For despite our reputation for hard-nosed cynicism and lack of sentimentality, many of us are afflicted by an inclination to tearfulness at certain passages of music - and I mean real jerked tears of the most pathetic kind. It's not easy reading music through misty eyes (let alone the sheer indignity of it all) so you'd have thought it preferable to prevent it happening. But the only cure I know is to disengage from the music and go through the motions a little, robbing the performer of a uniquely intense experience. Damn you, music!
So now Taras Bulba - rather, a specific passage towards the end of the superb coda - can be added to my personal list of music to get all emotional about. This includes the end of Sibelius 2 (another coda); a 2-bar passage in Sibelius 4 (in which dread turns to hope which turns to rapture which ebbs away to desolation. 2 bars!); the end of the 1st movement of Brahms 4 (another coda!); the insane fugue in Shostakovich 4; 'Erbame dich' from Bach's St Matthew Passion.
My list could go on. But it's time for others to fess up. What's guaranteed to get your ducts to water?
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Aren't you meant to be embarrassed by being moved by populist stuff? I think you're on safe ground with Shostakovich 4.
ReplyDeleteI take your Bulba and raise you the YouTube Symphony's Global Mashup, music by Tan Dun. I actually had an argument with the wife because she talked over it while I was trying to show it to her.
Anything by Morten Lauridsen, the Gloria of Howells Coll Reg canticles, the slow movement of Nielsen's Inextinguishable...
But the Tan Dun was absolutely awful!
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