# "Angry" Works?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Nothing comes to mind for me, Beethoven was more passionate than angry to me. What examples do you have? I don't think anything in my collection is Angry.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sir George Grove hears "wrath" in passages from the development of the first movement of Beethoven's 8th Symphony. Listen for it. Ludwig certainly seems upset about something!


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## Vronsky (Jan 5, 2015)




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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Sir George Grove hears "wrath" in passages from the development of the first movement of Beethoven's 8th Symphony. Listen for it. Ludwig certainly seems upset about something!


I'll take a listen. Some of B's Piano Sonatas seem angry.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Vronsky said:


>


Wow, that scared me as it started up. I couldn't get through it though, it just wasn't for me. I didn't like the use of dissonance. But it certainly sounds furious!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Sir George Grove hears "wrath" in passages from the development of the first movement of Beethoven's 8th Symphony. Listen for it. Ludwig certainly seems upset about something!


I love it, but it isn't angry enough for me.


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## Vronsky (Jan 5, 2015)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Wow, that scared me as it started up. I couldn't get through it though, it just wasn't for me. I didn't like the use of dissonance. But it certainly sounds furious!


The Rite of Spring probably is the prime example of what you're looking for. Especially the performance of Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra.






Also, The Miraculous Mandarin?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Vaughan Williams Sym #4....that is one p*ssed off piece of music!!

Corigliano - Sym #1 - another very angry work...


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Vronsky said:


> The Rite of Spring probably is the prime example of what you're looking for. Especially the performance of Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra.
> 
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> 
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Good call with Spring. I'll listen to the other one here in a few.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Heck148 said:


> Vaughan Williams Sym #4....that is one p*ssed off piece of music!!
> 
> Corigliano - Sym #1 - another very angry work...


I'll try it! Thanks.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Love the Xenakis! For some reason this kind of music makes me smile!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

starthrower said:


> Love the Xenakis! For some reason this kind of music makes me smile!


I found it kind of terrifying, and then irritating, tbh.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Heck148 said:


> Vaughan Williams Sym #4....that is one p*ssed off piece of music!!
> 
> Corigliano - Sym #1 - another very angry work...


Agree Vaughan Williams #4 may be unbeatable in its evoking of anger. On piano, Beethoven's Appassionata is the first time I heard fury. Gilels and this version portray it pretty well. Look at Arrau sweat by the end of the first movement.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I don't hear the Rite, or Miraculous Mandarin as angry, but they're both great ballet scores.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

What about Rage Over a Lost Penny?


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Vronsky said:


> The Rite of Spring probably is the prime example of what you're looking for. Especially the performance of Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I concur with Mandarin.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Vaughn 4 does it for me.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> Agree Vaughan Williams #4 may be unbeatable in its evoking of anger. On piano, Beethoven's Appassionata is the first time I heard fury. Gilels and this version portray it pretty well. Look at Arrau sweat by the end of the first movement.


I hear B as more sad and passionate most of the time.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

How about
Chopin, scherzi nos. 1 and 3, Prelude op.28/24, Polonaise in C Minor
Schubert- Der Doppelgaenger (just one of its moods)
Brahms- Piano Concerto no.1, Symphony no.3 (1st movt), op.116/1, Rhapsody op.119
Scriabin, many of the preludes op.11, etude op.8/12 in D# minor

Also isn't the scherzo of Walton's first symphony marked 'con malizia'?


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## licorice stick (Nov 24, 2014)

Beethoven's Coriolan Overture sounds pretty darn angry to me. And the flip side of the coin in that piece is desperation and impotence, which makes the anger even more bone jarring.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Allan Pettersson's Symphony 7 comes to mind too.


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

I feel that Shostakovich's music is associated with anger.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

starthrower said:


> I don't hear the Rite, or Miraculous Mandarin as angry, but they're both great ballet scores.


I do agree. To hear them as angry seems to be a big misunderstanding of what they are. Shostakovich 10 - the Scherzo that is said to depict Stalin - does sound angry to me.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

jdec said:


> Allan Pettersson's Symphony 7 comes to mind too.


I hear pain but not really anger. Still they can be close.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Crumb - Black Angels and similar modern works. Although I find it difficult to differentiate if it is anger or anxiety.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Sergei Prokofiev - Battle On The Ice





Sergei Prokofiev : The Year 1941, Symphonic Suite Op. 90 





Penderecki: Cello Concerto No.1


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

A Survivor from Warsaw (Schoenberg) is a work that sometimes depicts anger and occasionally (surprisingly rarely) expresses it.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Hanns Eisler's _Deutsche Sinfonie_ op.50 - Bertholt Brecht is at his bitterest best here (although his texts were adapted to the work rather than him specifically writing them for it) and Eisler's music complements it perfectly.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

Jacck said:


> Crumb - Black Angels and similar modern works. Although I find it difficult to differentiate if it is anger or anxiety.


I thought it was more like prostate pain or gallstones

(this was a joke)


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

tortkis said:


> I feel that Shostakovich's music is associated with anger.


Try some valium.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

The Xenakis sounds like the underscore of series' like Kojak and Hawaii-Five-O when something really dramatic happens. Lalo Schifrin was already writing music like this in the 1960s: busy high woodwinds, very low piano, string swirls, flutter-tongue trumpet hits and growls... old news.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Eusebius12 said:


> Scriabin, many of the preludes op.11,


Many? More like 1 or 2 of them that might express anger.

Op. 11 No. 14 is probably the most striking.






Then there is Etude Op. 65 No. 3. Anger or completely psychotic?


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## Vronsky (Jan 5, 2015)

Shostakovich's eleventh symphony depicts violent events, the second movement especially.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Shosty's 8th first movement.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Anton Bruckner: Symphony no. IX (movements I & II)
Franz Schubert: Symphony no. VIII (movement I)
Gustav Mahler: Symphony no. IX (movements I & III)
Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Symphony no. VI, Mazeppa
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphony no. I, Isle of the Dead, The Miserly Knight
Alexander Glazunov: Symphony nos. VIII (movements II & III), IX, Two Prelude Improvisations
Sergei Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible, Piano Sonatas VI-VIII "War Sonatas"
Modest Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov
Franz Schreker: The Stigmatized
Alexander Zemlinsky: The Dwarf
Richard Strauss: Elektra
Franz Schmidt: Symphony no. IV
Nikolai Myaskovsky: Symphonies III, IV, VI, X, XIII, XIV, Piano Sonata no. IV, String Quartet no. IX
Felix Blumenfeld: Deux morceaux for piano, Symphony in C (more elegiac than angry)
Boris Lyatoshynsky: Symphonies I, II, III.
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies IV, VI, VIII, X, XI, XIII, Lady Macbeth, Piano Sonata no. I
Mieczysław Weinberg: Symphonies V, VI, XII, XIV, Piano Sonata no. VI
Dmitri Kabalevsky: Symphony nos. I & IV, Piano Sonata no. III, String Quartet no. II, Cello Concerto II
Samuel Barber: Music for a Scene from Shelley, Symphony no. II
Sir Arnold Bax: Symphonies I, II, VI
Vaughan-Williams: Symphonies IV, VI
Edgar Bainton: Symphony no. II
David Diamond: Symphony no. II
Antonin Dvorak: Symphony no. VII
Josef Suk: Asrael Symphony
Vitezslav Novak: De Profundis
Zoltan Kodaly: Psalmus Hungaricus (first movement)
Nikolay Roslavets: Violin Concerto I
Lev Knipper: Symphony no. IV (first movement)
Albert Roussel: Symphony no. II
George Enescu: Oedipe
Francis Poulenc: Les Dialogues des Carmelites, La voix humaine
Jules Massenet: Therese
Ernest Chausson: Symphony in B-flat


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Gustav Holst - The Planets - Mars, the Bringer of War


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Erwin Schulhoff's 5th 'sinfonia' (1938) is pretty angry, and with good reason. The Nazis were on the march and just four years later he died in a concentration camp. It's a very relentless work with a lot of the sound of Shostakovich's later "war symphonies."


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Heck148 said:


> Vaughan Williams Sym #4....that is one p*ssed off piece of music!!
> 
> ...


Agreed. A work of seething fury. To get the full effect, seek out VW's own 1937 recording with the BBC SO. He absolutely tears into it: even the Largo passages are creepy.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/vaughan-williams’s-symphony-no-4-which-recording-is-best


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There is a work which is all about anger in music by Monteverdi, he wrote an interesting preface discussing it. The piece is called Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. I think it's pretty good


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Do others hear anger in the second part (Europe During the War) of Reich's Different Trains?


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

The piano chamber work to rule them all: (especially the fourth movement)


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Just a thought...

The opening movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata no 2 kicks off in a distinctly irritable manner. The movement then tries to calm itself down, but that discordant first subject comes stomping and growling back like a bad mood on a wet day. Here's Rachmaninoff giving it what for:






His pace and control on the last movement are, I suggest, without equal.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

In another thread, I described the first movement of Prokofiev's 2nd symphony as film music for the fight to the death of King Kong and Godzilla. And they are both very angry.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

eugeneonagain said:


> The Xenakis sounds like the underscore of series' like Kojak and Hawaii-Five-O when something really dramatic happens. Lalo Schifrin was already writing music like this in the 1960s: busy high woodwinds, very low piano, string swirls, flutter-tongue trumpet hits and growls... old news.


A lot of shows in the 60s and 70s were using quite experimental composers, certainly serialism was a core component of what we heard on TV and even at the movies. Nowadays, composers seem much more loath to break consonance, which can become a little cloying. Cinematography also tends to be far less gritty, we often see 'sweeping panoramas' whether that adds meaningfully to the story. Mind you, I found Lalo Schifrin to be irritating. Didn't he also score the original Mission Impossible?

John Williams did change the direction of cinematic music, I feel certain.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

DeepR said:


> Many? More like 1 or 2 of them that might express anger.
> 
> Op. 11 No. 14 is probably the most striking.
> 
> Then there is Etude Op. 65 No. 3. Anger or completely psychotic?


And these:






















Op.65/3 sounds neither angry nor really mad (insane), but rather weirdly exalted. Perhaps Bruckner might be an apt comparison even if the idiom is different.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

This piece explodes in an insensate fury (building from a base of pathos):


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

pjang23 said:


> The piano chamber work to rule them all: (especially the fourth movement)


I love this piece, but an even more furious Brahms can be found here imo:


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

Pat Fairlea said:


> Just a thought...
> 
> The opening movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata no 2 kicks off in a distinctly irritable manner. The movement then tries to calm itself down, but that discordant first subject comes stomping and growling back like a bad mood on a wet day. Here's Rachmaninoff giving it what for:
> 
> ...


The movement explodes in a climax of rage and despair, which is carried over into the scherzo. The sonata overall is about death, I think of it as more tragic than angry, but I thought of mentioning it in my initial post in the thread.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

"These Boots are Made for Walking" -- Nancy Sinatra


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Alan Pettersson Symphony No. 7.

Practically painful to listen to.

Human agony personified in musical notes.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Prokofiev: Scythian Suite, "Dance of the Monsters". If not exactly angry, at least ill-tempered.






Bernard Herrmann: On Dangerous Ground (soundtrack), "Death Hunt."


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

How about the main section of the scherzo from Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. Menacing!!!


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

All works get angry if you poke them with a stick.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

If you trust Bernstein, the Passacaglia from Brahms 4 is 'angry'. I agree. Under Furtwangler it's white-hot ferocious.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

Eusebius12 said:


> I love this piece, but an even more furious Brahms can be found here imo:


Try Franck's Piano Quintet:






+ the Violin Sonata 2nd movement:






Highly dramatic more than anything, but still.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

Tallisman said:


> Try Franck's Piano Quintet:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I love Franck, and his Bramsian side is not often remarked upon. His music sounds far more like Brahms than Liszt. Perhaps it is more Lisztian in spirit. The violin and piano sonata is an almost perfect work. Almost, except that it seems to end 2 movements before it actually does. The Piano Quintet is also highly enjoyable, although wilder and woollier. I never thought of them as angry as such; however the Quintet is certainly dramatic; climactic, even.


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

Surprisingly not yet mentioned: The first movement of Mahler's 2nd (esp. 11:05-14:00)


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Eusebius12 said:


> This piece explodes in an insensate fury (building from a base of pathos):


One of my very favorites that I've listened to countless times. Such a great Etude, but I've never thought of it in terms of anger and fury. It's however very passionate, fiery, intense. And the melody on top is beautiful. 
Anyway, it doesn't matter, we can all feel and think what we want about it. The music is great regardless of the emotions we associate with it.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

DeepR said:


> One of my very favorites that I've listened to countless times. Such a great Etude, but I've never thought of it in terms of anger and fury. It's however very passionate, fiery, intense. And the melody on top is beautiful.
> Anyway, it doesn't matter, we can all feel and think what we want about it. The music is great regardless of the emotions we associate with it.


Depends how it is played, of course. Scriabin, from his recordings (on player pianos; therefore just about worthless in terms of dynamics, depending on their 're-interpretation') wasn't very heroic in his sonorities, however all those ffs can really be made explosive under the hands of someone like Horowitz, with those stalking bass chords and the cataracts of figuration above. Affanato indeed? Perhaps a love gone wrong? Or a passionate affair?


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