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:
Spot on observation, Bryan. You never disappoint.
Shostakovich 15th and Haydn's Seven Last Words are great choices
Thanks, Jim and Wenatchee.
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