# Where time ceases to exist...



## Lisztfreak (Jan 4, 2007)

Do you know that unearthly feeling when notes are suspended in a fourth dimension, and when time just stops and all that matters is pure sound transformed into light and finest emotion? Only few pieces for each one of us that are capable of making time and space relative and irrelevant - not pieces actually: bars. A chord here, a phrase there, just like the 'little phrase' from Proust's 'Swann in Love' (which, as Proust once revealed, is the second subject of the first movement of Saint-Saens's Violin Sonata No.1). 

You feel nothing except music in such moments.

the last two minutes of Mahler's 9th
the third part of Les offrandes oubliées, by Messiaen
the extatic, celestial melody from the Adagio of Alwyn's String Quartet No.1
the main theme of Hovhaness's Symphony No.6
Hymn of a Convalescent, from op.132, Beethoven
a certain bar from Debussy's La fille aux cheveux de lin
the final cadenza in Elgar's Cello Concerto, just before the Coda
the whole last movement of Sibelius's 5th, plus the coda of the first movement


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I am a left handed right brained person, so time has less meaning for me anyway then it does for many people. Although the pop culture idea of a left brain / right brain has been largely discredited, I'm told quantum physicists are beginning to think that time is just our brain's way of organizing events and that it may not work the way we perceive it.

Anyway, on to your interesting subject:

In Beethoven's 9th, after the second time we hear the descending "Alle Menschen, Alle Menschen, Alle Menschen . . ." the four soloists voices ring out alone on a chord that seems suspended in time as you describe. I'm not sure but I think this may be a modulation that adds to the effect. Whatever it is, it sends goosebumps up and down my arms.

In Handel's Messiah, in the first tenor part "Comfort ye my people," is the line, "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned." It's mostly all in comfortable major triads -- except the single word "iniquity" is some kind of harsh, in comparison, diminished chord. Brilliant! I haven't seen this analyzed - it just sounds that way to me. So I could be wrong about this. It's one of those moments anyway.

Shostakovich, Cello Concerto No. 1, 1st movement, almost exactly halfway through the cello breaks into a rhythm I can only describe as going "itchy-itchy-itchy-itchy" really fast and the orchestra chimes in with sporadic jabs, then the whole thing almost seems to break apart into individual tiny motives that are barely glued together. That whole segment till the end is a moment suspended in time for me. 

These are the kind of moments I live for.


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## andruini (Apr 14, 2009)

I can think of only one right now, but what you wrote, Lisztfreak, is exactly what I feel with this one..
In Fauré's Requiem, in the Agnus Dei, when the tenors finish the phrase "Agnus Dei, quitollis peccata mundi dona eis requiem, sempiternam requiem" on the C major chord, and then the sopranos sustain the high C as they enter "Lux æterna luceat eis", and then the whole choir, and the orchestra, join them in the most glorious A flat major I've ever heard... I could stay in that moment forever.. The way they hover up on that C... The magnificent depth of the A flat chord.. 
Gives me the chills every time..


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

I love this thread...

Possibly one of the better ones I can think of is near the end of Bernstein's Candide, when the instruments are all blasting fortissimo and whatnot with the solo voices miked and then, all of a sudden, the instruments go totally silent as the choir surges forth. Such an amazing moment.

Of course, there's also the end of Mahler's ninth. Five of the most powerful minutes I think I've yet heard.

Shostakovich's fifth symphony, slow movement. Virtually the whole thing, but that climax kills every time, and the sheer terror of it stops time in its tracks.

Mahler's second has two moments like this for me. Halfway through the last movement, after the "call of summons," the off-stage instruments fade into silence, which seems to extend forever, until that heart-melting first phrase of the choir comes in. Words can't describe it. The second part is the climax, when the choir is singing "zu Gott, zu Gott, zu Gott wird es dich tragen." Especially in Bernstein's later version and in Tennstedt's, where they really slam on the breaks at the choir's last word, realized as the real climax of the whole thing. When that part is done well, time is just not a factor.

The very beginning of Sibelius' fourth symphony. There is an unearthly disjointedness about it that separates reality from itself. One of the most arresting beginnings of any symphony I think I've ever heard.


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## JoeGreen (Nov 17, 2008)

Lisztfreak said:


> ...the main theme of Hovhaness's Symphony No.6...
> 
> ...a certain bar from Debussy's La fille aux cheveux de lin...


Yeah, a lot of Hovhaness can do that, and I think I know which bar in the Debussy your talking about.


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## livemylife (Mar 13, 2009)

Right at 4:00... to about 4:37.


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## Dedrater (Mar 2, 2009)

Gustav Holst's 'Neptune' movement from _The Planets_, particularly the last few minutes, matches the description of this type of experience, I think.

Also, maybe the very end of Liszt's _Piano Sonata in B minor_, or some other late-era Liszt works.


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