# And thereafter.... only silence



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Do you know that feeling? When a piece of music ends that is so intensely emotional that you cannot play anything else for a long while? It happened to me just now once more, and made me think this over. Actually, I know only two compositions that have this power over me personally, and both by Mahler. _Das Lied von der Erde_, after the concluding Ewig... Ewig... and the one I played just now, his _Kindertotenlieder_, where the anger and despair in the music suddenly resolve into a musical glimpse of heaven.

If you recognize this, please list what works have this effect on you.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I felt the same recently at the end of Harrison Birtwistle's the Minotaur. Awful and powerful.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Yes!
This is exactly what I was trying to describe in the 'Do you ever get tired..?' thread.



emiellucifuge said:


> Im not doubting that everyone who loves classical music at the present will not continue to do so for the rest of their lives, but do none of you have at least a few hours a week, perhaps even a whole day during which you just cant listen to any music?
> 
> Like I said, sometimes Its like I have a full stomach, some pieces affect me so much that listening to anything else would either blow up my brain or be like a foreign object irritatingly entering my head.


DLVDE is definitely a good example. I definitely have a long silence after Tristan und Isolde.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Schubert's Winterreise: the most obvious example, of course. The haunting Der Leiermann should send shivers down anyone's spine.

Cherubini's Requiem in C minor: the way it calmly ends with "reeee-quiee-em, reee-quiee-em" after all of that horror and wailing. 

Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum: the legendary piece that ends as mysteriously as it began.

Bach's Contrapunctus XIV: That last unfinished fugue. If only . . .


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## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

After I listen to Tchaikovsky's _6th Symphony_ it takes me a few minutes for the soaring depression I just experienced to die down before I have the energy to get up again.

I also agree with _Winterreise _and _Tristan und Isolde_ having this effect, as stated elsewhere in this thread.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Yep, DLVDE and Tchaikovsky's 6th have The Effect. Also, for me, Nielsen's 5th.


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## GoneBaroque (Jun 16, 2011)

I remember a performance of Britten's War Requiem with The Boston Symphony led by Ozawa. At the conclusion there was a prolonged stunned silence before the audience rose to its feet as one body.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I think of all classical music like that.

Recently, I changed the way I listen to music and watch movies. I bought a new house and put in a dedicated listening/ screening room with a hidef video projection system and a kick *** 5:1 audio rig. I got rid of television and have only small speakers playing popular music and jazz as background music throughout the house. So when I go into the listenng room to play something, I am totally focused on it. I've even tweaked the lighting to suit. I've found that my appreciation for music and movies has increased, because I'm not taking it for granted and multitasking while I view and listen any more. My friends, when they come over to visit, have a bit of acclimation to do. They're so used to snapping their remote and talking while viewing, they have trouble focusing at first. But they're coming around.

I tend to watch or listen to something and then bring the lights up and let it soak in. I don'trun things back to back like I used to.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

_Goldberg _Variations, many of the longer Bach fugues, Beethoven Op. 111...


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I'm that way after Mahler's 9th ends. It's like having respect for the dead.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

bigshot said:


> I think of all classical music like that.
> 
> Recently, I changed the way I listen to music and watch movies. I bought a new house and put in a dedicated listening/ screening room with a hidef video projection system and a kick *** 5:1 audio rig. I got rid of television and have only small speakers playing popular music and jazz as background music throughout the house. So when I go into the listenng room to play something, I am totally focused on it. I've even tweaked the lighting to suit. I've found that my appreciation for music and movies has increased, because I'm not taking it for granted and multitasking while I view and listen any more. My friends, when they come over to visit, have a bit of acclimation to do. They're so used to snapping their remote and talking while viewing, they have trouble focusing at first. But they're coming around.
> 
> I tend to watch or listen to something and then bring the lights up and let it soak in. I don'trun things back to back like I used to.


Sounds great (non-pun intended). Respect the music and it will repay you.

Your practice is not universally accepted though. Some of your friends may limit their 'coming around'.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Art Rock said:


> Do you know that feeling? When a piece of music ends that is so intensely emotional that you cannot play anything else for a long while? It happened to me just now once more, and made me think this over. Actually, I know only two compositions that have this power over me personally, and both by Mahler. _Das Lied von der Erde_, after the concluding Ewig... Ewig... and the one I played just now, his _Kindertotenlieder_, where the anger and despair in the music suddenly resolve into a musical glimpse of heaven.
> 
> If you recognize this, please list what works have this effect on you.


That's when you know it's the real thing, I used to think that way coming out of certain artists' concerts, I just couldn't speak. That is why I hate the morons who leap to their feet and start screaming before the notes have even died away. It didn't use to happen and I notice they do it for very mediocre performances. They just want to be first and to what end ,nothing to do with music I think. As far as visitors are concerned, if they talk over the music I just take it off and switch averything off. But you get to know who really want to hear and who does not
Mahler's Das Lied wit h Ferrier does it and Certainly a number of lieder do, depending on who is singing--Karl Erb for instance. Also anything sung by John McCormack whether it be an aria, an Irish song or something like "The Trumpeter".


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I am not usually a fan of dark & overly pessimistic works (which is why I don't want to touch composers like Pettersson). I usually need some sort of boost or optimism in these types of works, even if it's a subtle boost (or ambiguity from which I can take my own "boost").

Works that are like this for me are these. Some of these I've heard live & you only see them programmed at the end of a concert - and for good reason, methinks -

*Messiaen* - _Quartet for the End of Time_
*R. Strauss *-_ Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings_
*Brahms *- _Piano Quartet #3 in C minor, Op. 60_
*Bernstein *- _Sym. #3 "Kaddish"_
*Gorecki *- _Sym.#3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"_
*Berg *- _Wozzeck_
*Shostakovich *- many of his things, eg. _String Quartet #8_
*J.S. Bach* - _Chaconne from Partita #2 for solo violin_

All of these commemorate the dead, I've noticed, except the Messiaen and Berg...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

"All of these commemorate the dead, I've noticed, except the Messiaen and Berg..."

Say what?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Don't take it too literally, what I said.

The Shostakovich, R. Strauss, Gorecki, Bernstein all deal with the aftermath of World War II in some way. Some of them directly with the Holocaust.

The Brahms work was began as Schumann was having his final mental decline, and finished about 20 years later when Brahms had kind of dealt with the grief in some way. It's a very dark work, Brahms even broke with convention and did not end in C major, but in C minor (same as the work had began with).

There is scholarship to the effect that since Bach wrote the _Chaconne_ when he came back home and his first wife was dead and buried, it is like a memorial/cathedral in sound built to her memory. It includes a choral/hymn tune, as well as musical mottos of Bach's own name in it as well as that of his first wife...


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2012)

bigshot said:


> I think of all classical music like that.


Same for me.

[Off topic. The topic made me think of this: I enjoy pieces (or "pieces") that end so silently that it's as if they're still going for some seconds after they've ended.)]


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I am not usually a fan of dark & overly pessimistic works (which is why I don't want to touch composers like Pettersson).





Sid James said:


> I am not usually a fan of dark & overly pessimistic works (which is why I don't want to touch composers like Pettersson).


Well, for what it's worth, I have never found Pettersson's music to be dark and pessimistic. He tends to keep things going, which might translate into obsessive, but that's as close as I would get to something like pessimistic.

I've been intrigued enough by Pettersson's style to try to figure out what it is that gives his music that characteristic Pettersson sound. I was listening to Schubert's ninth recently, and I think I'm on to something: imagine Schubert's ninth without any of the top level melodies. Just the "accompaniment" level stuff. Yeah, I know. A symphony is not like a simple song with tune and accompaniment, but there are levels--things that are prominent and things that support the prominent things. (You've probably all heard conductors who get "new" interpretations simply by treating erstwhile lower level things as if they were upper level things.)

Anyway, Pettersson's music seems to me to be like anyone else's symphony without that upper level. Not that it doesn't have melodies and motifs, because of course it does. But it all seems to be lower level stuff. Just the frame, as it were, without roof or walls. Or skeleton, nerves and blood vessels without any skin. Makes for perfectly enjoyable music, but rather unsettling if you want a prominent motif or melody.

Or that could be all my grandmother's eye.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

some guy said:


> Well, for what it's worth, I have never found Pettersson's music to be dark and pessimistic. He tends to keep things going, which might translate into obsessive, but that's as close as I would get to something like pessimistic.
> 
> I've been intrigued enough by Pettersson's style to try to figure out what it is that gives his music that characteristic Pettersson sound. I was listening to Schubert's ninth recently, and I think I'm on to something: imagine Schubert's ninth without any of the top level melodies. Just the "accompaniment" level stuff. Yeah, I know. A symphony is not like a simple song with tune and accompaniment, but there are levels--things that are prominent and things that support the prominent things. (You've probably all heard conductors who get "new" interpretations simply by treating erstwhile lower level things as if they were upper level things.)
> 
> ...


Interesting observation, and I think you are right in some respects as regards the often-found repetitive, "accompanying" / rhythmical underlying presence in his symphonies. However there is at least one total exception: the incredible 2nd Violin concerto in the Ida Haendel recording. It´s 55 minutes of continous melodic singing in the violin voice ... whereas Van Keulen in her recording destroys this feature into something more fragmented or disrupt.

The same must probably also be said of the ending of the 9th symphony with the long "swan song" at the end for the strings, especially in the Comissiona recording and its very slow tempo. As opposed to the feverishly fast, and also too fast, CPO recording with Alun Francis.

The 8th symphony though, in spite of its "bolero-like" character, does have some of the features you are describing, I think, as well as the main part of the 9th symphony.

I think your metaphors also correctly hint at the "static" quality often found in Pettersson´s music; it often makes me think of Sibelius´ "Tapiola" in its more hieratic recordings, like the Karajan DG, for instance, and its almost "sculptural" presence.


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## Sofronitsky (Jun 12, 2011)

Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, Rachmaninov's 3rd Symphony (Wonderful! Underrated certainly), and Prokofiev's Violin Concerto.

I also have this feeling after listening to Emil Gilels' Appassionata, Sviatoslav Richter's Harmonies Du Soir, and Vladimir Sofronitsky's 5th Sonata (Scriabin)


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2012)

joen_cph, I only know the symphonies, and I only know them in Francis' recordings. I'm always intrigued by reports of different interpretations of Pettersson's works. They remind me of my own experiences with different recordings of Gerhard's works. In some cases, these are so extreme as to seem like different pieces.


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