# Death Row (Final listening request)



## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

You are about to be killed in Death Row, but you are given a request to listen to *one* piece before you die. Which piece do you choose?


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Right now I wouldn't go for classical. Freezing Moon by Mayhem or wait..."Didos Lament" by Purcell, of course! (sorry)


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) by John Cage in the Halberstadt church organ version.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Handel's Messiah!


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

A morbid topic, but here's my contribution:

I'd pick Barber's _Knoxville: Summer of 1915_ sung by Leontyne Price with Thomas Schippers.

Set to the poetry of James Agee, the final lyric is:

"After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am"

Then I'd say, "OK, let's get this over with."


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Possibly movements 6 and 7 of Beethoven's Op 131. Or Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Art Rock said:


> Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) by John Cage in the Halberstadt church organ version.


I see that the next note change will be on February 5, 2022. The performance is scheduled to end on September 5, 2640.

There is a similar story about Hangtown Fry. In the 1850s a man was sentenced to death in Hangtown (now Placerville) California "and was asked what he would like to eat for his last meal. He thought quickly and ordered an oyster omelet, knowing that the oysters would have to be brought from the water, over a hundred miles away by steamship and over rough roads, delaying his execution."


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

The closing scene from Poulenc's _Dialogues des Carmélites_, where the nuns are led off to their deaths. Hopefully it would inspire in me at least some of their courage, if not their serenity.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Mahler 3, I should think - no, not because it's the longest, but because it "includes everything."


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Swedish psalm here!


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## Spy Car (Nov 15, 2017)

Wagner's Ring. 

That's one piece, right? LOL.

With oysters on the half shell, if you please.

Bill


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## Ulfilas (Mar 5, 2020)

Das Lied von der Erde, or Parsifal


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

John Cage - _Organ2/ASLSP_ (As Slow as Possible). The performance of the organ version at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany began in 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640.


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

Nigel Short leading Tenebrae in Will Todd's "That We May Love Again".

lyrics by Ben Dunwell:






*Dead my daughter, dead my son.
Dead my lover, wrapped in cloth and laid in earth.
O Lord, bring peace to the hearts of war and hate.
O Lord, give rest to the taken ones whose peace will come too late.
We who have the most to tell have no voice to speak.
We who have the most to weep have no tears to let.
We who have the most to bear have been rendered weak.
We who are the most forgotten never can forget.
Lord, bring peace, that we may know our pain.
O Lord, bring peace, that we may love again,
that we may live again the lover's touch,
that we may live again the love of earth,
and bless the birth of every child
that lights our way to God.*


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## Guest (Oct 11, 2020)

The full Ring Cycle by Wagner!!!:lol:


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Christabel said:


> The full Ring Cycle by Wagner!!!:lol:


Except you might get bored to death first!


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Death Row: a particularly noxious 12-tone row that can 'put to sleep' an unreceptive listener. It was composed by a _serial_ killer. 

Final listening request? Bernd Alois Zimmermann's 1954 Concerto for trumpet "Nobody knows the trouble I see".
After the performance, the trumpet is to be 'muted'.


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## mark6144 (Apr 6, 2019)

mbhaub said:


> Except you might get bored to death first!


Satie's Vexations with full repeats, just to annoy them


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Britten's _Death in Venice_ seems appropriate.


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## thejewk (Sep 13, 2020)

Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I'd take the same one Edward G. Robinson selected in the film "Soylent Green" before he was turned into human food: the Beethoven "Pastoral" symphony.

If the music must have a death theme I'd take Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Mahler 8 C.S.O Solti


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Christabel said:


> The full Ring Cycle by Wagner!!!:lol:


Make it the Goodall Ring. Then you get an extra hour.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

SixFootScowl said:


> Make it the Goodall Ring. Then you get an extra hour.


Extra 2.5 hours :lol:. You get an extra Das Rheingold, basically.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

larold said:


> I'd take the same one Edward G. Robinson selected in the film "Soylent Green" before he was turned into human food: the Beethoven "Pastoral" symphony.
> 
> If the music must have a death theme I'd take Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.


In _Soylent Green_, Edward G. Robinson requested, "classical music; light classical music". They gave him the opening movement to Beethoven's _6th_, and some excerpts from Grieg's _Peer Gynt Suite_ the _Morning Mood_ and _Asa's Death_. In the 1973 movie (which takes place in the year 2020!) they had a huge complex for assisted suicide as the world had fallen into a dystopian nightmare of disease, pollution, global warming, food shortages, and overcrowding. Subjects would go to a special room where they would be guided by some young attendants, die a painless death, as they watched beautiful pastoral images of what life on earth was like in the days before it all came to ruin. They were also given the option of musical accompaniment. The bodies would then be disposed of...

...and I can't say more unless you've already seen the movie.


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

The chorus "Inneggiamo il Signor non é morto" from _Cavalleria Rusticana,_ with Maria Callas as soloist and the Metropolitan Opera Chorus.

In person, if you please. That's OK, I'll wait ...


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## Mannheim Rocket (Aug 1, 2020)

Coach G said:


> In _Soylent Green_, Edward G. Robinson requested, "classical music; light classical music". They gave him the opening movement to Beethoven's _6th_, and some excerpts from Grieg's _Peer Gynt Suite_ the _Morning Mood_ and _Asa's Death_. In the 1973 movie (which takes place in the year 2020!) they had a huge complex for assisted suicide as the world had fallen into a dystopian nightmare of disease, pollution, global warming, food shortages, and overcrowding. Subjects would go to a special room where they would be guided by some young attendants, die a painless death, as they watched beautiful pastoral images of what life on earth was like in the days before it all came to ruin. They were also given the option of musical accompaniment. The bodies would then be disposed of...
> 
> ...and I can't say more unless you've already seen the movie.


I think the first movement from Tchaikovsky's _Pathetique_ is played as well! It's a powerful scene.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Art Rock said:


> Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) by John Cage in the Halberstadt church organ version.


^^^^ This. Obviously. ^^^^ *

* Was just going to write the same thing.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

BenG said:


> You are about to be killed in Death Row, but you are given a request to listen to *one* piece before you die. Which piece do you choose?


Anything by Celibidache in Munich or Reggie Goodall in London ....


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Either Missa Solemnis, which is as magisterial as anything ever written (even for one who is relatively non-religious);
or The Midsummer Marriage which never inspires in me less than a feeling of immense pride at being a human being.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

vtpoet said:


> > Originally Posted by *Art Rock*
> > Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) by John Cage in the Halberstadt church organ version.
> 
> 
> ...


I didn't notice that Art Rock had made that post when I wrote the same thing lower down the page.


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## Spy Car (Nov 15, 2017)

Might not be long (or popular on a classical music forum) but this one is spot-on thematically:

Bill


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Maybe it's cliche, but I'd go with Beethoven's 9th.

And no, not the Maximiliano Cobra rendition. I'd rather go right away.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust", sung by Nat King Cole.


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

Anything by Billy Joel. It’ll make me desperately impatient for death’s arrival.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

MatthewWeflen said:


> Maybe it's cliche, but I'd go with Beethoven's 9th.
> 
> And no, not the Maximiliano Cobra rendition. I'd rather go right away.


If your last two hours are spent listening to that, you would practically be dead two hours early anyway.


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

MatthewWeflen said:


> Maybe it's cliche, but I'd go with Beethoven's 9th.
> 
> And no, not the Maximiliano Cobra rendition. I'd rather go right away.


Cobra is probably the most impressive of all Beethoven's Ninth performances. It is no easy feat to make that symphony boring, dull, and sterile. For that, we must commend him.


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