# Piece of music that expresses entire Life for you



## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

To make it clear: it should be a piece of music (doesn't matter how popular or important it is according to common standards) that means an entire Life for you. What is Life for you expressed in one piece of music. Only one ! 

We shouldn't judge by length of a work or by its importance in musical history. It is should be just your personal feeling about this particular piece of music.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

I start with this one seemingly superficial, rather entertaining piece of music but if one listens to it attentively one will find much more than expected especially in this recording.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Personally, what expressed my entire life is Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. It begins with an acknowledgement of the need for help/mercy, leads to glory, and despite dangers/difficulties, it ends in peace. And least I hope to end in peace. The key is the Benedictus, where the Holy Spirit, symbolized by the solo violin, continually descends.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Strauss's Heldenleben


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Except from the point about brevity, I probably wouldn't choose any late Webern.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

If a single piece of music had to express how I see my own life, not to mention life in general, it would take hours upon hours. Such a symphony doesn't exist.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Strauss's Heldenleben


LOL.

I hope no one replies "Don Giovanni".


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Franz Schmidt's 4th symphony comes awfully close.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Brahms's Intermezzo, op. 118, no 2 in A Major for piano: it is autumnal, looking back but I think also looking forward. Not suggesting there is a program; Brahms didn't write program music. But here are some personal associations. 

- ternary form: A section opens like a lullaby in 3/4 (first phrase rhythm same as "Brahms's Lullaby")
- overall upward striving of A section
- B section opening more troubled -- love?
- chorale canon in the middle of B section seems to me a kind of crux, prayer-like
- when the B section's opening returns with variation, the music seems to carry forward to a new level that continues with the return, modified, of A, ending with its evening close (again that rhythm that I associate with "Lullaby, and good-night")


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I'll stick with my favored Bach D-Minor keyboard concerto.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

First movement of Beethovens string quartet op 59 no 2


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Roger Knox said:


> Brahms's Intermezzo, op. 118, no 2 in A Major for piano: it is autumnal, looking back but I think also looking forward. Not suggesting there is a program; Brahms didn't write program music. But here are some personal associations.
> 
> - ternary form: A section opens like a lullaby in 3/4 (first phrase rhythm same as "Brahms's Lullaby")
> - overall upward striving of A section
> ...


The piano player Maria Yudina has some things to say about this one



> II. The Intermezzo Op. 118 No.2, A-dur (1892) sounds as an even greater degree of balance and happiness that have already turned into bliss. We are no longer on the way to, not at the doorstep of "world harmony", but inside it. We recall our wonderful lyric poet Fet:
> 
> And the entire abyss of ether is so close,
> That I gaze direct from time into eternity
> ...


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

This is an easy one for me. Gliere's Symphony no. 3 "Ilya Muromets." It's a programmatic symphony that tells the legend of Ilya Muromets, from his humble beginnings, his rise to become the greatest Russian knight in history, and then his downfall. It IS a whole life, covering many years for this person. Whenever I listen to this symphony front to back, it feels like watching a movie.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I agree with Manxfeeder (Missa Solemnis), but a high second would be Michael Tippett's opera The Midsummer Marriage.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Mahler's 9th 

(not so much "my" life but certainly Mahler's ... and/or a monumental reflection of life-to-death as a whole and that could relate to anyone, the trials and tribulations, the joys and the sorrows, the existential quandary, the meaning of it all, etc...)


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Roger Knox said:


> Brahms's Intermezzo, op. 118, no 2 in A Major for piano: it is autumnal, looking back but I think also looking forward. Not suggesting there is a program; Brahms didn't write program music. But here are some personal associations.
> 
> - ternary form: A section opens like a lullaby in 3/4 (first phrase rhythm same as "Brahms's Lullaby")
> - overall upward striving of A section
> ...


My first composition teacher is a man I've known for almost 50 years. A long time ago, perhaps almost 30 years have gone by, he took me aside one day and said, "You need to know and study this piece of music. It's one of the greatest things ever written." In his hand was the music for Opus 118, No. 2. I fell in love with it from that day on and it has been a constant source of pleasure. It's late Brahms, the developing variation Brahms, the distilled Brahms. There is not a wasted note in the piece.

Call me crazy, but if I were in love with one of the world's most talented pianists, and I wanted to seduce her heart and mind, I would want to write something like Opus 118, No. 2.


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

AfterHours said:


> Mahler's 9th
> 
> (not so much "my" life but certainly Mahler's ... and/or a monumental reflection of life-to-death as a whole and that could relate to anyone, the trials and tribulations, the joys and the sorrows, the existential quandary, the meaning of it all, etc...)


Mine is Mahler's Ninth as well. (And FYI, upon seeing your profile picture, I'm reminded that any one of Tarkovsky's masterpieces can fit this description for the medium of cinema.)


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Muisic that expresses a life, not necessarily my life or any particular person's life. 

Don't know about a human life, but Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" seems to express the life and death of the universe. Starts with a Big Bang and ends with a whimper. In between we have evolution. But would I have thought of that if it weren't for that movie a tiny part of it was featured in?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I'm more interested in Life in a snapshot or protrayed symbolically over a period of a day in music. So for me it's Debussy's Prelude of an Afternoon of a Faun, or Butterworth's Banks of Green Willow. For a human journey, it's Strauss' Alpine Symphony.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Open Book said:


> Muisic that expresses a life, not necessarily my life or any particular person's life.
> 
> Don't know about a human life, but Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" seems to express the life and death of the universe. Starts with a Big Bang and ends with a whimper. In between we have evolution. But would I have thought of that if it weren't for that movie a tiny part of it was featured in?


yes, generally speaking I very much agree with you if we think about life on universal level.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

I mean, it depends on the life, I suppose.

I take the question to mean a piece of music that encompasses multitudes of experiences. In that vein, Beethoven 6 and 9; Strauss Alpensinfonie and Ein Heldenleben (and of course literally Don Quixote and Don Juan); Holst The Planets, Sibelius 7. Perhaps also Mahler 5 and 6 (3 just _seems _like it takes a lifetime to listen to).


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Les Preludes
Ein Heldenleben


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Roger Knox said:


> Brahms's Intermezzo, op. 118, no 2 in A Major for piano: it is autumnal, looking back but I think also looking forward. Not suggesting there is a program; Brahms didn't write program music. But here are some personal associations.
> 
> - ternary form: A section opens like a lullaby in 3/4 (first phrase rhythm same as "Brahms's Lullaby")
> - overall upward striving of A section
> ...


Do you like the very eccentric performance of this piece by Pogorelich? It's a favorite of mine, although I can certainly understand why others might prefer a more straightforward performance.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

...
And thus the universe resounds
With a joyful cry
I AM!


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Littlephrase1913 said:


> Mine is Mahler's Ninth as well. (And FYI, upon seeing your profile picture, I'm reminded that any one of Tarkovsky's masterpieces can fit this description for the medium of cinema.)


Thank you -- yes, Tarkovksy for sure. Perhaps Mirror most of all in this regard ... or maybe Andrei Rublev ... or maybe... all of them in their own ways


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

AfterHours said:


> Thank you -- yes, Tarkovksy for sure. Perhaps Mirror most of all in this regard ... or maybe Andrei Rublev ... or maybe... all of them in their own ways


Keeping with the theme of your profile picture I would put forward St. Mathews Passion as a strong contender. It impossible to listen to the opening notes of erbarme dich without feeling something.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I don't think any piece of music expresses "entire life". It can provide a kind of poetic meaning and depth to the situations we encounter, giving our existence a deeper meaning and acting as a kind of salve or source of inspiration even but the 'entire life' thing? No, not really. Beethoven and Mahler to me seem perhaps the composers that are closest to taking the approach of putting as much of the varied and different kind of emotional content and life experiences they can into specific compositions, but if their goal was to 'put the world' into a piece of music I'm not sure its an attainable goal. For me to be honest I generally don't like that much juxtaposition within individual works.


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## Guest (Nov 27, 2019)

tdc said:


> I don't think any piece of music expresses "entire life".


I agree. Even if I thought it were possible, I'm struggling to select one. My inclination is to choose a short piece that somehow 'represents the meaning of music' in my life, rather than life itself.

_Berceuse _from Fauré's _Dolly Suite_, for example.

But I'm more likely to pick something by a non-classical artist anyway.

_Sea Song _by Robert Wyatt - it's about love, and what is a meaningful life if it's without love?
_The Big Ship _by Brian Eno - it's about continuity, permanence, movement, existence. It fades in and it fades out after a few minutes, but you know that it is a slice of eternity.

[add] Curiously, I've just discovered a movie review on The AV Club website from 2015 that refers to _The Big Ship_, which says much the same thing. It also enabled me to rediscover the word 'ouroboros'.



> Though it lasts less than three minutes and never really goes anywhere, Brian Eno's "The Big Ship" is pregnant with profundity. An ouroboros of a song, it starts where it stops, and only ends in the sense that it eventually fades to silence. Yet you get the feeling that somewhere, somehow, it goes on forever, the loveliest drone album to never exist.


https://film.avclub.com/one-brian-eno-song-perfectly-closes-two-very-different-1798282459


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

howlingfantods said:


> Do you like the very eccentric performance of this piece by Pogorelich? It's a favorite of mine, although I can certainly understand why others might prefer a more straightforward performance.


At this snails pace I don't get the feeling of "the chase" with the canon in the middle section. I think that's why most pianists play this piece at the upper range of andante. Pogorelich's tempo is on the dirge side of things. Not how I would interpret a love letter.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

> I don't think any piece of music expresses "entire life". It can provide a kind of poetic meaning and depth to the situations we encounter, giving our existence a deeper meaning and acting as a kind of salve or source of inspiration even but the 'entire life' thing? No, not really. Beethoven and Mahler to me seem perhaps the composers that are closest to taking the approach of putting as much of the varied and different kind of emotional content and life experiences they can into specific compositions, but if their goal was to 'put the world' into a piece of music I'm not sure its an attainable goal. For me to be honest I generally don't like that much juxtaposition within individual works.


I understand what you mean and I would say I agree. It is impossible to incorporate "entire life" in one piece of music regardless how "long" or "profound" it could be. Here in this thread I wanted to ask what people think, which piece of music they associate with definition of a word "life" and with an ascent on how they understand it "now". Maybe with time even their definition of entire phenomenon we call "life" might change (it is natural, everything changes), but which piece of music could be a symbol of "what life is" for this particular person. Answers are supposed to be completely subjective...


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Ravel's Bolero; although in my case it would probably have to be performed backwards.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

geralmar said:


> Ravel's Bolero; although in my case it would probably have to be performed backwards.


Life is so monotonous?


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Beethoven's _Ninth_. I idolize this composer and for me the _Ode to Joy _ is a hymn of hope for my own life.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

*Helenora*, This thread is a very productive one IMO, a rich harvest. The OP is an open-ended question (one that starts with stated or implied "What ...?"), as I've advocated for elsewhere on TalkClassical.

The connection (post #9) between Brahms's piano Intermezzo op. 118, no. 2 in A major and the "Brahms Lullaby," which my mother sang to me at bedtime when I was an infant, came to me while thinking about this post. The responses by *Mandryka* and *Room 22011974* are to me amazing! I haven't yet listened to the Pogorelich recording ... and thee are lots of interesting comments from other posters.

Thank you, everyone.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

geralmar said:


> Ravel's Bolero; although in my case it would probably have to be performed backwards.


I remember an interview on CBC Radio decades ago with the conductor Ernest Ansermet. He said _Bolero_ is like a train ride, with the chord change before it ends signalling where you get off.

Played backwards, does it end with you the last passenger exiting in the middle of a field?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

The Ring Cycle. Starts with so much potential, some sublime moments punctuating tedious monotony, then ends in disaster.


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