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Sorry to seem so boring but it's passion in composition that
often makes me weep. I've had to think quite a lot while reading all of
the posts about Sad But Beautiful Music; I lose count of the music that makes me
weep but it's usually for the passion, the volume of emotion, in the piece,
not the sadness itself. I suppose some of my items here might be thought
of as pedestrian by some but I cannot deny that great music can take you just
about everywhere emotionally.
Beethoven's 6th, towards the end. That's the top o' the tops for me no matter what else I encounter.
When the truth about Beethoven's unrequited love - later his brother's wife, a
farmer's daughter - became known, the passion at the end of the Pastorale
made sense. Its effectiveness of course requires tissues. I
discovered its effect on me while seeing Disney's Fantasia at age 6. Can't
help it, so I had to learn not to be embarrassed about it, and carry a
handkerchief.
Boring part two: Sadness in music = Barber's Adagio for
Strings (aka the 2nd movement of his String Quartet No. 1, Op 11). I hate
it having been played and played and played, mainly because I felt that the uses
(in film) were borderline-hackneyed. The Proms are a famous series of
performances in the Royal Albert Hall each summer, and they end in the second
week of September. The conductor for the Last Night At The Proms (a big
deal, wiki it, there's usually tons of English flag-waving, Elgar, Land of Hope
and Glory, the lot) for 13 September 2001 happened to be for the first
time an American, Leonard Slatkin, who had been looking forward to doing Last
Night in the traditional manner. The BBC changed the program to have less
bombast etc., and added the Adagio for Strings, the last movement of Beethoven's
9th, and removed the Rule, Brittania stuff. I'd say it was the one time I
felt that the song and the moment became one, were for once being 'utilized'
appropriately. In this case the piece outlasts the mediocre uses it has
had. It gave me a release that nothing else could.
Third: Paul Robeson singing Old Man River. Ah!
Thinking of the way that recording sounds can edge one to the neighborhood where
tears flow.
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