# Violence in classical music?



## ericdxx (Jul 7, 2013)

Is there any piece of classical music that makes you think of ruthless, meaningless, destructive violence?


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## DaddyGeorge (Mar 16, 2020)

No. Fortunately, I think such thoughts avoid me in general, not to mention in connection with music...


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Immediate connection when seeing thread title: second movement of Shostakovich 10.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

The first movement of Aaron Jay Kernis' second symphony.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ericdxx said:


> Is there any piece of classical music that makes you think of ruthless, meaningless, destructive violence?


Trevor Wishart Red Bird


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The fights in Monteverdi's Tancredi, from 6.15 and about 13.15 here


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

First movement of Prokofiev's second symphony.
Mosolov's The Iron Foundry


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

ericdxx said:


> Is there any piece of classical music that makes you think of ruthless, meaningless, destructive violence?


don't know as to 'meaningless' but The Coriolan Overture must be about violence:


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Violence in classical music? *



ericdxx said:


> Is there any piece of classical music that makes you think of ruthless, meaningless, destructive violence?


Yes. Anything by Philip Glass. Hearing that stuff makes me want to punch holes into the wall. Arghhh!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

There is violence in several operas - Wozzeck is an example - but of the OP's 3 adjectives (ruthless, meaningless, destructive) it is very rare for all three to apply.

There is also music that depicts battles - Alexander Nevsky - which are by nature violent although the music is not usually really about the violence.

And there is music that portrays consequences - for example, Kullervo paints a violent world and the the story concerns the aftermath and impact of a violent act.

There is also a lot of music that may suggest violence to us but often, if the composer had a programme at all, it is not about violence but chaos or machines or something awesome.

I can't think of any music that portrays and explores violence _as it actually is_ and I suspect it would be impossible to enjoy such music.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Always.


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## Ekim the Insubordinate (May 24, 2015)

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring - in the end, the chosen victim dances herself to death. That is pretty violent.

But the question is whether there is any music that makes you


> think of ruthless, meaningless, destructive violence


.

For that, then I have to say that Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" which set to music various expressions of loss of children - a mother losing her child in the Silesian war, the inscription from a girl on the wall of a Gestapo cell to her mother, and the Virgin Mary speaking to her son, Jesus. All communicate to me the sorrow brought on by ruthless, meaningless, destructive violence.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Zhdanov said:


> don't know as to 'meaningless' but The Coriolan Overture must be about violence:


Coriolanus is about the love of two men for each other, and about the unfairness of social inequality.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Coriolanus is about the love of two men for each other,


no, you are mistaken... hear the music? where's love in it?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Zhdanov said:


> no, you are mistaken... hear the music? where's love in it?


The play. I meant the play. I don't listen to Beethoven any more.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

In addition to the Prokofiev 2, his Scythian Suite.

The beginning and end of Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Main theme here:


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Stabbing Theme in *Psycho*.

*Bernard Herrmann*


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Coriolanus is about the love of two men for each other, and about the unfairness of social inequality.


No it's not.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Violence in music??
Try - 
Miraculous Mandarin [Martinon/CSO]
Rite of Spring [Bernstein, Solti, Mehta]
Mahler - Sym #6 - Solti/CSO [vicious!!]

Shostakovich - lots of examples!!:
Lady Macbeth [most of the piece lol!!], 
Sym #8/II,III [Try Solti, Mravinsky]
Sym #10/II - Mravinsky, Solti - or the ultimate = Stokowski/CSO [!!!]

Honegger - Sym #3/III - Mravinsky/LenPO - [brutal!!!]
Vaughan Wiliams Sym #4 - [V-Wms, Boult]


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Hovhaness symphony #50, Mount St. Helens. Final movement (III) depicts volcanic eruption.






I suggest this CD. A set of earplugs was packed into the spine of my copy.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> No it's not.


Yes it is! Coriolanus is a dreadful snob who supports the old order and its inequalities; when I saw it in Stratford Coriolanus was clearly Auphidias's lover - there's a very sexy fight scene when they meet after Coriolanus's banishment.

Or is the Beethoven thing not about Shakespeare? Maybe some German wrote a Coriolan. I don't nothing about Beethoven really.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Kurt Weill's opera _Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny_ has a scene where someone is electrocuted.

Berhard Herrmann's _Psycho _music scene of stabbing on the stairway and in the shower is supposed to be an evocatoin of the stuffed brids in the house shrieking.

Miroslav Kabelac wrote 8 symphonies, most have some violent content. Among other things in his life, the 1968 Prague spring turned to repression, then his wife was abducted and murdered by communists. His lie wasn't very happy and is reflected in his music.

Hanns Eisle's _Deutsche Sinfonie _among other compositions has violent content. He is the lesser known of the three students of Schoenberg.

Perhaps the best known, Alban Berg, wrote a famous_ violin concerto_ that is interpreted to be extraordinarily violent in certain sections.


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## R3PL4Y (Jan 21, 2016)

Vaughan Williams' sixth symphony and to a degree the fourth symphony


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Or is the Beethoven thing not about Shakespeare? Maybe some German wrote a Coriolan.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolan_Overture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Marcius_Coriolanus


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Strauss's _Elektra_ is all about violence. A real shriekfest.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Shostakovich: _Symphony No. 11 in G minor, "The Year 1905", Op. 103_ - II. _The Ninth of January_


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Boulez' _Sonatina for flute & piano,_ and his _Second Piano Sonata._


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## Donna Elvira (Nov 12, 2017)

Verdi's Rigoletto from Act III, "Scena e Terzetto Tempesta"


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Several operas. Two in particular that come to my mind:

R. Strauss - _Elektra
_Puccini - _Tosca

_There are probably too many operas to list actually. Opera can be quite dark at times!

Also,

Shostakovich's 14th Symphony 
Prokofiev - "The Crusaders in Pskov" from _Alexander Nevsky _(the scene that part comes from in the movie certainly fits the OP's criteria. Chilling music with it!)
Stravinsky - _ Le Sacre du Printemps _


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

A well known example of violence is in the scene where the Jews ask for Christ's crucifixion in Bach's St John Passion, from _Die Jüden aber schrieen und sprachen: Lässest du diesen los, so bist du des Kaisers Freund nicht._

Strange that the music for the auto da fe scene in Don Carlos is not really violent.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

One of John Cale's student compositions was at the Royal Academy of Music, where he walked out on stage and proceeded to destroy a grand piano with a sledge hammer.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> One of John Cale's student compositions was at the Royal Academy of Music, where he walked out on stage and proceeded to destroy a grand piano with a sledge hammer.


I never heard about that during my time there, got any refs? I have heard a similar story in relation to a certain Mr Kropp, who took an axe to a dodgy piano in Bangkok during his recital.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Veljo Tormis' amazing _Raua needmine_ (Curse Upon Iron), invokes ancient shamanistic traditions to construct an allegory about the evils of war. The text viscerally decries the development of iron from rusty ore to sword to modern "cannons, tanks and airplanes...and warheads." The climax of the piece may be interpreted as a mimetic representation of an atomic bomb exploding and wreaking death and destruction on humanity and nature alike.


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## Sequentia (Nov 23, 2011)

Violence is one thing, but "meaningless violence" is another matter entirely. If you mean music that evokes nihilistic thoughts or a sense of futility, there's a lot of 20th-century music that fits the bill: much of Xenakis's orchestral music, Ornstein's early works (a title like _Suicide in an Airplane_ speaks for itself) and some of his later music (e.g. the final climax of his Piano Sonata No. 8), some of Ligeti's later _Études_, or various works by Boulez featuring the piano (the _Sonatine_, Piano Sonata No. 2, and both _Incises_ and _Sur Incises_). Last but not least, I'm tempted to mention some of Messiaen's more explosive works, though the spiritual dimension or inspiration of those would make the "meaningless" part of "meaningless violence" questionable, to say the least.

Kabeláč was mentioned earlier and his 8th Symphony is certainly a good contender. There are many violent climaxes in Sorabji, but I'm not sure about them being "meaningless". His _Étude No. 75_ is one of the most violent pieces I know, but has a strong sense of inner struggle and overcoming obstacles (though ultimately failing), while _Étude No. 69_, one of the most tragic and hopeless pieces Sorabji ever produced, does not have such a violent climax. Lastly, I'd include the ending of Sorabji's Piano Symphony No. 4, which is the only piece of music I know that strikes me as a musical "depiction" of suicide.

I was on the verge of listing no further pieces and composers, and then realized no post appears to mention Penderecki's _Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima_. Although the piece did not originally carry that title, "senseless" (or meaningless) violence does not get more senseless than that.

Some links:

Xenakis:






Ornstein:










Ligeti:






Boulez:






Messiaen:






Kabeláč:






Sorabji:






Penderecki:


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> One of John Cale's student compositions was at the Royal Academy of Music, where he walked out on stage and proceeded to destroy a grand piano with a sledge hammer.


Those were the days that the government paid for our tertiary education.


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

Sequentia said:


> Violence is one thing, but "meaningless violence" is another matter entirely. If you mean music that evokes nihilistic thoughts or a sense of futility, there's a lot of 20th-century music that fits the bill: much of Xenakis's orchestral music


Xenakis' music is the opposite of nihilistic.


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## Sequentia (Nov 23, 2011)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Xenakis' music is the opposite of nihilistic.


Which has no connection to "evoking" nihilistic thoughts. Care to clarify what the opposite of nihilism is? Can't be religious music, of which Xenakis hardly composed any.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

Sequentia said:


> Which has no connection to "evoking" nihilistic thoughts. Care to clarify what the opposite of nihilism is? Can't be religious music, of which Xenakis hardly composed any.


I don't think the music, the notes themselves, can be inherently nihilistic or religious... music is music and notes are notes. On the other hand, if the composer had such intention then the piece, but in my opinion still not the music, would be e.g. nihilistic.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

mikeh375 said:


> I never heard about that during my time there, got any refs? I have heard a similar story in relation to a certain Mr Kropp, who took an axe to a dodgy piano in Bangkok during his recital.


Sorry, It's one of those things I remember reading in a magazine. I tried to trace it, with no luck.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Jeffrey Stolet: Concerto for Orchestra, Chainsaw, & Cow


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Sequentia said:


> Which has no connection to "evoking" nihilistic thoughts. Care to clarify what the opposite of nihilism is? Can't be religious music, of which Xenakis hardly composed any.


Xenakis, strangely enough, saw himself as a bit of a guru, a shaman.

Was Xenakis influenced by Scriabin? Prometheus is a sort of polytope I suppose, though clearly not site specific. Xenakis lets us know quite a bit about his ideas about music and mysticism, which may or may not resemble the ideas Scriabin took from theosophy.

In _Xenakis on Xenakis_ we read (p 18)



> The power of music is such that it transports you from one state to another. Like alcohol. Like love. If I wanted to learn how to compose music, maybe it was to acquire this power. The power of Dionysus


And on page 1 of _Music and Achitecture_ he informs us that



> Art, and, above all, music, has a fundamental function, which is to catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expression. It must aim [...] to draw towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect. If a work of art succeeds in this undertaking even for a single moment, it attains its goal.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Since I see classical music as part of the search for beauty and truth, it seems convoluted that the search for violence should be part of the enjoyment of classical music. In this sense, while I tend to percieve heavy metal and some rap music as a very angry and violent, I see no beauty in it and do my part to avoid it.

On the other hand, I remember when I first heard Benjamin Britten's _War Requiem_, I thought the music was too beaitiful to be memorial to war. Taking into account Wilfred Owen's poetry and all, I saw it as still a Romantic take on war with those brave, beautiful, soldiers dying in the field, and I didn't experience the full carnage, especially the psychological carnage, and the violence against women that is always part of war. In this sense, Shostakovich's _Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk_ is much more violent than Britten's _War Requiem_ in that it brings violence against women to the fore in stark and very disturbing terms. But why would I want to listen in order to become disturbed?

Gorecki's _Symphony #3 "Song of Sorrow"_, takes the women's viewpoint of war more into account, although I concede that I was deeply moved by Gorecki's 3rd even before I know a thing about the subject matter or even bothered to look up the English translation of the Polish lyrics. The sadness that violence brings is certainly there, but sadness is not violence, only a reaction to violence.

Then there is _Mars, the God of War_ from Holst's _Planets_, not violent but fun, the intermediary step between Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_ and William's _Darth Vader March_. Schoenberg's _Survivor from Warsaw_ is an incredibly piercing and, for a twelve-tone work, a rather compelling and listenable picture of man's inhumanity to man. Which brings me back to heavy metal and rap, which I can easily identify as violent but in no way compelling or listenable, at least to my own ears.

It's been theorized that the success of Christianity as a world religion is in part because of the Christian Bible's sense fo humanity. People argue as to whether or not the Bible is a "book of peace". It is. But it's also a book of war, violence, jealousy, envy, lust, intolerance, prejudice, despair, etc. People think it would be great if we could just take all of the violence from the Bible and just leave in the "love your nieghbor" parts, but then we would rob the Bible of it's humanity; it's embrace of the totality of the human condition. So now the search for beauty and truth also involves the embrace of the human condition. John Elliot Gardner said in his book on the life of Bach (and I'm parphrasing from memory) that "Bach was great because he managed to at once touch upon what is human and what is divine."

I guess the question as to what place violence in classical music has brings forth even more questions than answers.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Nam June Paik: Klavier-integral

https://www.mumok.at/en/klavier-integral


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