Feelgood classical works

[rauschwerk]

Grainger: Mock Morris (piano version); Seventeen come Sunday; In Dahomey (Cakewalk Smasher).

[kernelbogey]

10/3/21: 01:24 AM
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962)
Divertissement
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Paavo Jarvi (conductor)

This didn't just make me smile/feel good: I was laughing out loud in the final movement. Long time since I'd heard it!

[cloughie]

Now, if Khatia Buniatishvili were to pop round to my house and play some Alkan on my little Yamaha digi piano in my living room
That would make me feel quite good

Will have to wait, edge, though she could play it in your garden on March 29 - have you got her number?

[cloughie]

10/3/21: 01:24 AM
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962)
Divertissement
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Paavo Jarvi (conductor)

This didn't just make me smile/feel good: I was laughing out loud in the final movement. Long time since I'd heard it!

https://youtu.be/TktHpLIqS-4

My all time favourite recording of the work.

[MickyD]

Boyce: Symphony No.1

[Barbirollians]

Surely the only "non-feelgood" music is music one doesn't like?

Not sure that is correct - I like Metamorphosen, Elgar’s Sospiri - He was despised from the Messiah but I would not regard them as feelgood.

Beethoven Piano Concerto No 5 for me .

[cloughie]

Bruckner Sym 7 - Movt 3

[Rolmill]

All very subjective, but if I want my mood improved the 'never fails' solution is: Bizet - Symphony in C (all of it).

To Richard Barrett's comment, I think there is a distinction to be made between "non-feelgood" and "feel-notgood" music. The latter might be equivalent to music one doesn't like, whereas I think the former encompasses the kinds of example Barbirollians gives in #51.

[Padraig]

If, to paraphrase Richard's observation, feelgood music is music that you like, then I like the melancholy of the sonnet Love's Farewell by Michael Drayton, and its setting by Tobias Hume, his contemporary. I play this version often and I think of Gamba, our late colleague who first posted it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw0BU02lTww

[Edgy 2]

Will have to wait, edge, though she could play it in your garden on March 29 - have you got her number?

[edashtav]

Just saw this thread for the first time, and the first piece to pop into my head is the orchestral version of

John Foulds: April-England

[kernelbogey]

Does 'feelgood' equal 'joy' for others here? That is my interpretation.

If I felt predominantly sad, say, and wished to indulge that for a while rather than dispel it, I might listen to the Mahler 5 adagietto, maybe, or the slow movement of the Brhams horn trio. That would be different from encouraging myself away from a particular mood by playing a 'feelgood' piece.

So... Vivaldi Concerto for two trumpets would do it for me - unalloyed joy.

[Richard Barrett]

Apart from not regarding Mahler's Adagietto as a "sad" piece (and neither did he I think), I don't really think that either music or human emotions are so simple that one of them can just send the other off in a particular direction. Surely music and mood-enhancing substances are two quite different things!

[Joseph K]

Apart from not regarding Mahler's Adagietto as a "sad" piece (and neither did he I think),

Agreed. I tend to think that piece has a kind of Romantic yearning ('Sehnsucht').

I don't really think that either music or human emotions are so simple that one of them can just send the other off in a particular direction. Surely music and mood-enhancing substances are two quite different things!

Indeed.

I think the thing here is that while it might be true that under a particular set of circumstances a piece of music might just send me off in a particular direction, this is essentially unrepeatable, for me at least. That's not to say that there's not something to listening to wonderful music many times, though.
Personally, there's quite a lot of sad music e.g. late Liszt piano pieces that really chimed with me at one time many years ago, but whose particular expressive affect I can't feel as involved with now, and possibly even relatively shortly after that moment; this raises the point that's already been raised on the thread - that if it's consolation in sad circumstances you're after a 'feel-good' piece would not necessarily be a conventionally 'happy' piece of music.

So perhaps ironically for me I only appreciate my 'feel-good' music when I'm already to some extent feeling good and thus am receptive to the music's feel-good properties.

[cloughie]

Bizet: L’Arlesienne Suites

Too much analysis on this thread! Just put on the music and say ‘I feel good...I knew I would’!