# Music that transports your soul



## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

Have you ever listened to a piece of music that made you feel like you had an out-of-body-experience? I remember I had one when I first 'got' the fourth movement of Mahler's _9th symphony_. I was walking in the halls in my school listening to my mp3 player, and right when the strings started crying the opening theme I felt like I was no longer walking on Earth, but lifted somewhere up in the sky. 

Another piece that does this to me is Schubert's lied _Der Tod und das Maedchen._ Perhaps I'm just crazy, but I'm curious to see if anybody else gets this feeling from certain pieces of music.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

I've always felt my soul being transported into a wonderful place whenever I hear the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no.2, 2nd mvt. From the flute accompanying the piano at the beginning and really, throughout the piece. Most particularly, however, from 6:00 through the end of the movement; on this particular recording:


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

The Magnificat of Liszt's Dante Symphony.


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## Guest (Dec 25, 2011)

I have over 4,000 CDs and many hours of downloads, mostly of contemporary classical.

Shall I just start listing them one by one?


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

I once listened to Stockhausens Klavierstucke, and my soul has never been seen since.


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## Alberich (Dec 22, 2011)

Whenever I listen to Lohengrin Prelude to Act III, I get the feeling I'm in a Heinkel He-111 flying over London and through a couple dozen RAF squadrons.
With 1812, it's Borodino.


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## hespdelk (Mar 19, 2011)

When I first came to know Bruckner's 8th symphony the adagio movement gave me this feeling.. it was as though I had a fever. I had similar experiences with Bruckner's 9th and the first movement of Mahler's incomplete 10th symphony at different times. Wagner does this for me also sometimes, particularly the opening preludes of Lohengrin and Parsifal.

There have been others but they don't come to mind right now.. the first act of Puccini's Turandot has done it for me as well..

Its a random effect for me, it doesn't happen everytime I listen to one of these pieces, I suppose I have to be in the right frame of mind.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

1. Parsifal
2. Parsifal 
3. Mass in B minor


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Alberich said:


> Whenever I listen to Lohengrin Prelude to Act III, I get the feeling I'm in a Heinkel He-111 flying over London and through a couple dozen RAF squadrons.
> With 1812, it's Borodino.


 I image instead on Auschwitz-Birkenau sounding at the reception of a train with jews.

With me, it is Tchaikowsky piano trio.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

The timeless answer to this question has been Allegri's Miserere.


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## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

Chopin Piano Concerto no. 1


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Pärt's "Fratres" (violin and piano version) as heard on this recording:


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Messiaen.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OP: Every time I listen to one prelude and fugue or all 48 of the J.S. Well Tempered Clavier on harpsichord.

"Transports my soul". Good way of putting it.


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## Guest (Apr 2, 2015)

I do not accept there is such a thing as a "soul", so what do I get transported?


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Haha, me neither, dogen, but I accept the various connotations that come with the word "soul". So, for the purpose of this thread, if I had to narrow it down to one single piece that moved my "soul", it'd undoubtedly be the "Heiliger Dankegesang" from Beethoven's 15th string quartet.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

I've never had an out-of-body experience from listening to music (or in any scenario other than perhaps dreaming), but I've heard what I recall to be really incredible music during certain dreams...no idea who composed it. Once I was even playing a Bach fugue on a piano in c minor, but realized it didn't sound like any of his c minor fugues, and woke up like 'wtf'? Oh yeah, I met bartok as well.


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## pentaquine (Mar 4, 2015)

Schumann


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

All good music does that for me, but just to give one example: most of J.S. Bach's music, with a slight preference for the Masses.

* Oh yes . . . Lord forbid one should have a soul! The horror!


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

One piece that I found incredibly moving is Kilar's first piano concerto. The first two movements are repetitive and profound. The third movement is meh in comparison, it's just a rowdy toccata with a silly ending


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## Guest (Apr 2, 2015)

OK, I'll play then.

Maybe cliched, but Gorecki's 3rd for me.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Cosmos said:


> The third movement is meh in comparison, it's just a rowdy toccata with a silly ending


He was a film composer, what can one expect.


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

I was listening to Copland's Appalachian Spring (suite, full orchestra)once, and doing a kind of meditation. I was lying on the floor listening, breathing and experiencing the music on a spiritual level. It's hard to describe, but as I listened to each section, I felt "farther out" than with the previous section. As the music reached the Shaker Variations, I felt like I was "floating", and as the last variation came along, (2/2, tutti, ff) I felt "cleansed". The last chorale section of the piece and coda brought me back down to Earth so to speak, and at the end, I felt refreshed and lifted out of a depression I had been in.

Music hath charms .......


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I was at a planetarium show that used parts of _Also sprach Zarathustra_ to accompanied views of the night sky. At the climax of the gorgeous string music that follows the opening of the piece the whole sky was made to spin over our heads, and I totally lost touch with physical reality and felt as if if I were among the stars. Amazing experience. The piece alone has never made me feel that way, however.

Absent planetarium shows, moments from Wagner's _Parsifal_ can certainly lift me to another plane, especially the final scene, as can the gloria, credo, and sanctus of Bach's _B-minor Mass._


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Lohengrin prelude


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Adagio to Beethoven't 9th symphony.
Beethoven't piano concerto No. 5, especially the first two movements.
Eine Alpensinfonie.
The leitmotiv of Valhalla in "Das Rheingold".
Parsifal.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Slow movement Mozart Piano Concerto No 23
This just does 'something' to me that no other music has ever done. Words fail me on the effect it has, my wife says I am getting more emotional as I get older (she is probably right) but boy is it moving


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## Andolink (Oct 29, 2012)

Thomas Sanderling leading the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in *Mahler's* _Symphony No. 6 in A minor_.

Breathtakingly engaging and emotionally draining. I guess that's something like "soul transporting"??


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Bach's B minor mass does a great job at that.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The Prelude to Act One of Parsifal can transport me in a very fine performance.


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht

Best Regards, 

George


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

There are hundreds of pieces of music that transport my soul, though perhaps only Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet could also transport my body.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Blancrocher said:


> There are hundreds of pieces of music that transport my soul, though perhaps only Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet could also transport my body.


Curiously I made the same joke in STI and chose Stockhausen as an example, but not that piece specifically.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

A very good performance of the second movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony can transport me.
More often than not, I hear a mediocre one that puts me to sleep.
The movement needs a "pulse". Something that Toscanini "got".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Sorry — misguided humor deleted.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

hpowders said:


> The Prelude to Act One of Parsifal can transport me in a very fine performance.


The ending, last movement of the opera does a great job too.


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