Friday, October 3, 2025

Is All Music Sad?

Madame, all music is sad.

--Franz Schubert

Despite Franz Schubert's remark to a fan, perhaps not. After all we have sardonic music, joyful music, comedic music, triumphal music and so on. But so often when I pick a piece of music for myself or for someone else to listen to it is what you might call 'sad' even though it is probably not the garden-variety emotion we think of as sad. Really great music is instead transcendent, out-lifting, making us stand outside ourselves--the original meaing of "ecstasy". Let's have some examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUCR2xiHiHQ




Ok, maybe it's not sadness, perhaps superhuman calm or simply spirituality?




3 comments:

  1. Spot on observation, Bryan. You never disappoint.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shostakovich 15th and Haydn's Seven Last Words are great choices

    ReplyDelete