What music makes you cry?

[LeMartinPecheur]

As Noël Coward put it - "extraordinary how potent cheap music is"...

Vinteuil: I very nearly stuck that quotation in myself, but couldn't quite recall who said it

[Alf-Prufrock]

I was interested to see the Bach-Busoni Chaconne cited, because I am affected too by the same music. I also find the return of the Aria at the end of the Goldberg Variations equally moving, especially at the hands of Angela Hewitt.

But most of my weepies occur with text or story-based music. One that always does it for me is the end of Gerontius from 'Take me away' onwards and especially with "Softly and gently".

At last year's Proms I found myself weeping at Karita Matila's 'Im Abendrot', but there the extreme beauty of the orchestral playing was an intensifying factor. However, I had wept equally at Renee Fleming's singing of the same song ten years earlier. This is on Youtube :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppoqUVlKkBU

[Chris Newman]

Narrative works like operas often make me dewy eyed. Extra special performances of works mean I need a hanky. I guess my biggest weakness is youth orchestras when they knock the pants off the professionals; then the floodgates open.

[Mahlerei]

Chris

Oh, I do so agree about youth orchestras. The Simon Bolivar band invariably chokes me up. Most recently a DVD of Neumann conducting the GMJO in Dvorak's Ninth really set me off.

[rubbernecker]

Whereas I can quite easily well up when watching various corny movies...

Strange that music doesn't provoke the same reaction in you, Vinteuil.

Being a hard man I try not to blub, but film-wise the end of Cinema Paradiso had me in uncontrollable floods. Musically, the only piece that is guaranteed to elicit in me a quasi-Pavlovian lachrymal response is the prelude to The 49th Parallel by Vaughan-Williams. Sections of Finzi's Requiem da Camera and Stravinsky's Little Boat from the Rake (as Don Basilio mentioned above) also come close.

[Paul Sherratt]

If Paradise was ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94aAPTWtcEQ

http://www.emulsioncompulsion.com/gallery2/d/56320-1/Kleenex+Man-Size+Tissues.jpg

[Uncle Monty]

Musically, the only piece that is guaranteed to elicit in me a quasi-Pavlovian lachrymal response is the prelude to The 49th Parallel by Vaughan-Williams.

Yes! That's a killer, isn't it? And even more so, the vocal version The New Commonwealth. I'm welling up just thinking about it. . .

[Chris Newman]

Chris

Oh, I do so agree about youth orchestras. The Simon Bolivar band invariably chokes me up. Most recently a DVD of Neumann conducting the GMJO in Dvorak's Ninth really set me off.

I was listening to a very youthful choir (The Hogan Ensemble) singing live so on Saturday night I missed the broadcast of Verdi's Othello. The Hogan's rendering of Joseph Rheinberger's and Frank Martin's Masses for double choirs tipped me into a wet period. Now I have just caught up with the opera on iPlayer and have had another good blub.

[Segilla]

It's not simply the sound of the music; it ls its associations as well.

Elgar, violin concerto, slow movement. I always recall my piano teacher telling me (ca. 1948) that at a performance in the Queen's Hall a lady sitting nearby burst into tears. (They well up right now, just at the thought of this).

Dyson's Children's Suite especially mvts 1 and 2. They remind me of ca 1944, arriving home from school to a darkened house, the fire had just been lit and freshly ironed laundry waiting to be aired. The aroma, the memories of childhood - its happiness and disappointments, and a sadness at days that can be recalled but never reclaimed.

Berlioz, the Love Scene from Romeo and Juliet. The miracle of the Dramatic Symphony's coming into being. The tragic story and that of Berlioz's life of struggle and lack of success.

Berlioz again, the Quintet and Sextet from Act IV of Les Troyens.

[BBMmk2]

Gorecki's Totus Tuus, does it for me. Also Resurgam by Eric Ball

[rubbernecker]

Yes! That's a killer, isn't it? And even more so, the vocal version The New Commonwealth. I'm welling up just thinking about it. . .

Gosh, thank you UM, I didn't know about this. The reviewer of Where Hope is Shining by the The Joyful Company of Singers on Amazon appears to agree with you:
"But the real jewel of the disc comes toward the end, in the form of Vaughan Williams' choral setting The New Commonwealth, described with masterly English understatement in Stephen Connock's notes as "remarkably moving". I was familiar with the tune - it had been used in the Prelude to the wartime film 49th Parallel - but I was unprepared for the sheer power and beauty of the vocal arrangement of this "glorious, noble, hymn-like melody". A very secular hymn, written to convey a message of hope in a grim post-war world. I defy anyone to listen to it without dissolving, and without being haunted by its wonderful words and music."

Right, that's now been ordered!

[Nick Armstrong]

Gosh, thank you UM, I didn't know about this. The reviewer of Where Hope is Shining by the The Joyful Company of Singers on Amazon appears to agree with you:
"But the real jewel of the disc comes toward the end, in the form of Vaughan Williams' choral setting The New Commonwealth, described with masterly English understatement in Stephen Connock's notes as "remarkably moving". I was familiar with the tune - it had been used in the Prelude to the wartime film 49th Parallel - but I was unprepared for the sheer power and beauty of the vocal arrangement of this "glorious, noble, hymn-like melody". A very secular hymn, written to convey a message of hope in a grim post-war world. I defy anyone to listen to it without dissolving, and without being haunted by its wonderful words and music."

Right, that's now been ordered!

UH-oh... expensive...! Sounds essential.. A musical highlight for me was playing "49th Parallel" with the orchestra of RVW's old school in a sunny riverside meadow in the Rühr valley during a town-twinning tour to Germany. Playing that piece in that context seemed like a Utopian dream, given the events a generation earlier. Sounds like the words of the choral version tap into the same vein.

(PS "49th Parallel" had taken the place in the programme of Coates's "Dambusters" March.... )

[Nick Armstrong]

I have sat dry eyed through La boheme and La traviata, but did cry the first time I heard (in the opera house at that) the epilogue to Britten's Billy Budd and the lullaby in Bedlam in The Rake's Progress, Gently little boat.

One that always does it for me is the end of Gerontius from 'Take me away' onwards and especially with "Softly and gently".

...film-wise the end of Cinema Paradiso had me in uncontrollable floods. Musically, the only piece that is guaranteed to elicit in me a quasi-Pavlovian lachrymal response is the prelude to The 49th Parallel by Vaughan-Williams. Sections of Finzi's Requiem da Camera and Stravinsky's Little Boat from the Rake (as Don Basilio mentioned above) also come close.

Yes, yes and yes! (especially "Take me away" etc., and "Cinema Paradiso" - the aging Toto's reactions watching Alfredo's posthumous gift, plus Morricone's welling score).

We are clearly blokes of similar stamp

[Dave2002]

Maybe it's time to add mine to the lists

Bach - Chorale from the St Matthew Passion
Strauss - 4 Last Songs
Puccini - O Mio Babbino Caro - hardly any time at all - just a couple of minutes long

There may be more, and perhaps on occasions some orchestral/instrumental music, but oddly it looks as though the ones which seems to have greatest effect are vocal/choral.

Perhaps Sibelius Violin Concerto - or even Brahms' Violin Concerto - on occasion.

As noted by others, there are sounds which ought to make me cry, but not for the same reasons. The YouTubes of Sunn O))) seem to me to be truly tragic! Dreadful!

[kernelbogey]

I don't often cry visible tears at a piece of music, though, like others here, I often come close. In many cases it is the association which the music holds with an event or period in my life.

The slow movement of the Brahms Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano is a case in point. I fell across this for the first time during a very intense relationship, many years ago, and long ended. Brahms was apparently mourning his mother's death in this movement and it is redolent of grief. We both found it deeply moving at that time: now it is overlaid with grief at that lost relationship. The same woman introduced me to the last three Schubert piano sonatas, and the opening chords of the G major take me straight back, with deep poignancy, to that time.

I once woke in tears from a dream in which my parents were dancing together to the last movement of Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' Quartet in the churchyard where they are both buried.