# Classical pieces that portray profound loneliness?



## nicolaxao (Sep 25, 2018)

Something in the lines of Beethovens Stringe Quartetto 14. A piece that shows deep and dispaired solitude.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Schubert's Winterreise.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Tchaikovsky’s emotional 6th with its profound sense of isolation, loneliness, and despair.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

The middle section of Mompou's Cancion 6 sounds very lonely to me.


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Gustav Holst's Egdon Heath is a lonely portrait of Hardyesque bleakness with just a pale hint of consolation at its close.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Ravel - Oiseaux Tristes (Sad Birds).


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

Brahms - Alto Rhapsody (starting 1:50)


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Schubert - Sonata D.960 - Andante






I would also like to mention one of my favorite ambient pieces that gives me a deep sense of isolation: Brian Eno - Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Liszt's _Nuages Gris_


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## bravenewworld (Jan 24, 2016)

I think there's a definite loneliness to Bruckner's 7th symphony, especially in the first two movements.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

Silvestrov has been a specialist about evocating lonely and bleak atmospheres. The symphonies 4-6 portray these feelings quite good.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

DeepR said:


> Schubert - Sonata D.960 - Andante


The opening certainly feels like loneliness, but there seems to be a resolution or sense of hope for better days at 3:20 (one of the most beautiful sequences in all sonatas).


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Chopin - Etude Op.10 No.6
Rachmaninoff - Etude-tableau Op.39 No.5
Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

The sarabande in c-minor from Bach's 5th solo suite for cello.


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## Templeton (Dec 20, 2014)

Franz Schmidt's 4th Symphony?


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Debussy's Footsteps in the Snow, esp in this rendition






Chopin's a minor waltz in Michelangeli's recording


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## Kollwitz (Jun 10, 2018)

I'm not sure if it's deliberately portraying loneliness, but the opening of Sibelius 4 certainly evokes a strong sense of it for me. Sometimes I imagine it as a solo traversal of a vast landscape, other times as a kind of inner, psychological turmoil borne of the knowledge that fundamentally we live and die alone.


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## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

Mendelssohn's violin concerto reeks of "Jewishness," which might connote more "struggle" than "loneliness."


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

^Came here to post that Debussy, strongly seconded.

Also Mahler's 9th and _Das Lied_.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Kollwitz said:


> I'm not sure if it's deliberately portraying loneliness, but the opening of Sibelius 4 certainly evokes a strong sense of it for me. Sometimes I imagine it as a solo traversal of a vast landscape, other times as a kind of inner, psychological turmoil borne of the knowledge that fundamentally we live and die alone.


Yup. I have always thought the message of that symphony is "The world is vast and you don't matter".

Returning to the OP, the loneliest passage that I know of is in the 3rd (slow) movement of Rachmaninoff's 2nd symphony. After the strings introduce the ritornello theme, a solitary clarinet plays a beautiful, heartbreakingly-wistful melody. Had the piece been written some years later, it could have been a threnody for the Russia that SVR felt was lost forever. However, the symphony was written 1906-7, which is a bit too early for that interpretation. Whatever, it's one lonely clarinet pouring its little heart out.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Not sure if anything can top...

Symphony No. 15 in A Major - Dmitri Shostakovich (1971) 

Though it's a tough call. Several excellent recommendations in this thread.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Brahms Symphony number 3, third movement:


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

The Brahms Clarinet Trio:


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Johannes Brahms 
Intermezzo in A minor for piano
op. 76, Nr. 7


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## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

*From Wikidpedia:*


> >>>The F-A-E Sonata, a four-movement work for violin and piano, is a collaborative musical work by three composers: Robert Schumann, the young Johannes Brahms, and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich. It was composed in Düsseldorf in October 1853.
> The sonata was Schumann's idea as a gift and tribute to violinist Joseph Joachim, whom the three composers had recently befriended. Joachim had adopted the Romantic German phrase "Frei aber einsam" ("free but lonely") as his personal motto. The composition's movements are all based on the musical notes F-A-E, the motto's initials, as a musical cryptogram. <<<


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-A-E_Sonata


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

No time to check it out today (I have a recording) but this might make the grade.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Sibelius: _The Swan of Tuonela_.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

Herrmann, The Road from his score to Fahrenheit 451.






Also from Herrmann, February from the song cycle The Fantasticks.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Manxfeeder said:


> The middle section of Mompou's Cancion 6 sounds very lonely to me.


So glad you posted No. 6. This was the same Mompou Cancion I had been thinking of. Wonderful, intimate composer, private and inward.


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## SvenDorland (Jul 3, 2021)

why did no one mention mozart fantasie? in D minor. Or bach adagio BWV 974. Bach wrote it about eternity. The piece gives me a sort of endless feel. A lonely feel of endlessness.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

The 1990's pieces by Vasks (the real one, not me) like the Cello Concerto and String Symphony -Voices.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Vasks said:


> The 1990's pieces by Vasks (the real one, not me) like the Cello Concerto and String Symphony -Voices.


Listening to the Cello Concerto now. Very striking.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

How about this?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Or this


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

WTC Book 1 Prelude No 22 in B flat minor.

How about the last movement of VW's 6th symphony? There's only you left because everyone else has been nuked.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Brahms 3rd Symphony 3rd movement feels like that to me.


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