# Pieces you both love and hate.



## k1hodgman (Sep 8, 2015)

And not because they're bad.

Stravinsky's _The Rite of Spring_, comes to mind...All of it.

I can't hear it without having to get up and move. Somehow. Anyhow. It's on an almost emotionally primal level, like something bad is coming.

John Murphy's _In the House - In a Heartbeat_, is another one.






So my question is this:

What is that song, Classical or not, that effects you on an emotionally primal level? What's that song you _love_, but is borderline painful to hear?

What's _your_ Rite of Spring?


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Beethoven's inescapable _"Für Elise"_. It's a beautiful piece, really - but I've heard it butchered and then cut short so many times that I really don't ever want to hear it again.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

I listen to Mozart in minor keys only rarely. He's too good at being depressing.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Epilogue said:


> I listen to Mozart in minor keys only rarely. He's too good at being depressing.


Great minds think alike. The majority on this forum seems to prefer minor key Mozart. Well maybe you too, if you find major key Mozart simply bad/uninteresting.


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## k1hodgman (Sep 8, 2015)

An observation I've found is it's the people who seem the liveliest, and most upbeat, who are the one with the most demons.

A lot of Mozart's music is rather light, lively, and upbeat. So when his music is depressed, it's _black_.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Two pieces spring to mind:

Strauss' Im Abendrot and the second movement of Kalinnikov's 1st Symphony; both because they are simultaneously beautiful and too melancholy.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Dim7 said:


> The majority on this forum seems to prefer minor key Mozart. Well maybe you too, if you find major key Mozart simply bad/uninteresting.


Definitely not!

I certainly wouldn't say minor key Mozart is any less great than major key Mozart, but I certainly listen to major key Mozart a lot more.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Epilogue said:


> Definitely not!
> 
> I certainly wouldn't say minor key Mozart is any less great than major key Mozart, but I certainly listen to major key Mozart a lot more.


Exactly. It might even help to think minor and major key Mozarts as different composers. For me they are for totally different moods. There's no such huge contrast for me in say minor and major key Bruckner. Or even Bach.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I love Schubert's song cycles. I first got into them as a teenager. But as an adult I now find the texts so emo, for lack of a better word, that they make cringe sometimes.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Mahler 8 because sometimes I can't stand it and it feels extremely forced and unconvincing, while at other times it's completely overwhelming and of cosmic proportions. One of those pieces that only works once a while I guess.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

isorhythm said:


> I love Schubert's song cycles. I first got into them as a teenager. But as an adult I now find the texts so emo, for lack of a better word, that they make cringe sometimes.


Ironic appreciation is the way to do it now then. Then you can cringe at yourself for being so hipster - ironically of course. Then you can be confused by the meta-irony, and enjoy the confusion, and confuse confusion with confession, and confess that you are Confucius, and con-fuse yourself with a fuse.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Elgar's cello concerto. It's not a favourite work of mine, I generally find Elgar to be the composer I'm least interested in, but that concerto is probably him at his best. Plus, my partner is a cellist so I have to be careful what I say about it.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

MoonlightSonata said:


> Beethoven's inescapable _"Für Elise"_. It's a beautiful piece, really - but I've heard it butchered and then cut short so many times that I really don't ever want to hear it again.


I heard that enough on the Benny Hill show!


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## Gustav Mahler (Dec 3, 2014)

I like Tchaikovsky's piano concerto, But the opening theme just irritates me. It is supposedly "Beautiful", But there is something that I feel is fake, I can't explain it. It may be just me, But that's how I feel.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

_Tristan und Isolde_. It's just so gut-churning, dark, and intense that if I'm not in the mood to be sucked into a black maelstrom of intolerable passion and longing I won't even think about listening to it.

I know I had more moods like that fifty years ago. In some ways life gets easier.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Presently it's Strauss' Metamorphosen. Sometimes it just loses me and I find my mind wandering in the middle of the piece. But its one of my most frequently played pieces so there's definitely some love there.


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## Gustav Mahler (Dec 3, 2014)

I don't like the main theme of the 1st mov. of Beethoven's 5th piano concerto. I don't know, It maybe sounds a little childish to me, Like annoyingly cheerful. It doesn't feel genuine.


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## atsizat (Sep 14, 2015)

You can't hate something that you like.


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## k1hodgman (Sep 8, 2015)

No, but you can have a love-hate relationship. Which is why someone coined the phrase.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

FugueMeister: _Presently it's Strauss' Metamorphosen. Sometimes it just loses me and I find my mind wandering in the middle of the piece. But its one of my most frequently played pieces so there's definitely some love there._

Gustav Mahler:_ I don't like the main theme of the 1st mov. of Beethoven's 5th piano concerto. I don't know, It maybe sounds a little childish to me, Like annoyingly cheerful. It doesn't feel genuine. _

Ha. I have the same problems with both these pieces. However, I don't find myself drawn back to Metamorphosen very often - limited tolerance for wandering, I guess - while in the "Emperor" Concerto the sublime second movement is worth waiting for (not that the first is bad, of course).


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## Gustav Mahler (Dec 3, 2014)

Oh, The second movement of the emperor concerto! What a sublime music-It has one of the most beautiful climaxes I have ever heard-Those ascending steps, Leading to heaven!
(By the way, I think Brahms may have stole the entrance of the piano in the 3rd movement of his sublime piano concerto from the entrance of the piano in the 2nd movement of the emperor concerto. It has quite a few similarities.)


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

_Die Walkure_ ... I love the first act, the second, however, seems tediously long and uninteresting and I wait impatiently for the final ~20mins. The third act is some of both but with a tremendous couple of closing scenes.


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## Gustav Mahler (Dec 3, 2014)

Also, I am in LOVE with Rach's 2nd piano concerto, But his 3rd doesn't move me.
And it is SO overplayed! WHY? Because it is so virtuosic?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I will never get tired of the childish theme of the first movement of the Emperor (I do know what you mean though).


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Arvo Part's "Tabula Rasa"--I love the first movement, but I can't stand the downbeat-bolero-in-reverse of the second.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Most of Handel's oratorios and operas. One moment Handel is like a more melodic version of the great Bach, and the next he's a more simplistic version of the sewing machine Bach. 

For an answer more in line with the OP's parameter, Bach's Chaconne. It's literally the only piece of music I can think of that seems to conjure not the aesthetically pleasing imitation of sadness but the real repulsive thing. It's somewhat particular to the version by Ivry Gitlis, which is a bit more raw and scratchy than most versions.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> One moment Handel is like a more melodic version of the great Bach, and the next he's a more simplistic version of the sewing machine Bach.


Excellent!

(...)


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I hate Bruckner's Eighth Symphony but am willing to wait 88 minutes for the glorious final climax.

I usually read the Wall Street Journal which kills the time until the magic moment finally arrives.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I hate Bruckner's Eighth Symphony but am willing to wait 88 minutes for the glorious final climax.
> 
> I usually read the Wall Street Journal which kills the time until the magic moment finally arrives.


So you alleviate your boredom with something... actually boring?


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

He's just so hip - boring is the new interesting at TalkClassical.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

_


Clairvoyance Enough said:



Bach's Chaconne. It's literally the only piece of music I can think of that seems to conjure not the aesthetically pleasing imitation of sadness but the real repulsive thing.

Click to expand...

_To my ears Bach's Chaconne is a work of extraordinary richness that traverses an immense range of emotions and in the end achieves a grandeur that transcends all of them.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

To me Bach's chaconne is a reminder of how much I'd rather be listening to "Erbarme dich."


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