Music of (or for) consolation

[Roger Webb]

Not something which I thought of for consolation as such but I find that Noriko Agawa’s recording of pieces by Peterson-Berger always cheers me up - Frösöblomster. This was available as a CD on BIS, but now seems hard to get.

BIS-CD 925 is now on Qobuz in 16bit 44.1k. Or there's one on eBay at £7.99.

[LMcD]

He is an excellent pianist - some months ago a recording of a medley of Cornish tunes.

His tribute to Alexei Navalny was featured on 'Pick Of The Week' on Radio 4 - modesty forbids me from naming one of the 2 listeners who were thanked for recommending its inclusion.

[cloughie]

His tribute to Alexei Navalny was featured on 'Pick Of The Week' on Radio 4 - modesty forbids me from naming one of the 2 listeners who were thanked for recommending its inclusion.

I’ll use Sounds on your recommendation !

[kernelbogey]

I listened to part of Tearjearker last night - in order to broaden my experience and understanding of music - and heard the Norwegian artist Aurora introduce a selection. Here is the programme blurb: It’s hard to be a human today. Somehow we can all feel lonely with the weight of the whole world on our shoulders, but music has the power to make us feel less alone. Join Aurora, as she curates a playlist to make you feel less alone. Featuring music from Erik Satie, Radiohead and Anna Clyne. Plus Aurora has a listener submission for the "Song That Saves Me". From this and other sources I gather that for younger generations music is seen as transactional: one listener had requested the Benedictus from Carl Jenkins's Mass for Peace which she uses 'for processes grief'.

[Maclintick]

There's an accompanying CD : 'Delius and his circle', where PG plays music by composers who knew Delius: Stone Records.

I can also thoroughly recommend PG's "Dicky Bird Hop" - the aural equivalent of Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo, a scintillating compilation of British light music on Em Marshall-Luck's enterprising EM Records label,
and very appropriate for this thread.

[smittims]

Well, kernelbogey. I'm grateful to you for going where I'd never dare and braving 'Tearjerker'!

From what you say I don't think I could stand much of it. It seems to be 'curated' for the 'Snowflake' generation.

'It's hard to be a human today': well, not perhaps as hard as it was in 1940s Germany, or in Britain c.1000BC. And why anyone should be obliged to have the weight of the world on their shoulders is beyond me. I bet the Satie would be more likely Gymnodpedie no. 1 than the Messe pour es pauvres.

Yes, it's easy to scoff. But it's sad to think that anyone is being told by Radio 3 that this is what music is all about.

[oddoneout]

Well, kernelbogey. I'm grateful to you for going where I'd never dare and braving 'Tearjerker'!

From what you say I don't think I could stand much of it. It seems to be 'curated' for the 'Snowflake' generation.

'It's hard to be a human today': well, not perhaps as hard as it was in 1940s Germany, or in Britain c.1000BC. And why anyone should be obliged to have the weight of the world on their shoulders is beyond me. I bet the Satie would be more likely Gymnodpedie no. 1 than the Messe pour es pauvres.

Yes, it's easy to scoff. But it's sad to think that anyone is being told by Radio 3 that this is what music is all about.

Indeed. Even more so when the ads are relentlessly telling us that

Radio 3 is the home of classical music

(And then, in one version currently receiving much airtime, playing snippets of talk...)

[Petrushka]

Odd that no-one has mentioned anything ŕeligious or sacred based on this thread when one of the very reasons for such music is often that of consolation.

I find the timeless majesty of Bach's B minor Mass puts most troubles into perspective.

[smittims]

Maybe it's because, as someone said on Radio 4 recently 'it's not "cool" to be religious now'. I tend to say 'I do a lot of things religiously, but I don't believe in the Supernatural'. However, I do find that , when I'm in the right mood, Gregorian chant can make everything else seem irrelevant.

[kernelbogey]

Odd that no-one has mentioned anything ŕeligious or sacred based on this thread when one of the very reasons for such music is often that of consolation.

I find the timeless majesty of Bach's B minor Mass puts most troubles into perspective.

As an atheist I nonetheless find sacred music consoling, but for what I could describe as 'purely musical' reasons - a statement that obviously begs a number of questions. I have never quite got my head around the B Minor Mass but plenty of other sacred, or as-sacred, works such as the German Requiem of Brahms, Janacek's Glagolitic Mass, and the Quattuor pour le fin du temps (Messiaen) offer consolation. The absence of eternal life is to be contemplated with as much devotion, IMVHO, as allegation of its existence.

With all respect, Pet.

[smittims]

Aha, yes! Swinburne's The Garden of Proserpine, especially in its setting by Vaughan Williams during his atheist years (he later settled for 'agnostic') celebrates the expectation of quiet rest.

[kernelbogey]

...the Quattuor pour la fin du temps (Messiaen) offer[s] consolation.

I have always been moved by this work, to which I was introduced, circa 1961 by one of the wonderful Talking about Music programmes by Antony Hopkins (the academic musicologist sand broadcaster).

Partly it is the description by Messiaen of the composition of the work in a German Prisoner of War camp (in Silesia IIRC), with the piano part written around the unplayable notes on the camp piano; part by the spectacle of the prisoners of war, huddled in the deep cold, listening to a work that must have sounded astonishing to almost everyone present.

The fifth movement, "Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus" (Praise to the eternity of Jesus), a duet for piano and violin, takes me deep into a sense of the fragility of human life, set in the enormity of the universe: it's intensely. moving.

[smittims]

Indeed. It's the cello movement that gets me. Few musical works can have been composed and performed under such extraordinary circumstances.

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed. It's the cello movement that gets me. Few musical works can have been composed and performed under such extraordinary circumstances.

And of course, Messiaen had already interwoven it into his Fête des belles eaux for ondes martenots three years earlier.

[kernelbogey]

And of course, Messiaen had already interwoven it into his Fête des belles eaux for ondes martenots three years earlier.

I haven't re-checked, Serial, but I understand he had already begun the quartet before being captured - I don't know whether there was more than that piece already in existence.