# Destruction-Themed Piece



## DallozD (Dec 8, 2010)

Hi,

I am looking for a piece of music that represents themes such as; destruction, depletion, exhaustion or the end of mankind, the stupidity of mankind. Sort of in the same way "Also sprach Zarathustra" relates to the evolution of mankind. 

Thank You


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

How about Bruckner's Apocalyptic?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Rued Langgaard's opera _Antichrist_.


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## Sarabande (Nov 26, 2010)

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, its inspired by the book of revelations which i dont really care for not being christian but it is about the end of human time


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## teccomin (Mar 21, 2008)

I think Bruckner's 9th fits the bill more than 8.


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## Falstaft (Mar 27, 2010)

Hmm..

_Götterdämmerung_, orchestral finale and the music leading up to it. Holst's _Mars_ belongs to a different ethos, but perhaps still similar to what I think you're looking for. You might also want to explore symphonies by 20th century Russian composers, which often seem to have a rather bleak view of humanity.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Falstaft said:


> You might also want to explore symphonies by 20th century Russian composers, which often seem to have a rather bleak view of humanity.


Shostakovich's 11th symphony:

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*


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

A few that come to mind:

Vytautas Bacevičius - Symphony No 2 (_Della guerra_)(inspired by the German invasion of Poland in World War II)
Holst - _Saturn_ from _The Planets_ (old age and exhaustion)
Honegger - Symphony No 3 (_Liturgique_)(full of the destruction of War)
Penderecki - _Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima_ (self-explanatory)
Shostakovich - Symphony No 8 (the composer's reaction to the horrors of World War II)
Shostakovich - Symphony No 14 (a song-cycle of 11 settings of poems on the subject of death)
Vaughan William - Symphony No 6 (last movement)(a bleak - some think 'post-nuclear' [although the composer denied it] - landscape)


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## DallozD (Dec 8, 2010)

Thank you all very much for the answers, you've been very helpful!


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## Rob Weir (Dec 25, 2010)

I always thought that Nielsen's 5th Symphony, 1st mvt., where the snare drum is instructed to improvise as if he were trying to disrupt the orchestra, could have been a setting of Arnold's line from "Dover Beach":

"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night"

It has that element of confusion, chaos, futility,


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Hovhaness - Symphony No. 50 'Mount St. Helens' Op. 360: III. Volcano.


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