So there’s this composer, Philip Arnold Heseltine, but he goes by Peter Warlock because he believes himself a wizard. And there’s his lover, a model named Minnie Lucie Channing who goes by Puma because … well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination.

Warlock lived only 36 years, taking his own life in the end. However, he managed to squeeze quite a bit of raucous living into that short life, including occult practices, fiery relationships, an unwanted child, saying whatever he wanted in the worst of circumstances, weekly orgies, police raids, and heavy drinking. He wrote his own epitaph:

Here lies Warlock the composer
Who lived next door to Munn the grocer.
He died of drink and copulation,
A sad discredit to the nation.

You’d expect anybody who lived a life like this to look awesome as well … and yes, Warlock had a very unique look (remarkably like Errol Flynn, I might add.)

Professionally, he was never happy with his work or his surroundings; he moved around quite a bit, took a number of different unsuccessful jobs, started (and never finished) many projects. Besides music composition, he published a number of different music journals, wrote musicological books, and helped to grow the budding new interest in folk and early music at the beginning of the 20th century. The influence of English folk music and early music styles can be heard in his popular Caprol Suite for strings. It features six folk-dance-like movements, simple melodies, and a sort of modern-modal harmony.

By “modern love story”, I don’t mean “Romeo & Juliet retold with contemporary characters” – I mean “a prostitute lures a lecher to be robbed and murdered, but the lecher is magical and won’t die until his lust is fulfilled.”

When Béla Bartók‘s ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin” was premiered in 1926, it was quickly banned for its questionable morals. But it was cool to be intense, politically charged, and controversial back then – after all, this was the era which included the rise of facism and communism, American prohibition and speakeasies, and all kinds of varied fringe arts ranging from elegant, traditional-sounding neoclassicism to clunky, forward-looking futurism. Time has eroded this ballet’s edgy effect – after books like Lolita or movies like Pulp Fiction, the story of the Miraculous Mandarin feels pretty tame:

A woman dances to lures victims into a room where they are robbed by three bandits. Eventually, a Chinese man comes, and he jumps on the woman in lust. The three bandits attack him and stab him, but he won’t bleed. He begins to glow with an eerie light. The woman realizes what is happening, and orders the bandits off the victim. He jumps up and embraces the woman – his lust fulfilled, his wounds begin to bleed and he dies. Ah, love.

So you’re having an existential crisis. Naturally, the first thing you do is ask yourself, “what music should I listen to while I ponder the absurdity of my existence?”

This isn’t just melancholia – there’s plenty of music for that. And the catch-all-word “sad” simply doesn’t cover it. Maybe there’s an intense longing in your heart, but your head tells you that your longing will not be satisfied. You tried praying to God, even though Nietzsche told you God was dead. And other people are no help at all.

Don’t settle for second-rate despondent ditties – you’ve tried the rest, now try the best – Anton Webern‘s expressionism.

Webern was a member of the Second Viennese School and a student of its founder, Arnold Schoenberg. They was a group of Germanic composers in the early 20th century who worked valiantly to break away from traditional systems of tonality. Webern stands out among his fellow composers because his compositions were ultra-organized; because of this, Webern, not Schoenberg, became the inspiration for serial music movement. Serialists used mathematical structures to create pieces that left no room for foolish human errors such as emotion. Boulez, one of the champions of serialism, criticized Schoenberg for allowing a little humanity (IE romantic tendencies) into his music, whereas Webern’s is cold, stark, and empty – just like life!

If one-and-a-half minutes isn’t long enough to cover your crisis, the whole six-movement suite can be heard here.