what do u guys think is the most emotionally moving piece?

[Moonbath]

In my opinion, my most favorite piece ever written that i have heard is Requiem by Mozart, i downloaded it on Shareaza, I have listened to it countless times, and it is so powerful and genius it is scary. I think Mozart was the most genius of all the composers. Altho i like all of them, especially Wagner because his pieces feature my instrument a lot, our school band played Ride of the Valkyries about a year ago, fun fun!

[jbuck919]

In my opinion, my most favorite piece ever written that i have heard is Requiem by Mozart, i downloaded it on Shareaza, I have listened to it countless times, and it is so powerful and genius it is scary. I think Mozart was the most genius of all the composers. Altho i like all of them, especially Wagner because his pieces feature my instrument a lot, our school band played Ride of the Valkyries about a year ago, fun fun!

Welcome to the Guide. It's funny, because today we had a post that needed to be moved from the Music Chatterbox to the Corner Pub, and yours will have to be moved in the opposite direction. But I am not a mod, so hang in there.

I know I myself and think many of us here might have, secret, or maybe not so secret, favorite pieces, but in terms of the emotionally most moving piece, I think it will always be hard to say. Perhaps some movements from the late Beethoven quartets? But the Requiem is not a bad choice, no, not a bad choice at all. Please keep posting.

[Ralph]

Before the move takes place, I'll go with Mahler's ninth symphony.

[paulb]

. I think Mozart was the most genius of all the composers.!

No man nor angel has revealed this to you, but God Himself has.
I also love the Requiem ,and can listen to it all day, and am AS astonished on the last listen as from the 1st of the day.
I have at least 6 recordings, most of which i feel are the finest on record.
there's much more to Mzoart ahead of you, and i hope you discover all Mozart has to offer. I myself just discovered his sacred works. Stunning in beauty and power.
Welcome aboard.

[premont]

As it is, there are fortunately lots of profoundly moving music.
Try f.inst.

W. Byrd: "Ye sacred Muses" composed in the memory of Thomas Tallis or
De la Haye: "Mort".

Both expressing in less than five minutes perhaps more than Mozart in his longer Requiem. Don´t let the fact that Mozart is a great composer hide, that the history of music from the beginning of musical notation until to day are filled with the works of lots of other great composers.

[Sapphire]

When I first got interested in classical music I too thought Mozart's Requiem was one of the most emotionally moving and brilliant pieces ever written. It is. But as you listen to more and more classical music you discover many other works that also fit the bill.

Other religious choral works that are also very moving are: Brahms German Requiem, Faure's Requiem, parts of Handel's Messiah, parts of Bach's Mass in B Minor, Schumann's Mass (op 147).

Among non-choral works, I too would recommend Beethoven's late String Quartets. But don't expect immediate enjoyment if you are new to classical music. It's "music for the future"!


Saphire

[david johnson]

for me, it is most often the simpler music that packs the biggest emotional bang.

dj

[Teresa B]

Welcome! The first one that totally grabbed me was Beethoven's Symphony no 6, the "Pastoral".

It has so many different moods, and I think it is one of the easier of Beethoven's works to comprehend for a newbie.

Try it!

Teresa

[DavidRoss]

At the moment I'm listening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which packs quite a wallop. I don't really know what you have in mind by "emotionally involving." All the music I love, and much that I merely like, is "emotionally involving" in that I am captivated, transported, consumed by it, heart, mind, and soul, when I give it my full attention. The gap between subject and object closes; self vanishes into the infinite now.

I believe this condition has at least as much to do with me, the state of my awareness, my receptivity, my willingness to put the internal critic and detached observer on the shelf in order to fully embrace the moment, as it necessarily has to do with any intrinsic quality of the music. Yet there is some music that I cannot connect with in this way. Much of this is the sort of 20th Century academic music geared to the mind rather than the heart which many folks here call derisively "modern." And much of it is music from earlier eras that seems derivative, uninspired, hackwork which pales beside the passionate originality of the great masters.

And finally I have discovered over the course of somewhat more than half a century that my responses have changed as I've grown in life. Today I am most moved--often viscerally, experiencing what I my wife refers to as the "goosebump factor"--by the music of a composer whom I simply couldn't get until I was in my forties.

Welcome to the world of great music, moonbath. Don't be in a hurry. Explore this great body of music, focusing at first on those composers and works that have stood the test of time, and I am sure you will find your way to the most emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually involving music for you at the appropriate time. "When the listener is ready, the music will appear."

[jbuck919]

As many posters here know, I recovered from a disorder from which I nearly died. So only in my head do I ever listen to one of Beethoven's few labeled programmatic movements: Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart-- Neue Kraft fuehlend.

Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian mode-- [then later in the movement] Feeling new strength.

[Corlyss_D]

That would be difficult question for me to answer and the answer would change depending on what I'm hearing.

Faure's Requiem

Hahn's Songs, particularly Tyndaris, with it's understated, poignant piano gloss; A Chloris, with the Bach lying coyily beneath the wistful line; and the incomparable L'Heure Exquise. They still have the power to make me tear up, even though I have heard them hundreds of times.

Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 and Lamento della Ninfa

Las Cantigas de Santa Maria

Perotin's Beata Viscera

Peter Abelard's O Quanta Qualia and Planctus David

Martim Codax's Cantigas de Amigo

Brahms Intermezzi Op 118, patricularly the Intermezzo in A major and Romanze in F major. The qualities of affection mixed with incredible loss is almost too much for the human heart to bear.

[Wallingford]

REAL tough to pin down a single one, so here's my pick of the crop:

The slow movement of Brahms' First Piano Concerto
THe slow movement of Franck's Grand piece symphonique, for organ
Beethoven's Piano Sonata #30 in E, Op. 109
Walter Niemann's Silver Cascades , an achingly and erotically beautiful piano piece (of which only Walter Gieseking appears to have left any surviving recordings......the sheet music's still in print, for any enterprising keyboardist with the "I-Am-Curious...." instinct)
AND:
The final fugue from Ravel's one-act opera L'Enfant et les Sortileges, in which the animals & trees carry the unconscious lad back to his mother. One of the GREAT examples of 20th-century choral counterpoint.

[John Haueisen]

This topic is probably as diverse as all of us posters.
Although many different pieces can move me, I simply cannot get through either of these two, without tears:

1. Wagner's Tannhauser: Wolfram's song to the Evening Star
2. Mahler's 2nd Sym: "Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!"

[miranda]

The late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's not yet released recording of "Neruda Poems", composed by her husband, Peter Lieberson, moved me to tears when I first heard her sing it a few weeks ago on WGBH streaming radio. The recording should be available soon. Her Bach cantata recording also makes me tear up.

Other works that I find to be extraordinarily moving:

Sainte Colombe's Tombeau les Regrets, especially the movement called "les Pleurs", played by Jordi Savall.

Mitsuko Uchida playing Schubert's Sonata, D960, and 3 Klavierstucke, D946.

Montserrat Figueras' Lux Feminae album in its entirety.

Ravel's Trois Poemes de Stephane Mallarme, as sung by Jill Gomez.

Hildegard of Bingen's Canticles of Ecstasy, as sung by Sequentia.

Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall's album Diaspora Sefardi.

[IcedNote]

The fourth movement from Mahler's Symphony No. 5 does it for me every time.

-G

[CharmNewton]

Every time I hear the song Kiss Him Goodbye, I always feel homesick for the things I love about Chicago (like the CSO, Carmen's Pizza--technically Evanston, running along the lake shore at sunrise and all of us White Sox fans who are long suffering no more--we are hurting a bit just now, though).

John

[hautbois]

Brahm's 4th symphony (opening), Dvorak's 8th (1st and 3rd mov.) & 9th symphonies(2nd mov.), Mozart's Requiem (Opening). Mahler's 4th, when the violions come it after the bell+flute passages.

[val]

The Adagio of Beethoven's Sonata opus 106.

The Molto Adagio of Beethoven's Quartet opus 132

The Adagio and Fugue of Beethoven's Sonata opus 110

The Arieta of Beethoven's Sonata opus 111

The Adagio of Bruckner's 8th Symphony

The Largo e mesto of Beethoven's Sonata opus 10 nº 3

The Andante of Schubert's Trio D 929

[GK]

Verdi Requiem
Bruch's Kol Nidrei
R. Strauss' Death and Transfiguration
Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet
Beethoven's 7th Sym., 2nd movement.
Tchaikovsky's 6th Sym., final movment
Tchaikovsky's Piano Conc., 2nd movement
Parts of every Mahler symphony
Parts of Brahms' 3rd & 4th symphonies

and many others

[SamLowry]

At first I thought I must think of a piece which brought forth incredible feelings of longing or sadness for me. I certainly liked the choice above of the Intermezzo in A Major.

But I choose (for the last few months at least) the first movement of Schubert's 9th. I'll tack on the last movement of Haydn's 104th! I think in the latter case I was actually thinking about Haydn in front of the London audience, which influenced my reaction.

[Barry]

Beethoven: 2nd movements of the third, sixth and seventh symphonies, opus 111 sonata and Emperor concerto

Tchaikovsky opening to act 2 of Swan Lake, second movement of the fifth symphony, opening movement of the sixth symphony and R&J Overture

Bruckner's adagio of the eighth symphony

R-K's Scheherazade

Lacrymosa from Verdi's Requiem

Second movement of the Schubert d. 929 piano trio

Prelude to Act I of Lohengren

(Yes, I'd say Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were the two best composers at pushing and pulling the listener's emotions; at least mine.)

[Lilith]

The first and second movements (especially the second) of the Barber Violin Concerto

Some others:
Ravel Pavane for a Dead Princess
Schumann's late chamber music
Great Cello Sonatas (Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninoff etc)

[hautbois]

Brahm's violin concerto 2nd movement.......with Szeryng, Haitink and the Concertgebouw ( now i am being personal here ), it moved me to tears.

[jbuck919]

Brahm's violin concerto 2nd movement.......with Szeryng, Haitink and the Concertgebouw ( now i am being personal here ), it moved me to tears.

Don't worry about that. I am frequently moved to tears by music. I mean, what else would be the point?

I attended a live performance of the Brahms in Columbia, MD, some years ago. The second movement is a conductor's nightmare. I had not known that until I actually saw someone conduct it.

[lmpower]

The slow movement of Beethoven's opus 132 string quartet plays a prominent part in the novel "Point Counterpoint" by Aldous Huxley. He cites it as the ultimate sublime and transcendent expression of the human spirit. What moves us varies from person to person and within various periods of our lives or the mood of the moment. Right now I am especially touched by the late intermezzi for solo piano by Brahms. There are several that are exquisitely poignant. Speaking of a moving lacrimosa, how about the one from Mozart's requiem, which moved it's composer to tears.

[Sapphire]

I trust Sony, Decca or EMI are keeping tab of all these wonderful recommendations, and maybe come up with a box set at Xmas of the:

"emotionally most moving classical music of all time, ever, already"!

(Courtesy of CMG of course)

Saphire

[premont]

Brahm's violin concerto 2nd movement.......with Szeryng, Haitink and the Concertgebouw ( now i am being personal here ), it moved me to tears.

In the booklet to the Eduard van Beinum "Early Philips years" box vol 2. it is stated, that van Beinum died from heart attack during rehearsal with the Concertgebouw Orchester playing Brahms Symphony nr. one second movement. Some time (maybe months) earlier he had stopped the rehearsal of the same piece, telling the solooboist Haakon Stotijn, that "you are going to kill me one day if you play that beautiful".

[Brendan]

Emotionally involving seems to mean 'tearful' to many. I find happy music as emotionally involving as meloncholy - much as I love Schubert's second piano trio I am currently delighting in Chopin's Mazurkas, which bring a smile or out-loud laugh every time I hear their quirky, unique charm.

Beethoven's 9th, with all its emotional range and especially the alla marcia, is another obvious choice. I'm surprised few have mentioned Wagner and his whole love/death obsession. For tragically involving, Callas as Tosca or Medea is memorable and moving, but The Barber of Seville gets played far more often at my place. Maybe memories of Bugs Bunny as a kid or something.

Boccherini's quintet is another emotionally involving and satisfying piece that never fails to engage, as long as I don't overplay it.

[Jack Kelso]

There is a great deal of music that excites; a lot is admirable, cerebral if you like. But the most emotional ones are often our favorites----and if I hear them too often, they can lose that edge. tSome of the ones that appear NEVER to lose that edge are:

HANDEL: "Messiah"
SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in a minor, op. 54
MOZART: Concerto for Flute & Harp, KV 299 (esp. 2nd mvt)
SCHUMANN: Incidental music to "Manfred", op. 115
BEETHOVEN: Marcia funebre, 3rd Symphony E-flat op. 55 ("EROICA")
ELGAR: Larghetto, 2nd Symphony, op. 63
SCHUMANN: Adagio espressivo, 2nd Symphony C Major, op. 61 (actually, the entire symphony!)
BEETHOVEN: Adagio, 9th Symphony d-minor, op. 125

....and many others, too numerous to mention here....

Jack

[paulb]

The first and second movements (especially the second) of the Barber Violin Concerto


Ravel Pavane for a Dead Princess
)

I'll look up the Barber vc.

Pavane as performed by ravel, if only the 1905 recording was a tad better, still a moving performance, though closely equaled by 1 or 2 other french pianists in my extensive Ravel solo piano collection.
Though i gave Mozart's high honors for beauty, the other composer i would bring up is Ravel. Daphnis et Chole might come to mind, who could deny the powerful expression of beauty in that magnificent score of over 50 minutes in length. Yet i would pass over Daphnis and mention one of my most beloved of all Ravel is his poem Ma Mere L'oye, Mother Goose suite. The 29 minute piece leads up to a finale that breaks all the formal ideas that one had of what beauty is, now has become a listening experience breaking the all previous constructs of the mind. The work itself will slowly strip the mind of its pondering of what beauty might be, and the muisc itself acts as the muse now , to lead you away from the physical and into the imaginal realm, the only place where Beauty can be glimpsed in some form.
Now will it be the Skrowaczewski/Minnesota or Martinon/Orchestra de Paris that will act as the doorway into this imaginal realm.....ahhh which ever recording you chose, many others there are, may you find this place where only the soul can travel, even yet while on this earth may you journey to the Elysian Fields.

[Corlyss_D]

The first and second movements (especially the second) of the Barber Violin Concerto

Amen to that! The second's dialogue with the oboe is the finest thing Barber ever wrote.

[Lark Ascending]

Some of my choices:

Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending and Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1
Ravel - Mother Goose Suite
Chopin - Prelude in E Minor (arranged for piano, violin & cello)
Butterworth - The Banks of Green Willow

[Reed]

The work that always brings a tear to my eye is Barber's "Knoxville, Summer 1915."

"One is my mother, she's good to me,
One is my father, he's good to me."

[Wallingford]

I may have overlooked it in the above posts, but one extreme example I should trot out is the third movement of Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra.

If any performance of that movement doesn't send water down from the corner of my eye, I'd chalk it up as an inferior performance.

[Corlyss_D]

Some of my choices:

Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending and Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1
Ravel - Mother Goose Suite

Yum, Lark. I'd add the 3rd movement from Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin.

[Sapphire]

I see that other people are having two bites at this cherry, so here's my brief second offering:

• Schubert's Adagio in E Flat maj, Op 148 "notturno"

One of the loveliest pieces of chamber music: Schubert at his delectable best. I find that people who say they aren't keen on chamber music usually change their mind after hearing this. Like so much of the best of Schubert's work, this piece was published posthumously. It's normally tagged on the end of Piano Trio No 2.


Saphire

[living_stradivarius]

At the moment I'm listening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which packs quite a wallop. I don't really know what you have in mind by "emotionally involving." All the music I love, and much that I merely like, is "emotionally involving" in that I am captivated, transported, consumed by it, heart, mind, and soul, when I give it my full attention. The gap between subject and object closes; self vanishes into the infinite now.

I believe this condition has at least as much to do with me, the state of my awareness, my receptivity, my willingness to put the internal critic and detached observer on the shelf in order to fully embrace the moment, as it necessarily has to do with any intrinsic quality of the music. Yet there is some music that I cannot connect with in this way. Much of this is the sort of 20th Century academic music geared to the mind rather than the heart which many folks here call derisively "modern." And much of it is music from earlier eras that seems derivative, uninspired, hackwork which pales beside the passionate originality of the great masters.

And finally I have discovered over the course of somewhat more than half a century that my responses have changed as I've grown in life. Today I am most moved--often viscerally, experiencing what I my wife refers to as the "goosebump factor"--by the music of a composer whom I simply couldn't get until I was in my forties.

Welcome to the world of great music, moonbath. Don't be in a hurry. Explore this great body of music, focusing at first on those composers and works that have stood the test of time, and I am sure you will find your way to the most emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually involving music for you at the appropriate time. "When the listener is ready, the music will appear."

Or it may just be this chord in the 4th movement that does it all:




Tough for me to say, but I have a weakness for pieces involving Celli sections that echo the violin's main theme. Two of these would be "Remembrances" by John Williams and Henryk Wieniawski's second Violin Concerto.

[Wallingford]

I'd add the 3rd movement from Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin.

Er,um, Corlyss......is that movement 3 from the PIANO version (the "Forlane") or movement 3 of the ORCHESTRAL version (the "Menuet")?

[Lance]

This is a wonderful and very personal question amongst all people who read it. We all know of certain music that truly has brings out some of our deepest emotion. It goes beyond harmony and melody ... something that churns your heart.

A few pieces immediately came to mind:

Richard Wagner's Parsifal prelude (Bruno Walter seems to get to the heart of this music better than most.)

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (movements 2 and 3, with the mezzo-soprano) [The RCA performance with Levine conducting, Marilyn Horne, mezzo-soprano]

Mahler: Kindertotenlieder (with contralto Kathleen Ferrier) AND Songs of a Wayfarer (many performances I've heard).

Fauré: Requiem, especially the Telarc recording with Robert Shaw conducting - Judith Blegen, soprano.

Mendelssohn: The Elijah [Elias], complete. This has simply got to be one of the most incredible oratorios ever written. I prefer the music over Handel's Messiah, but Messiah would be a runner-up.

[John Haueisen]

Lance,

I could certainly live happily ever after with your favorites for heart-churning music.

Along with Mahler's 3rd (my favorite) you might revisit the contralto's voice in M2. I find it especially touching in the Urlicht movement, where the angel tries to turn him aside (from heaven or an afterlife) and (Mahler?) exclaims, "I am from God and I want to return to God!" With this, Mahler's fear of death is reconciled, and he moves on looking forward to a resurrection.

In with Mendelssohn's Elijah and Handel, we might add Bach's St Matthew Passion and Haydn's The Creation. Beethoven didn't call him the grand old man for nothing.

[Länzchen]

Debussy was quite skilled at writing for voice, although I rarely see mention of his output of songs. His Fêtes Galantes Set II are mysterious but have a definate surreal beauty which pairs well with the texts of Verlaine, who was an earlier friend of the composer. The last movement "Colloque sentimental" in particular has a kind of stark stillness which sounds more like Webern or even Boulez, and the writing for male voice is wonderfully sensual and free, the height of vocal writing as far as I'm concerned.

I find it interesting how Schönberg, during his break with tonality, seemed to find a musical language which in some ways seems quite similar to Debussy, but overall comes across completely differently. His second string quartet is an interesting work for the first 2 movements which suddenly in the 3rd mvt.---when the female voice suddenly enters---becomes for me so deeply sad and yearingly beautiful, written of course at a difficult time in his life. His song cycle Das Buch der hängenden Gärten from the same year seems to cover similar expressive ground albeit on piano, although here some of the pieces here are just plain beautiful without being sad and others move closer to his forceful atonality; the last song is probably justifyably the most well-known with its great changes in mood and its pain. Unfortunately, the many typical classical sopranos seem to taint the gracefulness of Schönberg's vocal writing with their horrible high-pitched screeching tones

Ives' well-known songs "The Things My Fathers Loved", "Houseatonic at Stockbridge" (one must also hear the haunting orchestral version(s)) and the renaissance mass Missa Passa Lingua by Josquin are some other pieces containing vocals which I have been quite pleased by the beauty of. For some reason I only feel like talking about music with voices tonight.

[Jack Kelso]

Unfortunately, the many typical classical sopranos seem to taint the gracefulness of Schönberg's vocal writing with their horrible high-pitched screeching tones

Ives' well-known songs "The Things My Fathers Loved", "Houseatonic at Stockbridge" (one must also hear the haunting orchestral version(s)) and the renaissance mass Missa Passa Lingua by Josquin are some other pieces containing vocals which I have been quite pleased by the beauty of. For some reason I only feel like talking about music with voices tonight.

This is a problem for many sopranos when interpreting 12-tone opera (Berg, Henze, etc.), but it's a thin line and I don't always hear it if I'm not familiar with the music.

Talking about music with voices, Länzchen: try the Schumann oratorio, "Das Paradies und die Peri". There are more than a few moments when one senses that the composer is about to "go over to the other side". A work of the highest genius and purity.

Jack