Love Songs and Lullabies

Words are powerful, yet they often stumble when demanded to carry the weight of love. We say “I love you” a thousand times, and while the phrase remains true, it can begin to feel strangely small against the enormity of the emotion it attempts to describe. Love is too vast, too contradictory, too physical and too ethereal to be contained within syntax alone. This is where music steps in — not as a substitute, but as an amplification, a language that bypasses the mind’s careful editing and speaks directly to the heart. Consider how a single note can feel like longing made audible. No sentence could ever convey that precise sensation with such immediacy.

Words describe; music embodies.The power lies partly in music’s ability to exist beyond explanation. When Johann Sebastian Bach writes a rising suspension in the “Air” from his Orchestral Suite No. 3, we feel reverence and tenderness without ever being told what to feel. When Billie Holiday bends a note in “Body and Soul” until it aches, the pain of unrequited love arrives before any lyric has time to explain it. The body understands first, the heart is slow to learn, the mind catches up later, if at all. Perhaps the deepest proof of music’s superiority lies in its universality and vulnerability. Lovers who share no common spoken language can still cry together listening to the same piece of music. A mother can sing a wordless lullaby to her child and convey more safety and devotion than any carefully crafted sentence ever could. Even when lyrics are present, it is rarely the literal meaning that breaks us open — it is the way the melody cradles the words, stretches them, fractures them, or lets them float away into silence. In the end, words remain essential; they offer clarity, promise, apology, commitment. But when love grows too large for language — when it is unbearable joy, quiet devastation, or the overwhelming need to simply be near someone — music waits like an old friend who needs no introduction. It takes our trembling, imperfect feelings and for a few perfect minutes turns them into something transcendent.And in that shared, wordless moment, two people understand each other more deeply than any declaration could ever achieve.That is why, after every important “I love you,” the wisest lovers do not speak again. They simply press "play". ...................................................................................................................... Through hundreds of love songs, mostly in artsongs or using the widely accepted term in Indonesian "tembang puitik", and for any instruments, I not only celebrate love, but also invite the players and listeners to experience love in its entirety—with all the beauty and pain that comes with it. Music speak about love in a way that is so personal and timeless. Writing love songs was my way of “loving again” the people, including those who might not love me. I don't really fancy the “shallow” or “commercial” love of some pop songs, and instead I want to show that true love is bold, radical, and sometimes even toxic because it can change a person completely. ....................................................................................................................... This is my new published scores of Love Songs and Lullabies, written throughout my life. As an introduction, I would like to quote the transcript of the interview I did with the pianist Dr. Karen Yong who teaches at Albany State University. This was done for her Doctoral thesis many years ago, and also a material she presented at The Piano Conference: National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP) 2025 in Chicago. ........................................................................................................................ Yong: I notice that there is a collection of seven love songs in Alicia's Third, Fifth, and Sixth Piano Books. What was the inspiration behind the collection? There are 7 of them in the collection. Sukarlan: Oh, yes. They were written [a long time] before, in fact. Because many of the pieces, especially in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were written even when I was young. There were manuscripts in my cupboard. I had a cupboard with, I think, hundreds of manuscripts. And sometimes I just checked them over, and I thought, hey, this is interesting to make [it into] a real piano piece. And I wrote love songs because, well, for my girlfriends. Some of them are like birthday presents for people. Well, people I love but not girlfriends. Just friends. So yeah, some of them are old, some of them are new. I think the new ones start from number eight. Yong: Number eight? I think there are only a total of seven love songs in Alicia’s Piano Books. Sukarlan: Yes, seven in Alicia's Piano Books. Then, I published a new book called Shorter Works for Piano, because they don't have pedagogical purposes. They were not written for Alicia. They were just short pieces. If I had to write something, a prelude for my opera and another thing, so that's it. Yes. So that's why I didn't write more Alicia's Piano Book, but I wrote a collection of short pieces. And that's starting from “Love Song No. 8.” Yong: That makes sense. So, did you have any specific purpose for compiling seven love songs in three different volumes? Why didn't you compile in one? Sukarlan: Because I found one old love song one day and another love song a few months later. And sometimes, I took one paper and I thought, oh, did I write this? And if I thought this is very bad, then I said, okay, I'm definitely throwing this away. But if it's rather good, then I'd revise it. And if it's quite good, I’d just print it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, you see that Karen, back in 2020 had already suggested that I compile them into one book, and here it is. As for the lullabies, usually I write them for newborn babies of my dear friends, mostly piano teachers so they can play it for their babies. Jennise and Orlando are the babies (not anymore now) of Nitya Primantari. Athena Seraphine is the daughter of the late Brigifine E. Syams. Usually I just use the letters of their names as motif of the piece, except the ones for Mili or his sister Jessy where I just wrote what sounded in my head. Except the last one, for Rachel Nadia although one might say that she is a big, cute & admirable baby, and she's a pianist too. This lullaby was written the moment I learned she lay in a hospital bed, having a small accident that had shaken me more than her (now she's totally recovered). Anyway, the pattern is the same with my other lullabies, using the name of the babies as the main motif. The only difference is that usually my lullabies are sweet, carefree and made to lull the babies (and listeners) to sleep. This one, though still has the rhythmic element of a lullaby, has a certain melancholy to it, perhaps reflecting my worries for her accident (I still didn't know how serious it was when I wrote this, since she still hadn't answered messages on her phone). I was playing it at Rachel's place weeks later on her own piano, so she could hear the "authentic" (whatever it means) interpretation of the piece. But she made a video of it already while I was practising it after having totally forgotten about how it sounded (in fact, I even haven't checked it on the piano so that was the first time I heard it), so nonetheless there are very slight misaccuracies. You can find it on youtube. Anyway, one can hear the authentic, imperfect prayer I had sent into the dark for her, and that was enough. As my previous Love Songs, they were written in flashes of inspiration, usually inspired by dear friends but also they serve as sketches and melodic materials for future bigger works. Love Song no. 8 became the overture for my monologue "Tanah Air", commissioned by KOMPAS based on the monologue of the same title by Martin Aleida that won Kompas' Best Short Story of the year 2017. I wrote the theme of Love Song no. 9 back in the beginning of 2010s, and it was then used for the slow section of my First Chamber Symphony commissioned by the late ex President of the Republic of Indonesia, BJ Habibie. I then made something new for the middle section when I decided to use this theme as the 9th Love Song. So, in a way the process is reversed; although I wrote the first theme first, the Love Song came later. Love Song no. 12 is a birthday present for a dear friend / pianist Angelica Liviana, and ehm ... at the moment it's still not developed into a bigger piece of music.