The saddest music

[jayne lee wilson]

I feel very close to Suk's Asrael Symphony. I love it but I can hardly bear it. Why do I go back? I think to experience that intensity, to feel more fully alive, close to the burning cores of grief and loss. The most heartbreaking movement is the 4th - the least explicitly tragic or climactic but - the memory of the dead, beautiful, lost love, the yearning knowledge that what's broken can never be mended, that you can't, can't ever, get it back. If you've experienced such things it can be like a recurrent nightmare - the mind's attempt to understand, to see it and face it, to recover some control...

Similarly in the Andante of Mahler's 6th - "if only it could be like this..."...
But we know it can't.

[arthroceph]

Well I think there are a number of types of sadness, and it depends which type for you is the saddest. Some types of sadnesses are just merely reflective ... I've always thought this about the baroque adagios, I'd call them reflective rather than sad. I find reflection, circumspection to be a certain type of constructive sadness, the opposite to depression.

I'm not sure if genuinely depressive music exists, if you do find it, the ability to connect with it would seem to preclude its depressive capacity.

Equally if somebody cries at a piece of music, I'm not convinced the sadness is 100% ... there has to be an underlying pleasure at being able to identify the sadness.

This is the way I explain my predilection for music remotely sad or tragic. I'm quite a cheery person actually, but I have a weakness for the tragic in music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well I think there are a number of types of sadness, and it depends which type for you is the saddest. Some types of sadnesses are just merely reflective ... I've always thought this about the baroque adagios, I'd call them reflective rather than sad. I find reflection, circumspection to be a certain type of constructive sadness, the opposite to depression.

I'm not sure if genuinely depressive music exists, if you do find it, the ability to connect with it would seem to preclude its depressive capacity.

Equally if somebody cries at a piece of music, I'm not convinced the sadness is 100% ... there has to be an underlying pleasure at being able to identify the sadness.

This is the way I explain my predilection for music remotely sad or tragic. I'm quite a cheery person actually, but I have a weakness for the tragic in music.

[verismissimo]

Well I think there are a number of types of sadness, and it depends which type for you is the saddest. Some types of sadnesses are just merely reflective ... I've always thought this about the baroque adagios, I'd call them reflective rather than sad. I find reflection, circumspection to be a certain type of constructive sadness, the opposite to depression.

I'm not sure if genuinely depressive music exists, if you do find it, the ability to connect with it would seem to preclude its depressive capacity.

Equally if somebody cries at a piece of music, I'm not convinced the sadness is 100% ... there has to be an underlying pleasure at being able to identify the sadness.

This is the way I explain my predilection for music remotely sad or tragic. I'm quite a cheery person actually, but I have a weakness for the tragic in music.

[MrGongGong]

When i'm working with young people I often ban the words "happy" & "sad" when talking about music......... what the responses here show is a greater degree of nuance.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well I think there are a number of types of sadness, and it depends which type for you is the saddest. Some types of sadnesses are just merely reflective ... I've always thought this about the baroque adagios, I'd call them reflective rather than sad. I find reflection, circumspection to be a certain type of constructive sadness, the opposite to depression.

I'm not sure if genuinely depressive music exists, if you do find it, the ability to connect with it would seem to preclude its depressive capacity.

Equally if somebody cries at a piece of music, I'm not convinced the sadness is 100% ... there has to be an underlying pleasure at being able to identify the sadness.

This is the way I explain my predilection for music remotely sad or tragic. I'm quite a cheery person actually, but I have a weakness for the tragic in music.

Perhaps your last line suggests that you really need to feel these things? To recognise them "within"? For personal, cathartic or other reasons...? But in the "safe place" that Art can sometimes offer...?

I could never describe my experience of Mahler 6 or Asrael as any kind of pleasure. The end of the Mahler andante is too intense in its fragile self-belief to be a relief or a reassurance. And with Asrael especially it's more like the Moth to the Flame... but it's Art so I can keep returning to it, even if I shouldn't, trying to find something in "the horror, the horror..."

[Roehre]

.....

I could never describe my experience of Mahler 6 or Asrael as any kind of pleasure. The end of the Mahler andante is too intense in its fragile self-belief to be a relief or a reassurance.

What a difference in perception: Mahler 6 slow mvt for me epitomises the purest night music, very similar in my mind to the Nachtmusiken in 7, a very natural nocturnal landcape, for me very relaxing and -if necessary- comforting.

But Asrael: exactly the same feeelings.

[arthroceph]

Perhaps your last line suggests that you really need to feel these things? To recognise them "within"? For personal, cathartic or other reasons...? But in the "safe place" that Art can sometimes offer...?

Yes, I get you, and I think I swept some things under the carpet there in my comments, especially in light of your own comments and my recollection of the Dorfman play "Death and the Maiden" play (made into a film in 1994) ... where there is a clear case of pain through through music.

Thanks.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I would certainly agree with both teh last movement of Tchaikovsky 6 and Elgar's Sospiri. To these I would add the last movement 'Lord Melbourne' of Britten Suite 'A Time there was' a movement for me of incredible sadness and regret; the last movement of David Diamond's 3rd String Quartet composed after the tragic suicide of a close friend; and the last two movements of Samuel Barber's The Lovers where Pablo Neruda's poetry becomes a mirror for the agony Barber felt with the gradual breakup of his long term relationship with his partner Menotti.

[gurnemanz]

Just read though all the above with interest. I think of Schumann's "Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet" from Dichterliebe, Schubert's Leiermann, Brahms Clarinet Trio Op.114 1st Mvt and Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit , Bob Dylan "Not Dark Yet", Joni Mitchell "The Last Time I Saw Richard", Strauss "Beim Schlafengehen", Cole Porter "Every Time We Say Goodbye" (I Like Jeri Southern's version)