There are songs I really enjoy, and classical pieces I enjoy, but there are two in particular that just raise goosebumps everytime I hear (or sing) them. One is a the Sanctus portion of a mass by 20th century Swiss composer Frank Martin. The other is an Agnus Dei by 20th Century American composer Samuel Barber - more familiarly know as Adagio for Strings, but IMHO far more haunting and beautiful when done chorally.
The first clip is about 8 minutes, the second about five, in case you want to take the time to listen.
There are other pieces that I truly love - Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor by Bach, Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Ninth, etc. But these are two rather small pieces that just are so exquisite that I wanted to share them. Do you have any pieces of this nature that you’d like to share?
Pachelbel’s Canon In D, despite its being extremely overplayed and cliched, but only a few versions. There’s one version in particular that I have on my computer (I have no idea whose interpretation it is and seemingly no way of finding out) that moves me every time I really listen to it.
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, 2nd movement (Adagio, I think). Simple, exquisite, and breath-taking.
Benny Goodman’s Tiger Rag. Awesome clarinet solos, piano-clarinet interaction, skatting towards the end. It never fails to make me want to dance wildly like a crazed modern performance artist imitating swing.
If you’re not familiar with the truly astonishing spem in alium by Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) then now would be a good time to acquaint yourself.
But you could listen to almost anything by Tallis, such as his lamentations I. The polyphony and melodies are jaw-droppingly good and way ahead of his time.
Away from polyphony, there’s Beethoven’s piano sonata no. 18 in E flat major. The whole thing is good but the 4th movement is particularly weird. It has a relentless “giddy” rhythm quite unlike anything else by Beethoven (or anyone else for that matter). It really freaked me out the first time I heard it.
Please, folks, try to find a link so that the rest of us can share your pleasure!
Anyone who cannot be moved by Beethoven’s 9th (aka the anthem of the EU), especially when they realize that by the time he wrote it, Beethoven was pretty much completely deaf and unable to ever hear the beauty he had written needs to be sat down in front of a stereo and made to listen to it, then deprived of rap or Britney or whatever for at least a month.
aldiboronti, not only was that music enchanting (I’d heard portions of it before), but the animation just left me breathless!
I used to love Pachelbel’s Canon In D, but then I was in the wedding of a dear friend stuck listening to it for about 15 minutes, and realized it was the same !@#$%^&-ing eight notes over and over and over! It’s highly decorated, but it never resolves. That was the end of my affair with Pachelbel, I’m afraid.
I have always channelled emotion through music. Every lady I’ve known has ‘her’ song. Sometimes more that one. We’ve done similar threads about striking chords. Come full circle, maybe.
So, Kryponite by Three Doors Down.
‘Hurt’, the J.C. cover of NIN.
and ‘Early Morning’ by Placebo.
And Cheap Trick’s 'I want you to want me." Has always been my Co-Dependants on Parade Anthem.
But lately I’ve been crying at the drop of a hat, and ‘Bawditiba’ by Kid Rock can move me to tears.
“This is for the questions that don’t have any answers,
the midnight glances, and the topless dancers.
the gangs of freaks, the critics, the cynics,
and all my heroes at the methadone clinics.”
I’m not a fan of repetitive music, either, and despite my having played Canon in D on two different instruments (in all its repetitive glory), I still find this one particular version to be amazing. I wish I knew whose version it is.
You know, I thought I was moderately well versed in Rennaissance composers. I’d sung Byrd, for Pete’s sake! How could I make it through my entire 52 years without ever hearing of Tallis? That spem in alium in particular is utterly mind-blowing!
mswas, can you provide a link to Ravel’s remix of Pictures at an Exhibition?
The Liebestod. It’s particularly effective if preceded by the rest of the opera (Tristan und Isolde), but is quite capable of getting me by itself. The Karajan interpretation (with Vickers and Dernesch) is particularly well done.
The best I could find was Karajan with Jessy Norman. The Liebestod on piano just left me thinking “I’ve heard this before somewhere…”
I love Wagner when he’s not doing arias. My problem is that I don’t much care for the solo human voice as an instrument. Choral human is absolutely beautiful.
Actually, come to think of it, I don’t really like most instruments in solo, even piano. Some of the odder ones, like oboe, bassoon, tuba, and those pipes they play in Tibetan monasteries, but that’s about it.
Please, folks, links!!! If you can’t find the version you love, find the closest you can!
There used to be a Schubert melody I adored as a child.
Both Debussy’s Clair de lune and Satie’s Gymnopedie no. 1 are very overplayed. I can feel the pianists scoff at me for even mentioning them. However, they are still very beautiful and they “really do it” (that’s the criteria, yes?) for me.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o](Clair de lune)
Gymnopedies is easily found on youtube. I feel weird picking a video out though, 'cause I can’t find any to it justice.
Way too many to even hardly be able to pick from randomly. First to come to mind: Mozart’s 41st Symphony (in I think D minor?); especially the first movement with its driving minor key. Sounds to me like someone running through a dark night. I love the Tallis mentioned above. Arvo Part’s Te Deum. And way too many pop pieces to even begin. Well OK, Jane Siberry’s “Calling All Angels,” Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “You Will Be Loved Again.” I’ll stop before I get started and accomplish nothing else today.
Your Gymnopedies link didn’t work for me, but I searched myself, and found a very interesting, not at all prurient, but NSFW one of Nudes in Arts for that work. I had had no idea that was Satie, although I’d known the piece itself of course for many years. It always reminds me of the piano bits of the sound track from Being There.
Sorry, but I’ve never been able to work up a lot of enthusiasm for Debussy.
Are you sure you have the right symphony or the right movement? THat’s the Jupiter symphony, 1st movement. I’m not an expert, but it sounds major to me. Maybe it’s later in the movement or a different movement or symphony?