# atypical emotional reactions to pieces



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Our emotional responses to music are subjective, but in many cases they are also widely shared. It would take a very unusual listener to find Mahler's sixth symphony cheerful, or Schubert's "Trout" quintet gloomy.

I'm interested in when our individual reactions depart from the "consensus" reaction to a piece, and how often this happens.

I'll start: I've always found Brahms' second symphony kind of sad - the whole thing, up to and including the brassy final chord. It has an autumnal or twilight quality for me, like it's looking back on happiness past, saying goodbye to it. I've never heard anyone else say this about the piece, and judging from his ironic note to his publisher about it, Brahms certainly didn't feel that way himself.

Anyone else?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I don't know if this is atypical or not, but I get very specific feelings from Schoenberg's Five Pieces for orchestra, the second one, called "Verganges."

The little celesta melody which recurs disturbs me, like a childhood memory is returning. It is both sad, and obsessive, as if the memory will not fade, but keeps returning. It's one of the most profound musical statements I've ever heard, yet I can't even get on CD the recording of it that I "imprinted" on, the one with Robert Craft on Columbia. All other versions fall short for me.

The fluttering woodwinds sound like dead leaves blowing. The high tinkling of the celesta returns there, too, doing a trill.

Here it is, from vinyl. The movement I refer to starts at about 2:30.

~


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I don't find Saint-Saens Danse Macabre remotely macabre. I feel very little of the reverence I'm supposed to feel toward Mozart. I don't know if either of these counts, but they are the exceptions. Usually I'm in the expected emotional state.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Our emotional responses to music are subjective, but in many cases they are also widely shared. It would take a very unusual listener to find Mahler's sixth symphony cheerful, or Schubert's "Trout" quintet gloomy.
> 
> I'm interested in when our individual reactions depart from the "consensus" reaction to a piece, and how often this happens.
> 
> ...


The first thing to say is that my emotional reaction is never to music but always to music in performance. I experience Brahms 2 played by Furtwangler as emotionally totally different to the same symphony played by Harnoncourt.

Sometimes, where the author's intentions are clear, it's just a bad performance which makes you feel strangely. This happened for me with Froberger's suite 20 played by Klosiewicz, the suite is explicitly a meditation on one's own death. But the way the Gigue comes in after the allemande in Klosiewicz 's performance, I just can't make sense of it at all, suddenly I felt happy, ready to dance! A similar thing for Bruggen's happy performance of Ich Habe Gunug. Surely those things are just a nonsense way of playing the music . . . Of course a bad performance may be very enjoyable and interesting music making, as it is in the case of the Klosiewicz.

One I'm thinking hard about right now is Rubsam's second recording of J S Bach's Trio sonatas -- suddenly the music, instead of sounding light and cheerful, sounds deep and cosmic and complex. Revealing performance, bad performance or what?

I don't know about consensus reactions -- whose consensus, Talk Classical's? I've NEVER found Mahler 6/i particularly tragic, Brahms 4 even less so.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I've NEVER found Mahler 6/i particularly tragic, Brahms 4 even less so.


How would you describe your reactions to those pieces?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> How would you describe your reactions to those pieces?


I can't answer that with total confidence. I remember the Mahler made me think of a vigorous march. The Brahms, well I don't see it as a very clear thing emotionally, it sends me up and it brings me down. I vaguely remember thinking that Furtwangler was more tragic than I heard from others - but with him you never know if he's playing the music or making it up. There's a live Brahms 1 from Giulini on BBC which is really tragic.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

^ Not wishing to speak for Mandryka, to some extent I find Mahler's 6th more terrifying, disturbing, and claustrophobic than tragic.

One great example is the first movement of Beethoven's C sharp minor quartet. Wager called it the most melancholic music, but I find it contemplative, and perhaps even optimistic as it sequences the fragments of the fugal theme upward, it feels like it strives to the stars.

And finally... the first movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony. It's so powerful! And yet, I can't label any sort of emotion or story with it. It would be a mistake to pigeonhole it as tragic, or angry, or stormy. And it would also be a mistake to call it merely abstract. In fact, I could describe Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra this way too.

If you look at Webern's wikipedia page, it says that most of his late works are inspired by the death of his mother. But I don't hear that... I hear a more friendly, warm dialogue between the Klangfarben instruments. The string trio feels like three young spirits emoting in dialogue, and enjoying it so much.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The problem with doing this exercise is _words_. If it's hard to say how we feel about music, it's just as hard to say what we mean by the words we use. Try to use indefinite words to describe ambiguous music, and where are you? Is Mahler's 6th tragic? What is tragedy? Is it Oedipus, Mimi dying of TB in _La Boheme_, or 9/11?


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## Sina (Aug 3, 2012)

Our pasts, experiences and unconscious have much to do with our emotional reactions to things, where all senses twist and make a complex. There's this food I used to hate because its name resembled a faith (I wouldn't mention to prevent promoting hatred) because it had made my life and everyone I knew a real hell. Taste, smell, and words intertwined here. Not surprisingly to myself, every single note from Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and any baroque music sends a chill down my spine, while many of the music from that period are so cheerful for so many people. Also Messiaen is my favorite composer but no wonder I have never heard some of his most famous pieces, organ works. I also had hard time exploring composers like Penderecki, Gubaidulina, Pärt and such, but eventually ended up adoring their instrumental works.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

SeptimalTritone said:


> If you look at Webern's wikipedia page, it says that most of his late works are inspired by the death of his mother. But I don't hear that... I hear a more friendly, warm dialogue between the Klangfarben instruments. The string trio feels like three young spirits emoting in dialogue, and enjoying it so much.


Actually, that would be his earlier, pre-12 tone works. I think many of the 12-tone ones have a calmer, more mystical emotional palette.

As for Mahler's Sixth, I'd say the first movement traverses a range of emotions from claustrophobia to ecstasy to the solitude of open air to a final Pyrrhic victory.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but when Mahler named his 6th symphony "tragic" I think he was referring more to dramatic tragedy than emotional tragedy.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Gee, I wish you'd asked this question a few years ago, isorhythm  Then, I would have known what I am supposed to be listening for :lol: Unfortunately, my memory is not so long, but two Shostakovich works come to mind:

Violin Sonata
Viola Sonata

I have read numerous times that these works are so depressing that they are unlistenable, that Shostakovich was expressing his own demise in them, etc. I have never found them depressing. In fact, the Violin Sonata, I think, has a lively dance movement. They are deeply introspective to me, truly great works, but not depressing. I think many people, likely coming from the pop world (yes, this is a generalization), find any music that is brooding and thoughtful to be depressing, because it isn't animated and catchy. Conversely, I find music that is cerebral and reflective to be all the more listenable.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> Gee, I wish you'd asked this question a few years ago, isorhythm  Then, I would have known what I am supposed to be listening for :lol: Unfortunately, my memory is not so long, but two Shostakovich works come to mind:
> 
> Violin Sonata
> Viola Sonata
> ...


You know, a piece like the Shostakovich viola sonata or Symphony 14 may be about death, and not be sad. Presumably that's how Korrentzis views the symphony, and I've read all sorts of very complex ideas about how Russian culture sees death. Not everyone sees death as sad or depressing, on the contrary.

Same for Bach in all those catatas which are about death. I think this raises all sorts of issues about how best to perform them now.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

violadude said:


> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but when Mahler named his 6th symphony "tragic" I think he was referring more to dramatic tragedy than emotional tragedy.


Tragedy isn't an emotion ever, is it? Though if I remember right Aristotle thought it was linked to pity and fear. It's easy to forget this sort of thing, I've made that mistake myself. I guess when people say tragic they just mean doom and gloom, which is obviously a gross oversimplification for Mahler 6.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Same for Bach in all those catatas which are about death. I think this raises all sorts of issues about how best to perform them now.


This makes me think of the final aria of _Ich habe genug_ ("Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod" - "I rejoice at my death"), written in a lively 6/8. It's very hard for a modern listener to know what to make of it.

Our reaction to the opening aria is probably very different from Bach's, too - it expresses "world-weariness," but a modern person's world-weariness is likely very different from his, especially a modern person who isn't Christian.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

I was at a performance of Stockhausen's Kontakt two years ago, and everyone else was loving it. It made me physically ill.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> This makes me think of the final aria of _Ich habe genug_ ("Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod" - "I rejoice at my death"), written in a lively 6/8. It's very hard for a modern listener to know what to make of it.
> 
> Our reaction to the opening aria is probably very different from Bach's, too - it expresses "world-weariness," but a modern person's world-weariness is likely very different from his, especially a modern person who isn't Christian.


Yes, and not just in the final aria, it was when I found this recording of Ich Habe Genug that I began to see how complex these issues are






Contrast the affects in a more modern approach


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

The "Tristan Chord" doesn't sound at all to me like longing or yearning the way someone who's in love would, it just sounds like power, not very pathetic the way a human emotion would be.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> The "Tristan Chord" doesn't sound at all to me like longing or yearning the way someone who's in love would, it just sounds like power, not very pathetic the way a human emotion would be.


Would you expect it to? Surely the Tristan chord is too ambiguous to express any nameable emotion, unless ambiguity itself can be called an emotion. How could it, as a single chord, out of context, evoke the qualities of longing or yearning? Time and movement are necessary for that, and some melodic and harmonic gesture. So, at the beginning of _Tristan und Isolde_, the chord serves as the unstable pivot between two gestures: it's the destination of the first - the unison minor sixth which rises out of nowhere and exhausts its energy immediately, descending chromatically and resolving into the chord - and it's the birthplace of the second, the chromatic scale that rises out of the chord, ending on an unresolved dominant seventh which hangs for a moment in questioning silence before the whole process repeats itself, twice, at progressively higher tonal levels and higher levels of tension and expectation. It's the whole remarkable passage that gives the chord meaning - and still leaves that meaning ambiguous and in need of the whole prelude and the whole opera. By the end of _Tristan_, its tensions finally stilled in Isolde's love-death, we understand better the function of the famous chord in expressing tragic, unquenchable longing. But we can never understand this unsettling music completely, as we can never understand completely what it is in ourselves that responds to it.

I think our attempts to name the emotions musical works are said to express, or seem to express to us, are attempts to simplify the complex and define the indefinable. It isn't surprising that people disagree about what music says to them, or that some conclude that such disagreement proves that music cannot express anything at all and that all attributions of emotional expressiveness are purely conventional and acculturated. But I believe that the "music expresses particular emotions" and the "music expresses only itself" positions commit contrary errors, and both arise from a lack of insight into how music does what it manifestly does, as its forms and dynamic patterns engage the forms and dynamic patterns of human perception, ideation, and feeling.


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

Woodduck said:


> Would you expect it to? Surely the Tristan chord is too ambiguous to express any nameable emotion, unless ambiguity itself can be called an emotion. How could it, as a single chord, out of context, evoke the qualities of longing or yearning? Time and movement are necessary for that, and some melodic and harmonic gesture. So, at the beginning of _Tristan und Isolde_, the chord serves as the unstable pivot between two gestures: it's the destination of the first - the unison minor sixth which rises out of nowhere and exhausts its energy immediately, descending chromatically and resolving into the chord - and it's the birthplace of the second, the chromatic scale that rises out of the chord, ending on an unresolved dominant seventh which hangs for a moment in questioning silence before the whole process repeats itself, twice, at progressively higher tonal levels and higher levels of tension and expectation. It's the whole remarkable passage that gives the chord meaning - and still leaves that meaning ambiguous and in need of the whole prelude and the whole opera. By the end of _Tristan_, its tensions finally stilled in Isolde's love-death, we understand better the function of the famous chord in expressing tragic, unquenchable longing. But we can never understand this unsettling music completely, as we can never understand completely what it is in ourselves that responds to it.
> 
> I think our attempts to name the emotions musical works are said to express, or seem to express to us, are attempts to simplify the complex and define the indefinable. It isn't surprising that people disagree about what music says to them, or that some conclude that such disagreement proves that music cannot express anything at all and that all attributions of emotional expressiveness are purely conventional and acculturated. But I believe that the "music expresses particular emotions" and the "music expresses only itself" positions commit contrary errors, and both arise from a lack of insight into how music does what it manifestly does, as its forms and dynamic patterns engage the forms and dynamic patterns of human perception, ideation, and feeling.


The orchestration it's given in the prelude is very restrained, when it appears in Act II (especially the part where they say "I am the world"....whatever that is supposed to mean) it's given a very lush and even brassy orchestration and I think it sounds like something very powerful, but beyond human, kind of impersonal, I guess it's an overused phrase to say "from another world" but it sounds to me distinctly super-human. It sounds kind of invulnerable when it's not a few soft woodwinds and a cello playing it, which is why it really doesn't sound like any fragile aspect of the human psyche like longing.

On the other hand, the Valsung love theme really sounds like what people say the Tristan Chord sounds like to me, even though it doesn't end on a dominant 7th chord, the phrase is always unending, incomplete and taken up by another leitmotif or has an extension of some kind instead of concluding on its own. Yet it has a weak, vulnerable character, and the brightness of it at least suggests something positive about the obvious subject matter, whereas the Tristan Chord is like the indifferent power of some sorcerer's potion.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> The orchestration it's given in the prelude is very restrained, when it appears in Act II (especially the part where they say "I am the world"....whatever that is supposed to mean) it's given a very lush and even brassy orchestration and I think it sounds like something very powerful, but beyond human, kind of impersonal, I guess it's an overused phrase to say "from another world" but *it sounds to me distinctly super-human*. It sounds kind of invulnerable when it's not a few soft woodwinds and a cello playing it, which is why it really doesn't sound like any fragile aspect of the human psyche like longing.
> 
> On the other hand, the Valsung love theme really sounds like what people say the Tristan Chord sounds like to me, even though it doesn't end on a dominant 7th chord, the phrase is always unending, incomplete and taken up by another leitmotif or has an extension of some kind instead of concluding on its own. Yet it has a weak, vulnerable character, and the brightness of it at least suggests something positive about the obvious subject matter, whereas *the Tristan Chord is like the indifferent power of some sorcerer's potion.*


Don't you know the story of Tristan and Isolde? In the original legend, their love is caused by _the indifferent power of some __sorcerer's potion!_ Wagner, it's true, goes to the trouble of "modernizing" the tale by having the pair already in love before they take the fatal drink. They drink what they think is poison, choosing death rather than life apart, and so the substitution of a different drink - the so-called "love potion" - by Isolde's handmaid is transformed from an agent of magic to a simple agent of release from inhibition: realizing that they aren't going to die, they can no longer conceal their love. Wagner accompanies the drinking of the potion with the music of the opening of the prelude, and so gives us a very clear idea of what he thinks it means. It is not supposed to be about "love" in a sentimental sense, but about a terrible "magic," a "superhuman" power beyond explaining or resisting, that grips two people and ultimately destroys them. _Tristan und isolde_ is not _Romeo and Juliet_! The music alone is enough to make that clear. Sounds to me like you get it!

:tiphat:


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Ravel's Bolero makes me think of a girl dancing for a bunch of guys. I think it's supposed to mean something else.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> This makes me think of the final aria of _Ich habe genug_ ("Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod" - "I rejoice at my death"), written in a lively 6/8. It's very hard for a modern listener to know what to make of it.
> 
> Our reaction to the opening aria is probably very different from Bach's, too - it expresses "world-weariness," but a modern person's world-weariness is likely very different from his, especially a modern person who isn't Christian.


as it's about someone preparing for death it is little wonder it sounds that way!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I do think the reaction to the music also depends on the performance to some extent. Hear Perahia play the Mozart's concerto 27 and it sounds playful. Hear Gilels and it sounds deeply resigned.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Don't you know the story of Tristan and Isolde? In the original legend, their love is caused by _the indifferent power of some __sorcerer's potion!_ Wagner, it's true, goes to the trouble of "modernizing" the tale by having the pair already in love before they take the fatal drink. They drink what they think is poison, choosing death rather than life apart, and so the substitution of a different drink - the so-called "love potion" - by Isolde's handmaid is transformed from an agent of magic to a simple agent of release from inhibition: realizing that they aren't going to die, they can no longer conceal their love. Wagner accompanies the drinking of the potion with the music of the opening of the prelude, and so gives us a very clear idea of what he thinks it means. It is not supposed to be about "love" in a sentimental sense, but about a terrible "magic," a "superhuman" power beyond explaining or resisting, that grips two people and ultimately destroys them. _Tristan und isolde_ is not _Romeo and Juliet_! The music alone is enough to make that clear. Sounds to me like you get it!
> 
> :tiphat:


The love (whatever it is) in Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare's version anyway) also grips them and destroys them.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> The love (whatever it is) in Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare's version anyway) also grips them and destroys them.


What's your point? Are you comparing a 19th-century German opera based on medieval legend with an Elizabethan non-musical play about urban Renaissance teen love? Wouldn't you tend to expect significant differences?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> What's your point? Are you comparing a 19th-century German opera based on medieval legend with an Elizabethan non-musical play about urban Renaissance teen love? Wouldn't you tend to expect significant differences?


Of course. Shakespeare didn't write music but he did write inccomperable verse. However the point is that the theme is basically the same - star crossed lovers whose love ultimately leads to their death. I would have thought you'd have noticed that. Of course I realise there are differences but I also notice the similarities.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> [...] I think our attempts to name the emotions musical works are said to express, or seem to express to us, are attempts to simplify the complex and define the indefinable. It isn't surprising that people disagree about what music says to them, or that some conclude that such disagreement proves that music cannot express anything at all and that all attributions of emotional expressiveness are purely conventional and acculturated [...]


Yes, this all rather reeks of *Deryck Cooke's* _The Language of Music_:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-Music-Clarendon-Paperbacks/dp/0198161808


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

After multiple listens, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis doesn't feel religious to me at all. I don't hear the glory of God, I hear the glory of human achievement.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Cosmos said:


> After multiple listens, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis doesn't feel religious to me at all. I don't hear the glory of God, I hear the glory of human achievement.


Interesting. I don't feel the _Missa_ as especially "religious" either, but then I feel that way about Classical and early Romantic period religious-themed works on the whole. Assuming now that by "religious" we mean Christian (what the term means to a Hindu is another subject), I find music of this era lacking in the blend of pain and mystery I think basic to expressing the central Christian doctrines of sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. The "Enlightenment" sensibility was rather careful to exclude any awareness of the incomprehensible, the uncontrollable, the frightening and the overwhelming - what aesthetic theory then called the "sublime" as opposed to the "beautiful" - from its artistic products. Just compare a mass of Haydn to Bach's B-minor.

Beethoven's _Missa_ is also something of a compositional tour de force - rather strenuously so, I think. That may contribute to the conspicuous sense of "pride" it displays. For me there's more of what I'd call "spirituality" in his chamber music than in his public-scale statements.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Likewise, the I feel Beethoven's _Missa_ more respectable as a composition than anything religious about it. Maybe Beethoven's idiom is much instrumental than truly vocal.


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## Adam Weber (Apr 9, 2015)

brotagonist said:


> Gee, I wish you'd asked this question a few years ago, isorhythm  Then, I would have known what I am supposed to be listening for :lol: Unfortunately, my memory is not so long, but two Shostakovich works come to mind:
> 
> Violin Sonata
> Viola Sonata
> ...


Those are my two favorite works by Shostakovich, and I feel much the same way. Personally, I hardly ever find myself depressed by music. When coupled with images or other goading, sometimes, yes, and then in my memory that music can sadden me, but music in and of itself seems incapable of depressing me. It can put me in an introspective, somewhat cold and reverent mood, but I still find that experience very enjoyable in its own way and completely different from depression.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I don't know if it's atypical, it may appear dark, gloomy and destructive at first, yet I find Scriabin's Vers La Flamme a very energizing and uplifting piece of music. I get these radiant positive vibes from it. It sends the chills down my spine everytime (especially in the way Horowitz brings it to an end).


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Pachelbel's Canon in D sounds like devil's music to me.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> Pachelbel's Canon in D sounds like devil's music to me.


I always suspected you were in league with the devil.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> I always suspected you were in league with the devil.


Damn, it seems that you found the hidden Satanic message in this post.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> Damn, it seems that you found the hidden Satanic message in this post.


Somehow I missed that post. It adds little to my understanding, but thanks.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Interesting responses to Beethoven's _Missa_. I _do_ hear it as religious, in Beethoven's idiosyncratic way, more so than the religious music of Haydn and Mozart. The clear influence of 16th century music in places is part of that. The whole mass, in fact, feels to me like a 16th century mass blown up to an enormous scale.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

When I first heard the end of _Dialogues des Carmelites_, I nearly laughed my head off. No pun intended.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Would you expect it to? Surely the Tristan chord is too ambiguous to express any nameable emotion, unless ambiguity itself can be called an emotion. How could it, as a single chord, out of context, evoke the qualities of longing or yearning? Time and movement are necessary for that, and some melodic and harmonic gesture.


Of course, nothing exists in isolation; but a chord out of context can very well express a "longing" or "unresolved" quality by itself. This is because it is not really in "isolation;" there is really no such thing, since our existence, experience, and being is always "in time" and not static. We have experience of other chords as a reference.

Plus, there is an "absolute" degree of sonance which our ears perceive. A fifth (2:3) makes fewer ripples on the eardrum than a 243/365 interval. It has an "absolute" quality, like the color red.

We can see "red" and know it is "red" and not blue, in isolation, because our experience has shown us "blue" before.


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