place in the listener’s heart, is even more intensive, with the violins giving more space and time to the piano to properly express his mesmerizing, uplifting, soaring rise.

There is an official interactive version of this song that you can play on your browser. It’s awesome, you give it a try at this link.

Album: Elements. Year: 2015.

music_note 5. Divenire

Divenire is an orchestral piece that has a classic chord progression, similar to Night. It is quite fast-paced and particularly emotional. The most touching moment, in my opinion, is at 4:23, where the high notes played on the piano seems to struggle, in some way, to reach the limits of their faculties.

I read an old review on this website and there was a great comment on this song and the album Divenire. I want to share it again here:

“Divernire is Ludovico at his best; everything is cohesive and emotionally riveting, making for an album of compositions that can rival the best from recent years in the minimalist movement. Take for instance the title track that greets listeners earlier on. Ludovico enters on a foreboding A, B, C, and G chord progression that foretells the inevitable: the storm is coming. Encircling chords climax properly twice throughout the piece; all the while, listeners are swept away into the creation, their emotions rising and falling with each build and release. Moments like this showcase the composer’s peak of skill and ability on this record”

Album: Divenire. Year: 2006.

music_note 6. Logos (Elements Special Edition)

Logos is a song from the album Elements that comes in two versions, but the Elements Special Edition (above) is the one I like the most. This song was born from a process of experimentation and innovation, enough that it can be difficult to listen to at first. There are some instruments that are not commonly found in music, like the echoing intermittent bass at 0:56 that provides the rhythm (recognizable at the start of “Night”, too), the musical saw at 3:20 and what I think is the calabash (an African percussive instrument made out of a gourd, the Lagenaria siceraria) at 2:20. The scale used is also unusual.
This is what probably creates the distinctive atmosphere of darkness, fear and anxiety. Those emotions are interrupted in the culmination of the song at 3:48 where they are masterfully converted into a strong sense of light-heartedness and hope. This creates a lot of contrast in the overall piece and it’s why I always find it emotionally gorgeous. The powerful and energetic end, then, concludes the work with the atmosphere foretold from the beginning, albeit in an almost unexpected way.

Album: Elements. Year: 2015.

music_note 7. Elements

The innovative instrument of this song is the Fender Rhodes piano, which introduces the melody and hints at the rhythm, which is what I like the most about this song. That thing is like a strong march that has no intention of stopping, but rather, it becomes stronger and stronger with an orchestra of violins tenaciously repeating the same note (or a descending-ascending melody of 8 notes) and after a little pause at 3:39 it returns even more powerful than before. The beat is simple, with no other drums or secondary accompaniments, yet it is very robust and vigorous.

This review well expresses what I’m talking about:

“One of the standout tracks on the album is the title piece Elements, which is both beautifully structured and exhilarating. It starts quietly, but develops into an explosive climax of strings from the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. The melody is repetitive, but hypnotically so, conjuring images of dancing molecules combining and recombining, and it contains an effective use of military-style snare drum.”

Album: Elements. Year: 2015.

music_note 8. Cold Wind (Day 6)

This song, which is not very famous, may not seem particularly interesting at first, but in the second half it shows off all its expressiveness. Again, it consists of a simple repeating melody, but Einaudi flawlessly takes advantage of this repetitiveness to give a huge emphasis on the change in the chord (for non-musicians, it is the set of notes played simultaneously that accompanies the melody) at 4:50 and 5:36, always keeping the feeling of power, energy and strength very high. This keeps going until 5:52, when the calm enters and the instruments slowly muffle, almost taken by sleep, and fall silent.

The title of this work well depicts the sensations and the atmosphere: you are in the middle of a storm and the biting wind is blowing more and more aggressively on you. The frozen landscape both comforts and disturbs with an alternation of hypnotic stillness and hard strummed strings melting together like virgin snow in the midday winter sun. At the end, though, the cold wind sheds its bite and you can finally rest from this strenuous undertaking.

Album: Seven Days Walking. Year: 2019.

music_note 9. The Path Of The Fossils (Day 1)

The longest piece in Seven Days Walking is The Path of the Fossils. This song slowly builds into a dramatic segment with all instruments growing louder the further into the journey the traveller wanders, until stopping to admire the view at the summit. The melody is deep, dramatic and resonant. The aggressive, dynamic and unpredictable atmosphere created recalls some primitive period of the wild, like the one from which the fossils originate. In the end, the sound of the cello seems like a suggestion that one of the fossils is coming to life.

According to Einaudi itself, the title comes from a trail he used to take with his father, as a boy in Piedmont, where together they found fossils plugged into a wall of earth, a remainder from the time that part of Italy was under the sea.

Path Of The Fossils is also present in Day 2, Day 3 and Day 6 (the latter has a stormy, intense ending that the others don’t have).

Album: Seven Days Walking. Year: 2019.

music_note 10. Ascent (Day 1)

Ascent is perhaps the purest song of Seven Days Walking, containing moments of melancholy and others of happiness and hope, that make you both tearful and glad to be alive. Like other songs of Seven Days Walking, when you listen to Ascent it seems that it belongs to another dimension, a distant, untouchable, ethereal dimension, to which you cannot access or reach but which you can perceive within yourself.

This beautifully charming piece comes in all seven versions, one for each day: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6 and Day 7.

The song is still the same, but they all have a different character, with variations in notes, pace, tone and timbre of the instruments. This complexity of subtly distinct variations is what creates a unique opera for each execution.

Album: Seven Days Walking. Year: 2019.

Other songs

There are many other songs that I excluded from the list. These are some honourable mentions:

Also, I encourage you to read The Case for Einaudi by Josh Winiberg, which is an analysis and comment of Einaudi’s best works from the perspective of a musician and music teacher.

Before closing, there’s another thing: just yesterday, Einaudi published his new album titled “Underwater”, composed of 12 minimalist compositions. It is the first album of just piano solos of the last decade (I think the absolute first was Le Onde in 1996). Go check it out at this link!


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