# Most nosthalgic pieces



## nicolaxao (Sep 25, 2018)

What are the pieces you think most perfectly evoke a nosthalgia for a lost past/lover/time, etc.?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Bulldog (a user here) has organized a game about the saddest pieces in classical music. You might find some inspiration there - look at the list in the last post
Sad Music Makes Me Cry (Selection Thread)


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Nostalgia doesn't have to be melancholic. Cecil Armstrong Gibbs's 'Dusk' is nostalgic without being sad.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Liebesleid by Fritz Kreisler
2nd Quartet Nocturne by Borodin


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Barber - Knoxville, Summer of 1915.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

The Clarinet Quintet by Brahms. And it fits perfectly for this time of the year.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

You should definitely check out Gerald Finzi.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

and while I'm sure some persons will say that this is not classical music I think that the famous Cavatina written by John Mayers is a gorgeous piece


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2018)

Ligeti's Chamber Concerto, definitely.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"Home Sweet Home" the mega-hit by Stephen Foster






HOME SWEET HOME

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
Which seek thro' the world, is ne'er met elsewhere
Home! Home!
Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home
There's no place like home!

An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again
The birds singing gaily that came at my call
And gave me the peace of mind dearer than all
Home, home, sweet, sweet home
There's no place like home, there's no place like home

:cheers:


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

shirime said:


> Ligeti's Chamber Concerto, definitely.


Uh? Why? Doesn't seem very nostalgic to me...

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In my case, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte. In part, of course, because of its contemplative musical mood. But also because the idea behind it is deliberately nostalgic. From wiki: _Ravel described the piece as "an evocation of a pavane that a little princess [infanta] might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish court". The pavane was a slow processional dance that enjoyed great popularity in the courts of Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries._


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2018)

aleazk said:


> Uh? Why? Doesn't seem very nostalgic to me...


Reminds me of a past time in my life.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

shirime said:


> Reminds me of a past time in my life.


Oh, I thought it was about 'objective' nostalgia rather than personal, that's why it seemed weird to me.

Ha, if I start posting the pieces that give me personal nostalgia, well, it's pretty much anything I listened to around eight years ago, since my life was much better and happier at that time... although, I knew much less than I do now (not only in music, but in pretty much every field of knowledge...)


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2018)

aleazk said:


> Oh, I thought it was about 'objective' nostalgia rather than personal, that's why it seemed weird to me.
> 
> Ha, if I start posting the pieces that give me personal nostalgia, well, it's pretty much anything I listened to around eight years ago, since my life was much better and happier at that time... although, I knew much less than I do now (not only in music, but in pretty much every field of knowledge...)


I don't think I have a long enough memory for a proper 'objective' sense of nostalgia.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

shirime said:


> I don't think I have a long enough memory for a proper 'objective' sense of nostalgia.


No, I meant related to the composer's intention for the piece, like the Ravel example I mentioned, not about our personal feelings towards the piece.

In that line, I would put a lot of music by Rachmaninov. Of course, his somewhat conservative style points towards the romantic canon in a somewhat nostalgic way, since that style was dying, if not already dead. Although in his harmony one can find quite a lot of sophistication, which may get him close, to some extent, to the impressionists. So he wasn't that conservative after all (I see his harmony, of course, as a development from Chopin, but Ravel, for example, also was very influenced by Chopin, who was a rather french composer in some aspects, particularly harmonic color.) But that's not the main nostalgia I find in him. It's the nostalgia for an idealized Russia, with a very strong identity (this is evident in the very strong russian themes of many of his pieces, say, the piano concertos.) But that identity was falling apart precisely around those times, with the revolution and all that.


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

I concur on the Finzi, esp his Romance for String Orchestra.

Also Vaughan-Williams Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Many pieces by Charles Ives.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Rachmaninoff - Prelude Op. 32 No. 10


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)




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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Satie's Gymnopedies, and then pieces inspired by Satie like the second movement of Ravel's Piano concerto or Cage's In a Landscape


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)




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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

adrien said:


> I concur on the Finzi, esp his Romance for String Orchestra.
> 
> *Also Vaughan-Williams Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis.*


My first thought.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Satie's Gymnopedies, and then pieces inspired by Satie like the second movement of Ravel's Piano concerto or Cage's In a Landscape


The Ravel G Major? I thought the second movement was inspired by Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.

http://www.kennedy-center.org/artist/composition/2756


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Haydn's Trumpet Concerto.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Regarding Rachmaninoff, so much of his solo piano music--the Preludes especially--were written to evoke and remember the sound of the bells of the churches of Old Russia, a sound that he grew up hearing constantly before his emigration. And those bells can be heard clearly tolling even by my non-Russian ears....


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