Why does Secret Garden's music endure over time?

The music night titled “Secret Garden Live in Vietnam” in the international music project for the community Good Morning Vietnam initiated by Nhan Dan Newspaper and IB Group Vietnam took place on the evening of October 18, 2025 at the National Convention Center (Hanoi) and was considered a meeting between memories and the present: middle-aged people who listened to music when they were young and today's audience met on the same melody line.

When time is the “test” of sustainability in music

Sustainability, in the context of music, is not just about the longevity of a hit. It is the ability of an aesthetic to continue to function effectively across changing sonic platforms, cultural contexts, and consumption habits. When a piece of music can move from CD, radio, cassette, to digital platform, from auditorium to coffee shop, classroom, graduation, or private playlist to public auditorium, and still retain its impact, it is called “sustainability.”

Secret Garden achieves this by operating as a “design system”: a melody-first philosophy, a transparent harmonic language, “breathing” rhythms, minimal but refined arrangements, and a strategy of using silence as a material. This design system allows their music to be flexible in its re-contextualization: it can be a soundtrack for a film, practice material for a youth orchestra, or a communal ritual piece without losing its identity.

The most prominent feature of Secret Garden’s music is the creation of cantabile melodies that are soft curves that can be easily expressed in words, even without lyrics. Structurally, most of their melodies follow a clear “open-climb-bloom-fall” logic – starting with a short motif, gradually climbing in height, blooming at a moderate emotional peak, then falling with a soft ending, leaving a lingering aftertaste.

The duo’s music taps into the listener’s instinct to “sing along.” Even as an instrumental, Fionnuala Sherry’s violin lines are easy to sing along to, easy to sing along to. When the melody is rich enough in song, it can live independently of its original arrangement. Many of Secret Garden’s pieces could be arranged for solo piano, string quartet, or even choir and still be instantly recognizable. It is this ability to “speak for itself” that helps their songs transcend generations and eras without needing to be supported by sound “trends.”

Classical-Celtic Interaction: A Door Opens the Aesthetic Map

The music of Secret Garden is a synthesis of classical technique and organization of thought (discipline, structure), Nordic/Celtic folk material and new age/crossover sensibility. The classical roots are given the backbone, the Celtic layer provides the local “scent”, the crossover spirit takes the music far beyond the concert hall. This aesthetic map is open to many groups of audiences entering from diverse paths.

The key point of this intersection is not to “paint” the surface, but to internalize it into melody and rhythm. Therefore, when changing the context (in movies, community events or classrooms), the “Secret Garden quality” is still recognizable as a form of “sound brand”.

In many of their hits, Secret Garden uses few instruments: violin, piano, and sometimes Celtic whistle and harp. This arrangement is enough to lift the melody, just right to maintain the color, beautiful at the explosive points. The durability lies in the discipline of not showing off. When the sound structure is concise, the song is less likely to be "modernized" by temporary arrangement trends. It will go through the years without going out of fashion.

The restrained arrangement also creates a space where each instrument has room to breathe, to be silent. In production techniques, reverb is used as an instrument: not too thickly painted but enough to prolong the echo, creating a feeling of “a hall in the listener’s heart”. This approach creates an emotional technology that is difficult to get old.

Many long-time listeners may also recognize that the music of Secret Garden shows that silence is also a note. The pauses at the right time help the brain complete the melody, stimulating the imagination to fill in the rest. When the listener is “co-creating” by completing the musical phrase in their head, the relationship with the work becomes personal and lasting.

In a concert hall, silence is also a consensual moment. It is a moment when the whole community waits for the right note to fall, becoming an unforgettable experience. This promises to be the highlight of this year’s Good Morning Vietnam concert with Secret Garden: establishing a listening culture where silence is respected as much as sound, where collective memory and the digital present meet in the discipline of listening.

Memory-Present Reunion: When Three Trajectories Merge into One Point

In Vietnam, the album “Songs from a Secret Garden” was once a passed-around item.

Listening to Secret Garden is like watching a slow-motion movie scene, carrying with it urban memories such as an afternoon at a coffee shop, a damp alley after the rain, a night bus leaving the city… When music provides a language with few words and many images, audiences of all generations can translate it into their own image archives.

Endurance sometimes does not come from a specific story but from the ability to stay in daily activities: while studying, reading, working or even driving. A song that is closely associated with life will be listened to a lot and gradually become a habit, a melody that appears first in the mind.

Good Morning Vietnam not only brought Secret Garden to Vietnamese audiences for the first time, but also created a space where audiences of many generations - from those who used to listen to portable CDs to those who grew up with digital Playlists - could sit in the same auditorium, synchronize their breathing, and wait for a note to fall. This synchronization became a meeting between memory and the present when three trajectories merged into one point.

The generation that listened to Secret Garden on CDs and radios in coffee shops, carrying urban memories of the 90s and 2000s that symbolized a “warm golden youth”, will meet the generation that grew up with streaming, using Secret Garden as a soundtrack to focus on studying or working. The third trajectory is that of amateur to semi-professional musicians who have used the Nordic duo’s melodies as a practice ladder, as a lesson in restrained arrangement.

“Secret Garden Live in Vietnam” is like a convergence point where three orbits intersect. There, memories are not framed in nostalgia, and the present is not slipped away in haste.

Sustainable music does not run after time, but goes with time. Secret Garden expresses that idea with its lyrical melody, natural rhythm, restrained arrangement and respect for silence. These elements combine to form a musical language rich with space, enough for the previous generation to store memories in, and for the next generation to put their digital life in without being cramped.

When Good Morning Vietnam brings Secret Garden to the Vietnamese stage, the audience will not just be waiting for a show. It will be a moment when the community redefines how to listen - letting melody lead the way, letting silence be found, letting memory and the present look at each other and smile.

A garden that knows how to retain water will be green through the four seasons, a music that knows how to maintain human breathing will be green through the years. And at the moment the violin raises its bow, the piano touches the first key, what is happening can be named with two simple words: “sustainability”.

“Secret Garden Live in Vietnam” will take place at 7:30 p.m. on October 18, 2025 at the National Convention Center, Hanoi . This is an event within the annual international music project for the community “Good Morning Vietnam” initiated by Nhan Dan Newspaper and IB Group Vietnam.

Source: https://nhandan.vn/vi-sao-am-nhac-cua-secret-garden-ben-vung-theo-thoi-gian-post913294.html