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:

Jim Handloser said...

Spot on observation, Bryan. You never disappoint.

Wenatchee the Hatchet said...

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

Bryan Townsend said...

Thanks, Jim and Wenatchee.