Dream 3 (In the Midst of My Life)

*From Sleep* is the one-hour waking edit of Richter's eight-hour lullaby *Sleep*, and "Dream 3" is its most-heard fragment — a piece engineered, with neuroscientist David Eagleman's input, to work below the threshold of full attention. Ben Russell and Yuki Numata Resnick's violins trace a slow, unhurried line over piano and a soft synthesized pad, in a tempo close to a resting heart rate. Nothing develops in the conventional sense; the material rotates through a small set of consonant harmonies, with tiny changes in voicing that reward attention but never demand it. The strings are bowed with almost no vibrato, giving them a breathing, unfixed quality rather than a performed one. The subtitle borrows Dante — nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita — which colors the calm with the sense of being midway through something, not at its start. Culturally *Sleep* was a phenomenon: performed overnight with beds instead of seats, streamed by millions who never consciously listened to it, and it reframed what a classical premiere could be. It is genuinely functional music, best used at 2 a.m. when you have given up on sleeping and want something that won't argue with you, or under work that requires quiet.