# Highly Personal Compositions



## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

What do you all consider to be the more "personal" works in classical music?

To explain in greater detail, I find music to be much more enjoyable if I know that the composer had a special connection with a particular piece, or if there is a story behind it's composition. In other words, I like to know that a particular work really meant something to them and was not just another number in their output.

As a prime example, it is widely thought that Tchaikovsky's 6th was one of his most personal works...so much so in fact that he refused to reveal the "program" behind the "Programme Symphony." The adagietto from Mahler's 5th is said to have been written as a love song to Alma. There are plenty of other ones, but these are the two that immediately come to mind.

Does anyone else have any more good examples? I welcome lesser-known compositions too, since there's an even better chance that I won't know anything about them!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

An interesting topic. Two composers come to mind with both "public" and "private" works...Schubert and Shostakovich.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Wagner composed the Siegfried Idyll for his wife Cosima's birthday.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Itullian said:


> Wagner composed the Siegfried Idyll for his wife Cosima's birthday.


Monteverdi's L'Orfeo must have been an extraordinarily personal work, coming as it did so soon after the death of the composer's wife, Claudia Cattaneo. I'm also very moved when I hear the "Aino" theme in Sibelius' 7th--what a difficult life they had together, alone in the wilderness. *edit* Oh, and on a similar theme: Schumann's Fantasie in C.

Of course, with my favorite composers I tend to find _all_ of their works to be heartfelt, personal statements--whether that belief is warranted or not!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Personal. Sure.

Beethoven Piano Sonata #32.

Beethoven String Quartet in A Minor, "Hymn of Thanksgiving" movement.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I don't know if I take music personal anymore… or I take it all personal. One or the other.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Near as I can determine, Franck composed the Symphony in D out of personal need to do so. The result is a very personal 'stream of emotion', that generates one in me. The Symphony in D is one work that defeats my efforts to avoid thinking about what I'm hearing, without damaging the experience.


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

What about Hymnus Paradisi by Herbert Howells? Composed as therapy to try and recover from the death of his son, then withheld from public performance for well over a decade before he finally allowed it to be performed.


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## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

Taking "personal" in a somewhat different way, I think of Bach's "Art of the Fugue." I suspect that, with this and some of Bach's other late works, he was pushing his own limits, seeing how far he could go in an art form that was already considered passé at the time, without much caring whether the music would have an audience.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Whistler Fred said:


> Taking "personal" in a somewhat different way, I think of Bach's "Art of the Fugue." I suspect that, with this and some of Bach's other late works, he was pushing his own limits, seeing how far he could go in an art form that was already considered passé at the time, without much caring whether the music would have an audience.


I feel similarly about many of his works--who was supposed to be buying those solo cello suites, again?

Incidentally, I was recently rereading Albert Schweitzer's book on Bach, who begins with a lovely (if overly Hegelian, for some tastes) discussion of his "objective" or "superpersonal" art.

Here it is, for those interested: https://archive.org/details/jsbachvolume1002520mbp


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I find it hard not to absorb some of the background lore of a piece when I read the album liner notes, look up the piece on Wikipedia, or read books about music, but I let it go in one ear and out the other. Of course pieces are dedicated to individuals, were commissioned to commemorate historical events, were composed during trying periods in a composer's life, etc., but, in the end, they were released for the enjoyment of the public.

Schnittke's later works, for example, are said to be austere, because he was so debilitated by the many strokes he had sufferred. Sure, it is a documented fact that he had been ill, but do I really want to play the role of a stranger sitting at the bedside of a dying man gasping his most intimate final thoughts? Do I want to entertain this morbid curiosity in my living room while having a quiet supper? Some might, and they might feel that this makes the music all the more personal for them, but I just want to listen to some music and have it tell me what it has to tell. If it is meaningful _to me_, then I will listen again; if not, then there is other music.

It has been said that the message of Wagner's Parsifal is antisemitic. I have scanned essays where they detailed how this all is. If that is what I were hearing, then I wouldn't want to listen to the music. Luckily, one has to study tomes to get all that out of it.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

Oh wow, these are exactly the kinds of replies I was hoping for. I really love the suggestions, keep it up!


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Giacinto Scelsi is an interesting character, who had very strong, personal associations with his music. His most characteristic style was born in crisis:



> Scelsi's mature music is marked by a supreme concentration on single notes, combined with a masterly sense of form. Scelsi revolutionized the role of sound in western music - his best known work is the Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra, each on a single note. These single notes are elaborated through microtonal shadings, harmonic allusions, and variations in timbre and dynamics. It is impossible to express in words the immense power of this apparently simple music.
> 
> ...
> 
> During World War II, Scelsi wrote his String Quartet No. 1 (1944) which is one of his most important early compositions. During this same period, his wife left him and he later underwent some sort of psychological breakdown. His therapy eventually consisted of playing a single note on a piano over and over again, and this was to lead the way to his new style. The last work which Scelsi composed during his First Period was the cantata La Nascita del Verbo (1948), and this piece continued to have profound implications (though apparently not pleasant ones) for him when it was performed in 1950.


http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/scelsi.php

La Nascita del Verbo is an interesting work, too.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Busoni's Fantasia nach Bach. Not only is it another testament to his never-ending love for Bach, but also a tombeau for his then recently deceased father.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Glazunov loved to write Elegies of all sorts, some of them were "generic" and others he really dedicated to someone who had passed away. I'd have to say that his orchestral prelude "In Memory of Stasov" his long-time mentor is probably the most tragic thing he ever wrote, and one of the most profound for sure. It has one moment of hope in the middle, but it fades into darkness and silent tears.  He used a funeral Orthodox chant as the basis of it.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Stargazer said:


> I find music to be much more enjoyable if I know that the composer had a special connection with a particular piece, or if there is a story behind it's composition.


A vive la difference comment: I'm just the opposite -- that info might be interesting, but it adds nothing to the music whatsoever, and I think it may even limit or detract whatever listening pleasure there might be had from the work.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Bartok's 6th string quartet--my favorite from his cycle--was a highly personal work, the last movement of which reflects his recent knowledge of his mother's death.

*p.s.* A friendly reminder that Mother's Day is coming up soon!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> Bartok's 6th string quartet--my favorite from his cycle--was a highly personal work, the last movement of which reflects his recent knowledge of his mother's death.
> 
> *p.s.* A friendly reminder that Mother's Day is coming up soon!


You are the first person I've ever encountered who chose the Bartok #6 as his favorite. Not a criticism; simply an observation. Yes, it was a highly personal composition.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

_Frei aber einsam_. - J. Joachim's personal motto

The F-A-E sonata : composed by *R. Schumann*, *J. Brahms*, and A. Dietrich for J. Joachim, they applied a musical cryptogram, taking the first letters from J. Joachim's maxim and using the _musical/I] motto as the theme for each movement.

...then came Frei aber froh, *J. Brahms* optimistic alteration of the phrase.

We can hear this small motif (F-A-F) in *R. Schumann's* Symphony No. 3 "Rhenish". The first movement contains a short F-A-F theme, just before the second theme in the recapitulation.

But this theme truly comes to the forefront in J. Brahms Symphony No. 3, from the opening notes alluding to Joachim, to the last theme that fades away, as if it were a symphonic-requiem for his mentor and dear friend Schumann._


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