• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

What is the saddest...

cascadeco

New member
Joined
Oct 7, 2007
Messages
9,083
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
9w1
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
Watch this, I'm about to pwn you all:

[youtube="RRMz8fKkG2g"]Barber's Adagio for Strings - 9/15/01[/youtube]

Good god, I love that piece of music. Thanks for posting it - although I'm familiar with the choral arrangement. And yes, rather heart-wrenching.

Another piece I love - Allegri's Miserere
YouTube - Miserere mei deus

And finally, this one is one of my all-time favorite pieces of classical music - excruciatingly beautiful - Albinoni Adagio in G Minor
YouTube - adagio in G minor
 

kuranes

Active member
Joined
Apr 20, 2007
Messages
1,067
MBTI Type
XNXP
Emotional/heart wrenching in a more positive sense: Franck's piano quintet, romantically; Messiaen's Quartet for the End of time, particularly movents 5 and 8 *more spiritural, perhaps* YouTube - Kyung Wha Chung plays Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time; on another kind of scale, the last choral part of Mahler's 8th symphony if you can take that much bombast, this one also scores pretty spectacularly on the dramatic front YouTube - Mahler - Symphony No. 8 - Ending (Rattle, NYOGB)

Tragic: Babi Yar symphony by Shostakovich, 1st movement in particular, though you probably need to understand more russian than me to get the full effect YouTube - Babi Yar Requiem

* pretends to know Franck's piano quintet *
Yes, of course. An obvious choice, but it needed to be said, anyway.
* Plans to look it up *

The Messiaen/Chung piece was great, as was the Mahler "bombast".
( Is that like "Vinnie Boom-Bahhss" ? ) I was familiar with much of Messiaen, but hadn't heard that one, but there is a lot of Mahler I know nothing about. Interesting to watch the pictogram translations appear on the screen.

The Babi Yar Requiem stole a bit of my thunder, as this is actually an Albinoni adagio that I love, and was planning on posting.

I've stated on other threads my favorite sad songs, which include "Danny Boy" , and at least two Tom Waits songs ( "The House Where Nobody Lives" and "Georgia Lee" ) and some Neil Young songs ( "Winterlong" and "Expecting to Fly" and "Long May You Run" and "The Old Laughing Lady" ) and so I suppose I should find some others to trot out. Here's one that comes to mind.

YouTube - Ennio Morricone "Deborah's Theme", live in Warsaw

A clip from the movie to put the theme in perspective.
YouTube - Once Upon a Time in America - Best Scene Ever Made

I can never understand why people suggest songs that are only sad in lyrics, but not in music, in these threads. * shrugs *

On the subject of whether a slow lulling minor key song is more sad than an intense song ( if I can put the earlier question in those words ? ) I thought I knew the answer when I began to think about creating this post. I wondered at first if the person was referring to the difference between crying due to sadness versus crying due to rage, which is a difference I can understand; but I couldn't understand sadness due to intensity, versus the more traditional definition of it. After listening to the Mahler piece I'm no longer so sure of myself on that point, however. Hmmm

The song that is both most intense and nearly saddest, too, is Peteris Vasks "Musica Dolorosa", but there is no Youtube performance of it, unfortunately. ( It is 14 minutes or so long. )

A composer who often goes well beyond sadness in intensity, and then off into some unnameable areas, is Penderecki. I have included his requiem or dirge for Hiroshima in my thread "The Real Indiana". I've also heard his "The Entombment of Christ" and some other pieces.

I need to explore Ligeti more....
 

JivinJeffJones

New member
Joined
Apr 25, 2007
Messages
3,702
MBTI Type
INFP
I'm going to further destroy my credibility by proposing Glycerine by Bush
and also that "memory" song from Cats, although that may be colored by the fact that I learned and sang it as a member of a high-school boys choir.

I... I'm not proud. :doh:
 

penelope

New member
Joined
Nov 17, 2008
Messages
249
MBTI Type
INxJ
"Tiny Vessels" by Death Cab For Cutie was responsible for pretty much breaking my heart about 4 years ago.
 

iwakar

crush the fences
Joined
May 2, 2007
Messages
4,877
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPEK_xuQl_c"]Ours - God Only Wants You[/YOUTUBE]

This may qualify as something more than just "saddest" but I nominate it as a fave of mine anyway.
 

Kasper

Diabolical
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
11,590
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
9w8
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
The music from Miss Saigon. The two that effect me the most are Boi-Doi and The Fall of Saigon, I can't listen to them without being deeply affected, the music has passion and it's just sad, so very sad that it's based in reality.

They're called Boi-Doi, the dust of life
Conceived in hell, and born in strife
They are the living reminders
Of all the good we failed to do
We can't forget, must not forget
That they are all our children too.

Another vote for Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah too, brilliant and moving.
 
Top