# Indescribable effect of music



## DaddyGeorge (Mar 16, 2020)

Hi everybody, I'm interested in your opinion on the following...

Occasionally, when I listen to music, I experience a strange, enjoyable, indescribable feeling of joy (music is very touching to me) on some parts of the composition (that I already know), and it even makes me cry sometimes. That alone is nothing unusual, I think. It seems interesting to me that I experience these feelings repeatedly (for many years) in the same places of the some pieces. Not always when I listen to them, but repeatedly (especially when I don't hear the piece for longer time). Do you have a similar experience? If yes, what parts of what pieces are the most touching for you? Or is it my incipient senility? Thanks for any reaction...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yes, it happens. How certain very specific moments have such power over certain people is a mystery we'll probably never solve.

There are not many such intense moments for me. One is the brief song of Rachmaninoff, "How fair this spot" or "It is beautiful here," particularly as sung by Rene Fleming. At the very first phrase I get an intense flood of emotion. Another is the "transformation music" from Act One of Wagner's _Parsifal._


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Such sensations are a frequent and delightful pleasure for me. Just a few of those intensely personal favorites, the music that I can't go a month without hearing; include Sibelius 7, Bach's Goldbergs and B Minor Mass, Liszt's B Minor Sonata, Chopin's Barcarolle, and the majority of Brahms's chamber music.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Specific tonal relationships, especially in terms of chord progressions and their interactions with the main melodic line, are usually responsible for emotional high points; sometimes additional counterpoint can contribute also.

Now treating the topic title literally:

I would say music is hard to describe only because the written language is a 1-D row of 2-D symbols, whereas music is a 2-D row. Describing a 30-staff page in plain language is always going to be awkward. That's why there is that quote by a famous conductor about one glance at a page being worth more than whatever the number of words.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Though music can be experienced intellectually (by studying the precision of a Bach fugal score, for example, or examining how Beethoven builds a transition to change from one key to another, or how Webern structures his tone row), music is generally experienced emotionally. So if one laughs or cries, or shouts, or curses, or even leaps and bounds up and down at various passages in musical works, it should prove no surprise.

For a real emotional workout, I can think of nothing more exhilarating than a fine performance of the Tchaikovsky 6th Symphony. The Russian composer pulls out all the stops and puts one through the emotional wringer so that nearly every emotional response is at some point in the work explored. (Of course, other great composers -- Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, Bruckner -- pull of similar feats in certain of their works. Which makes exploring music a true human experience worth undertaking.)


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

DaddyGeorge said:


> Hi everybody, I'm interested in your opinion on the following...
> 
> Occasionally, when I listen to music, I experience a strange, enjoyable, indescribable feeling of joy (music is very touching to me) on some parts of the composition (that I already know), and it even makes me cry sometimes. That alone is nothing unusual, I think. It seems interesting to me that I experience these feelings repeatedly (for many years) in the same places of the some pieces. Not always when I listen to them, but repeatedly (especially when I don't hear the piece for longer time). Do you have a similar experience? If yes, what parts of what pieces are the most touching for you? Or is it my incipient senility? Thanks for any reaction...


Sibelius' 7th Symphony - all the way through there is a feeling that I am partaking of the numinous (and a profound sense of life's journey) and at moments the tears come - particularly at the final climax - 



 (Segerstam / DNSO).


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

They are called synapses, chemical reactions. They happen in lots of areas of life, music included.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Crying? No. But no matter how many hundreds of times I have heard it, once the final moments of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde have finished I find myself just sitting there for a few minutes, emotionally drained.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I cry when I hear Janet Baker with Bernstein singing Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. Also, I get very touched in certain places in Copland's Appalachian Spring, more like a "the sheer beauty of life" emotion. I think of Spring, birds, renewal, things developing and growing like they should. And baby animals. Really.

Also, after the death of my mother some years ago, I suddenly became emotionally sensitive to hearing the female soprano voice. It opened up a whole new vista of singers and music for me.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I can't listen to the period just before the recapitulation in the first movement of Bruckner's 4th symphony without stopping everything and going off into space. That's about the only thing that evokes that intense of a reaction.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, it happens. How certain very specific moments have such power over certain people is a mystery we'll probably never solve.
> 
> There are not many such intense moments for me. One is the brief song of Rachmaninoff, "How fair this spot" or "It is beautiful here," particularly as sung by Rene Fleming. At the very first phrase I get an intense flood of emotion. Another is the "transformation music" from Act One of Wagner's _Parsifal._


I remember the first time I heard _Parsifal_, I remember the exact spot where I was listening to it and even the weather that day. The music is concurrently so subtle and powerful that it just makes it so personally touching but still electrifying. Beethoven's "Ode to joy" is another one that always gets me going.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Manxfeeder said:


> I can't listen to the period just before the recapitulation in the first movement of Bruckner's 4th symphony without stopping everything and *going off into space.* That's about the only thing that evokes that intense of a reaction.


It's okay, Manxfeeder, your emotional reactions will become more numerous and intense as soon as the people you love start dying, and your kitty gets run over.
The "going off into space" feeling will eventually become a "going down a black hole" feeling.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

I'm normally in bits after the slow mvt. of RVW's fifth symphony.


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## Sad Al (Feb 27, 2020)

Yeah, I'm afraid it's your incipient senility. About Sibelius' 7th Symphony, it includes some ABBA-style musical harvester that I can't stand. As my Mom used to say: I'm so allergic! And I am a Finn.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

mikeh375 said:


> I'm normally in bits after the slow mvt. of RVW's fifth symphony.


What a gem of a work - and such a unique flavour; the Romanza is truly inspired.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Sad Al said:


> Yeah, I'm afraid it's your incipient senility. About Sibelius' 7th Symphony, it includes some ABBA-style musical harvester that I can't stand. As my Mom used to say: I'm so allergic! And I am a Finn.


Different opinion's are to be celebrated but where's the Abba?


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## Globalti (Feb 18, 2020)

There's plenty of music that makes me feel emotional and there are also a couple of colours; one is a greeny yellow and the other a mauve. Ford had the mauve as a car colour at one time. Seeing either colour brings on an intense wave of emotion, which I can't describe at all. I think it's because both are old colours from the 50s and I do remember as a small boy playing for hours with a collection of decorator's paint colour samples and I reckon those colours have unique wavelengths that excite something deep in my brain. So not too different from certain musical sounds I guess.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

From an interesting article on chills, frissons, etc. induced by music:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4107937/

"Sloboda (1991, p. 114) found that the most common types of musical phrases to elicit frisson were *chord progressions descending the circle of fifths to the tonic, melodic appogiaturas, the onset of unexpected harmonies, and melodic or harmonic sequences.* Other investigators subsequently pursued and expanded on these findings. Grewe et al. (2007) examined the effects of larger, musical structural elements on the induction of frisson. Their measure of frisson responses, although self-reported, took place in real time in a lab setting (participants were asked to press a button when they "got chills" while listening to music), and the experimenters chose the musical stimuli based on cultural prominence and genre representativeness (p. 299). They found that onsets of frisson were most likely to occur during *peaks in loudness, moments of modulation, and works in which the melody occupied the human vocal register.* The vast majority of studies on frisson that have incorporated music analysis, including retrospectives of Sloboda's (1991) study (Huron, 2006, p. 282), have identified *sudden dynamic leaps (mostly from soft to loud, though moves to extreme softness have occasionally been shown to elicit the same effect)* as major catalysts for frisson (Panksepp, 1995; Guhn et al., 2007). These findings support brainstem reflexes and *expectancy violation* as two components of Juslin's (2013) model reviewed above."

I have read other analyses that, generally, stress the idea of the cusp experience, also active in literature. This emphasizes the wrench elicited by the sense of either a sudden or an irresistable change of direction in the narrative--musical or literary--and the sense of a rushing off in a direction despite one's inherent emotional inertia.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> The "going off into space" feeling will eventually become a "going down a black hole" feeling.


Well, that's something to look forward to.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Music can light me up inside, make me feel warm and have goosebumps all over and sometimes... tears. 
I'm a simple man and I have these moments at all the "usual places" where most people have them, I think?
I even remember the first one, because it made such a powerful impression. I was 14 years old, discovering classical music through a classical radio station. I had late night listening sessions in bed, with headphones. A whole world opened up to me.
They played Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto which I heard for the first time. Where did I have my moment? Of course, the ending of the adagio...
Today, I don't think this particular piece "works" for me anymore but there is plenty of other music that does (also by Rachmaninoff!).


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## Sad Al (Feb 27, 2020)

janxharris said:


> Different opinion's are to be celebrated but where's the Abba?


You can hear his banal 'Chicitita' ABBA nadir near the end of the 7th- a few sadistic bars of optimistic musical hogwash that the aging bald guy wrote after too much cognac and cigars. He was smart enough to realize his downhill. Thus he wisely burned his 8th symphony during a sane bout of self-criticism and depression.

To me, a Finn, Sibelius was at his best in the Jäger March, violin concerto (check out Heimo Haitto) and Tapiola (check out Berglund 1968). The Jäger March is uplifting, although I'm not a fighter, life scares me s***less.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Sad Al said:


> You can hear his banal 'Chicitita' ABBA nadir near the end of the 7th- a few sadistic bars of optimistic musical hogwash that the aging bald guy wrote after too much cognac and cigars. He was smart enough to realize his downhill. Thus he wisely burned his 8th symphony during a sane bout of self-criticism and depression.


Well I still don't know what you are referring to exactly - I don't hear any flaws in the 7th so I don't agree with you - but respect your view anyway.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Sad Al said:


> You can hear his banal 'Chicitita' ABBA nadir near the end of the 7th- a few sadistic bars of optimistic musical hogwash that the aging bald guy wrote after too much cognac and cigars. He was smart enough to realize his downhill. Thus he wisely burned his 8th symphony during a sane bout of self-criticism and depression.
> 
> To me, a Finn, Sibelius was at his best in the Jäger March, violin concerto (check out Heimo Haitto) and Tapiola (check out Berglund 1968). The Jäger March is uplifting, although I'm not a fighter, life scares me s***less.


The 7th is 'banal' but the Jäger March isn't? Why don't you reference the exact offending passages in the symphony and where we have heard it all before? I can think of some composers that are often labelled 'banal' but not the later works of Sibelius.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Sibelius is certainly one of the composers upon whom I can rely to push my buttons--the Second and Fifth Symphonies, _Pohjola's Daughter_ for sure, spring to mind. Other reliable composers for me are Brahms, Ravel, and Prokofiev, with honorary mentions to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Hovhaness. As a non-musician, I find the more general broad-brush concept of the cusp experience to be the most satisfying, as it also serves equally to "explain" my preferences in non-classical music but also certain passages in books and film.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Such sensations are a frequent and delightful pleasure for me. Just a few of those intensely personal favorites, the music that I can't go a month without hearing; include Sibelius 7, Bach's Goldbergs and B Minor Mass, Liszt's B Minor Sonata, Chopin's Barcarolle, and the majority of Brahms's chamber music.


We share a love of the Sibelius symphony; regarding the Goldberg Variations - did you take to them immediately? I have listened several times and I struggle to get through them.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

janxharris said:


> We share a love of the Sibelius symphony; regarding the Goldberg Variations - did you take to them immediately? I have listened several times and I struggle to get through them.


Certainly not! I didn't take to any Bach immediately; it required a good couple months of trying desperately to understand why everyone said he was the greatest. Finally I just decided to quit focusing on the contrapuntal genius and intellectual elements and just see if I could feel moved by the music. Sure enough, I did...and it was a combination of the WTC (the incredible emotional diversity within it) and Karl Richter's organ recording of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor that pushed me nearly to the brink of tears. Since then he has been my indisputable favorite, with Brahms and Sibelius likely coming next. Discovering him is a lifelong journey - I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Art of Fugue and the Musical Offering, but that's OK. I've only been listening to him for less than 2 years anyway! Re: the Goldbergs, it just took time and repeated listens. For me, hearing the exquisitely sublime, remarkably simple aria transformed into so many dazzling incarnations that are so alike yet so different, then hearing it come back at the end, is an experience of utmost profundity. I would perhaps recommend Wilhelm Kempff's more straightforward recording which allows you to hear all the nuances.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Certainly not! I didn't take to any Bach immediately; it required a good couple months of trying desperately to understand why everyone said he was the greatest. Finally I just decided to quit focusing on the contrapuntal genius and intellectual elements and just see if I could feel moved by the music. Sure enough, I did...and it was a combination of the WTC (the incredible emotional diversity within it) and Karl Richter's organ recording of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor that pushed me nearly to the brink of tears. Since then he has been my indisputable favorite, with Brahms and Sibelius likely coming next. Discovering him is a lifelong journey - I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Art of Fugue and the Musical Offering, but that's OK. I've only been listening to him for less than 2 years anyway! Re: the Goldbergs, it just took time and repeated listens. For me, hearing the exquisitely sublime, remarkably simple aria transformed into so many dazzling incarnations that are so alike yet so different, then hearing it come back at the end, is an experience of utmost profundity. I would perhaps recommend Wilhelm Kempff's more straightforward recording which allows you to hear all the nuances.


I will keep trying with Bach (I like the double Violin Concerto btw) but every time I try I end up saying 'never again'. It might just be a very subjective thing I guess. I tend to like music that occupies it's own unique harmonic space; I don't hear that with Bach generally.

Really appreciate your post though AC Brio.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

janxharris said:


> I will keep trying with Bach (I like the double Violin Concerto btw) but every time I try I end up saying 'never again'. It might just be a very subjective thing I guess. I tend to like music that occupies it's own unique harmonic space; I don't hear that with Bach generally.
> 
> Really appreciate your post though AC Brio.


Not to keep pushing, but if you like music with unique harmonic implications I would try the Chromatic Fantasia/Fugue and the B minor P/F from WTC Book I. Straight out of the 20th century really.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Not to keep pushing, but if you like music with unique harmonic implications I would try the Chromatic Fantasia/Fugue and the B minor P/F from WTC Book I. Straight out of the 20th century really.


Not 'pushing' at all - thanks for tip - I'll check them out.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

mikeh375 said:


> I'm normally in bits after the slow mvt. of RVW's fifth symphony.


I'm always torn between RVW's 4th, 5th and 8th. I think they are all staggering works in their different ways. I think the 5th the most serene of the lot, though, without question.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

dizwell said:


> I'm always torn between RVW's 4th, 5th and 8th. I think they are all staggering works in their different ways. I think the 5th the most serene of the lot, though, without question.


The third not for you?

Sir Mark Elder's reading is good.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

janxharris said:


> I will keep trying with Bach (I like the double Violin Concerto btw) but every time I try I end up saying 'never again'. It might just be a very subjective thing I guess. I tend to like music that occupies it's own unique harmonic space; I don't hear that with Bach generally.
> 
> Really appreciate your post though AC Brio.


Give this remarkable YouTube video of the Bach D-minor keyboard concerto a viewing/listen or two. It reduces me to tears every time:


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

janxharris said:


> The third not for you?
> 
> Sir Mark Elder's reading is good.


I adore all of them. I've 5 complete cycles (Boult, Handley, Haitink, Previn, Thomson), plus extra bits and pieces for some (for example, I have Elder's 1st and Manze's 2nd and 7th). I would listen to 3 before 9, and the 'flat trumpeter' gets me every time. I just prefer 4, 5 and 8 to any other, I think.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

dizwell said:


> I adore all of them. I've 5 complete cycles (Boult, Handley, Haitink, Previn, Thomson), plus extra bits and pieces for some (for example, I have Elder's 1st and Manze's 2nd and 7th). I would listen to 3 before 9, and the 'flat trumpeter' gets me every time. I just prefer 4, 5 and 8 to any other, I think.


Excellent - a great selection you have there; he's truly a unique voice in music.

Elder's take on the third is on YT:


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## DaddyGeorge (Mar 16, 2020)

Strange Magic said:


> Give this remarkable YouTube video of the Bach D-minor keyboard concerto a viewing/listen or two. It reduces me to tears every time:


It starts at 1:10, the music completely captivated me and emotions absolutely engulf me (I consider myself quite rational)... Great piece and great performance. I really love Baroque music, it brings me many intellectual challenges and a lot of joy and pleasure, but only (some) Bach's works has such a strong effect (if we stay in the Baroque period).


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Strange Magic said:


> Give this remarkable YouTube video of the Bach D-minor keyboard concerto a viewing/listen or two. It reduces me to tears every time:


Nice performance! Thanks for the link. Makes me wonder why people think Mozart invented the Piano Concerto!

Edit to add: I wonder why she had a page turner?! She barely looked at the score, and I doubt she really needed to do so when she did. Nice gig if you can get it, though!


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

dizwell said:


> I'm always torn between RVW's 4th, 5th and 8th. I think they are all staggering works in their different ways. I think the 5th the most serene of the lot, though, without question.


The 4th, not so much for me, but I don't dislike it. I do like the 8th though. When first considering the OP, I was torn between the Romanza in the 5th and the last mvt. of the Sea Symphony. Losing time and space with Whitman and RVW, especially with the lights down, is a rejuvenating spiritual and transcendental experience I find.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Everybody knows I'm a Mahler fan(atic), and it was the 2nd Symphony that hooked me. But I've never before written about the strange way in which the 1st movement of the 3rd affected me the first time I ever listened to it. It was an unexpected and overmastering feeling that I knew this music already: totally, completely, intimately. It wasn't just "Hey, I've heard this before;" it was as if the music and I were ONE in some metaphysical sense; it was as if, somehow, I had been INVOLVED in its composition. I've never felt that way since about anything.


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## billeames (Jan 17, 2014)

Listening to the right CD player, in this case Simaudio Andromeda (it has a big sound),
Mahler 8 Solti finale, last 4 mins,
Bruckner 4 VPO Haitink, all
Beethoven 9th Isserstedt VPO movement 1. 
Bruckner TeDeum, beginning Haitink VPO

I wrote a note to myself. "When I am sad, I listen to luxury music". The above are examples of that.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Classical music ''purifies'' m y soul and mind and keeps me focused when doing important or work that I dont like, as a ''bg noise''.


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