# The shivers



## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

When I listen to certain passages in music that have a lot of emotional value, I often get warm shivers in my head and arms. Does anybody else get these, or am I just crazy (or perhaps too cold)?


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

A lot of good emotional music gives me chills. I also get teary-eyed during pieces that are not sad in any way. Epic and grand finales seem to get me teary-eyed, no matter whether the story that accompanies the music (if there is one) is emotional.


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## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

Yeah, I remember the first time I heard the ending to the first movement of Schubert's Great Symphony I bawled my eyes out. Same with the end of the Eroica's last movement.


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## Toddlertoddy (Sep 17, 2011)

I felt it when I listened to the beginning of Mahler's 9th


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I get goosebumps and tears. 

As you say, it usually has nothing to do with sadness. It's that elevated emotional state that only music can put us in. Sometimes a passage that is achingly beautiful may remind me of a lady friend or of close friends I see aging around me. Other times it's a kind of religious experience (although I have nothing resembling what most people would call a religion). I think this is what music does best. It puts us in a different state of consciousness, sometimes with profound physiological results. I think it is vital for our well being.

It happens out of the blue sometimes with a work I've already heard a few time before without having that effect. But there are a few works that almost always do it. Let, see . . .

Vaughan-Williams - Tallis Fantasia
Beethoven - almost all of it, but certainly the violin concerto (piano version) and the ending of the 9th symphony.
Schumann - the rousing last movement of his piano concerto.
Liszt - Les Preludes. That one just about makes me weak in the knees! 
Bernard Hermann - the title theme for The Day the Earth Stood Still. This music IS the very essence of science fiction boiled down into a few moments of debilitating awe.
Brahms - The string Sextet No. 1, movement 2 (I think) with the theme so heartbreaking it should be a controlled substance.
Monteverdi - 1610 Vespers, especially the Hymnus - Ave mari stellus segment.

And on and on. . .


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## Mephistopheles (Sep 3, 2012)

I do get it, but it tends not to be during emotional passages for me - instead, I most often experience it at the end of a movement that has a wonderfully intricate, well-developed structure, and its final moments are just so overwhelmingly perfect - a pristine culmination of all the motifs and direction that preceded - that I become enraptured.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

EarthBoundRules said:


> When I listen to certain passages in music that have a lot of emotional value, I often get warm shivers in my head and arms. Does anybody else get these


i do, sometimes i even cry over a music piece.


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## vertigo (Jan 9, 2013)

12:50-13:10


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## Dimboukas (Oct 12, 2011)

I often have this feeling too! This is what I found recently. The passage at 5:09 is entirely different in mood and not repeated.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

zONG! you're AVERAGE!


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## vertigo (Jan 9, 2013)

PetrB said:


> zONG! you're AVERAGE!
> 
> http://www.livescience.com/1139-music-chills.html


Whenever I read the words "according to research" and "by scientists" without mention of a source, I know I'm reading crap.


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## moore (Nov 28, 2012)

Instead of the tingles, I often sense this 'aching-beauty.' Some of the works that do this to me are:

Schubert: Impromptu No. 3 in Gb (D899)
Chopin: Prelude No. 4 in E minor (28/4)
Elgar's Cello Concerto - First movement
Puccini's Nessun Dorma
Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 (2nd Movement)
Multiple places in Beethoven's sonatas (5, 8, 14, 24)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

vertigo said:


> Whenever I read the words "according to research" and "by scientists" without mention of a source, I know I'm reading crap.


Alrighty, then. I edited my post for you.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Weston said:


> I get goosebumps and tears.
> 
> As you say, it usually has nothing to do with sadness. It's that elevated emotional state that only music can put us in. Sometimes a passage that is achingly beautiful may remind me of a lady friend or of close friends I see aging around me. Other times it's a kind of religious experience (although I have nothing resembling what most people would call a religion). I think this is what music does best. It puts us in a different state of consciousness, sometimes with profound physiological results. I think it is vital for our well being.


I have just gotten goosebumps and tears from Richard Strauss' "Im Abendrot". Apart from that:

- some Beethoven, Mahler and Bruckner slow movements (for example the ones from Beethoven's 9th, Bruckner's 7th and Mahler's 3rd)
- the _Tannhäuser_, _Lohengrin_ and _Parsifal_ preludes, especially the last one - I feel as if I were transported to heaven and back in those ten minutes
- the _Tannhäuser_ finale
- that moment in _Die Walküre _when Brünnhilde comes to warn Siegmund of his coming death and he tells her he would not exchange his bride and sister even for joyful life in Valhalla 
- that moment in _Siegfried_ when Brünnhilde awakes

...and many others, which are not necessarily sad, but overwhelmingly beautiful. When I listen to these pieces, I sometimes imagine myself somewhere in the midst of glorious nature, in the mountains or in the forest in autumn, or sailing out to sea, because, I believe nature to be one of the most beautiful things one can experience in life, together with love and music.


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