673. What Is Money?

When composer David Lang first proposed setting Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to music, his initial reading strategy was to hunt for sheep. "Sheep play a prominent role in the Messiah," Lang explains, referring to Handel's oratorio that partly inspired his project. "And I thought, okay, I'm gonna make a joke out of the connection to sheep." The sheep jokes eventually got edited out, but the impulse reveals something essential about Lang's approach: he reads foundational texts not as a scholar extracting arguments, but as a composer searching for emotional weight.

What Money Actually Is

Lang's central discovery while reading The Wealth of Nations was not about markets or efficiency but about connection. "I started trying to figure out what the themes were that resonated with me," he says. What emerged was an insight about money itself: "Money doesn't really represent anything by itself, but it represents the amount of labor that we put into doing something." This became the organizing idea for his oratorio. The movement called "What Is Money?" asks how far human connection through trade can extend. Lang points out the paradox that many people see money and economics as inhumane, whereas he considers money "probably the greatest social lubricant that's ever been invented." The alternative, he notes, is either bartering physical goods or "just