Max Richter's music put dozens of soldiers to sleep

This year marks the 10th anniversary of one of the most streamed classical records of all time: Sleep by the acclaimed composer and pianist Max Richter.

It's an eight-and-a-half-hour epic that you're meant to listen to while you're asleep. In an interview with Q's Tom Power, Richter says the project got its start in 2013 or 2014, when 4G technology was making the internet more accessible and convenient for the first time.

"I was talking with Yulia, my partner, and we were thinking about how creative works can, in a way, function as a kind of alternate reality," he says. "So we thought about this idea of a piece of music as a kind of a pause, or a holiday from this kind of 24/7 data blizzard. And so that's kind of the origins of Sleep."

At some performances of the piece, audiences could sleep or lie in a bed as they listened to the music. Richter says Sleep tends to operate on people in very meaningful ways.

"The piece works a lot on subsonics," he explains. "Very low frequencies — you feel it physically. In a way, it sort of lulls you, you know, neuroscientists would call it 'rhythmic entrainment.' It sort of synchronizes your body's tempo, in a way, with the tempo of the piece.

"The other thing is that the spectrum of the piece mirrors the spectrum that the unborn child hears in the womb because the mother's body filters out all of the high frequencies. So this low frequency pulsing, which is at the heart of Sleep, reminds us of something. It reminds us of something that we've all experienced, even before we knew we were a person."

In October 2019, Richter gave a historic performance of Sleep at the Great Wall of China.

"We get to the venue and it's surrounded by soldiers with guns, you know, really quite hard-core, scary security," he recalls. "It's kind of stressful, everyone is a bit freaked out. So we start playing the thing and after about two hours I get a break … and I see all these soldiers with their guns asleep on the floor. Dozens of them, just sleeping. And I was just like, 'Yeah. That's it. That's why we're doing this.'"

Though Richter made Sleep to be experienced while sleeping, he says many fans have told him they listen to the piece at the office, while doing yoga or while studying. He says music is an art form that you feel, and it can have a real effect on your day.

"Maybe this is sort of naive, but I do have faith in music," Richter says. "That sounds, maybe, slightly crazy, but I do sort of believe in the potential of creative work to elicit changes in the world. I experienced that in my own life. If I get out of bed in the morning, I'm making the coffee, I stick the radio on, and it's like [Beethoven's Eroica symphony] or something, my day is going to be a bit better. It just is. One per cent better. But, you know, I really believe in that one per cent."

The full interview with Max Richter is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Max Richter produced by Ben Edwards.