Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

The first words in a sermon preached in Brentwood Cathedral. Worse it must have taken 20 seconds to pronounce. The answer of course was some football team, the name of which I don't recall.

After the various posts about music (or non-music) at CH. with the years of experience behind you, what piece(s) of music brings tears to your eyes?

I'll start off with the
Philadelphia Orchestra playing Barber's Adagio for Strings Opus 11 which was recorded at the memorial concert for the victims of 9/11

Virtually any version of "Jerusalem"

My late father always said it should be the official National Anthem of England.

sejintenej wrote:I'll start off with the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Barber's Adagio for Strings Opus 11 which was recorded at the memorial concert for the victims of 9/11

We can certainly agree on that. Samuel Barber also used the same music for a setting of the Agnus Dei for unaccompanied chorus. That "ought" to be even more moving, but it leaves me cold.

A lot of music can choke me up. When I'm in the audience, I can handle it, but when I'm singing it's sometimes hard to keep going. One example among many: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adt9Bc0yJcM

It's a setting by Morten Lauridsen of a poem by Pablo Neruda, "Cuando yo muero". That's not my choir singing in the video, incidentally.

Translation:
When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want your ears to still hear the wind,
I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
and to go on walking over the sands we walked together.
I want all that I love to go on living,
and you whom I loved and sang above all things
To keep flowering into full bloom.
so that you can touch all that my love provides you,
so that my shadow may pass over your hair,
so that all may know the reason for my song.

Oh well... it's got to be the Foundation Hymn...

I'll add another sad concerto - the Concerto de Aranquez

The vocal version (I don't know the author) tells of a young girl who falls in love with a boy living in Aranquez. When she returns she finds that Franco's troops have massacred every person in the town and the only memory she has of her beloved is a solitary kiss.

Like J.R. I'll include Jerusalem - one of the very few memories I have of my mother

Last Post at Beating the Retreat.

jhopgood wrote:Last Post at Beating the Retreat.

Thank John.

I was too modest to add that one.

Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, specifically 2nd. movement. Never fails. Also Faure's Pavane.

anniexf wrote:Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, specifically 2nd. movement. Never fails. Also Faure's Pavane.

Tried it (Ytzack Perlman / Tokyo Philharmonic) which I found OKJ andbetter than much such stuff) which led me to Joshua Bell (I like) with Bruch viollin in G opus 26 2°mov which I found I do like and will keep on my list.

As for Faure"s Pavane, yes IF I am going to be sitting back with nothing else to do (impossible) . I prefer Ravel's Pavane pour une Infante Defuncte (Ozawa / Boston Stmphone) if I can concentrate but when I am working it has to be the William Orbit version. There are that I know of, two Ferry Corsten remixes, one (I don't like) is fast but the slower (Classic FM) version I have on when I am working

It all seems to come down to listening conditions but I wonder why those which affect me all have a deathly overtone! By contrast I also love Lauren Jelencovich's Nightingale in El Morro- a human voice used as an orchestral instrument - what singing pleasure but wonder and no tears involved

Blimey.

Munich art museum and a Van Gogh 'Sunflowers' which beamed at me an overwhelming sense of intimate yet almost glacial beauty, reminding me that spacewalking is only one of many ways of touching the void.

An elderly gent in the cemetery painstakingly watering what were clearly silk flowers - his memory or eyesight, or both, may have betrayed him but his will was indomitable.

Last, and probably least, listening to old records by the likes of King Crimson or Eno and popping in on a once known Utopian mood, as close as I'll ever get to time travel I suppose. ( The same could be said of Beethoven piano concertos 4 and 5 but my acquaintance with those works is from a later date in my personal, ahem, evolution. )

I find useful

http://kickassclassical.com//classical- ... -list.html

which is a simple list of kickass's classification of the top 100 plus about 8 bars for each selection. OK so the Classic FM list is up-to-date but far less convenient.

Thanks for the tip. Early '70s prog, ironically, was my way in to classical at school - chapel was a dreadful turn-off, to this day the strains of a Bach tune sets my flesh crawling. People will remember ELP who successfully purloined Mussorgsky, Bartok, Janacek and Copland to create a variety of frenetic sounds that sort of heralded the crazy rhythm of change that we were all on the threshold of at the time. Where did all that ambitious music go?
On the subject of classical though, most recently I attended a Berlin String Quartet show - started with Beethoven's Kreutzer violin sonata, which famously inspired Tolstoy to write the 'Kreutzer Sonata' tale of wife-murdering madness and the subversive power of music, break during which a short film was projected the details of which escape me but which reversed the Tolstoy idea into a happy ending, followed by the Janacek Kreutzer String Quartet. If you're still with me.. all very edifying stuff and makes me wonder why classical isn't integrated into more cross-media events of the ilk. Sacrilege to the purists?
Nowadays I've as much a soft spot for Prokofiev as I do Zappa or the later Miles Davis fusion stuff - all music with the power to move even if you're not always sure where to. Which is, naturally, the beauty of it.

'Live' Music Rules OK.