I’d like to
say yes, but then, what would I say when asked, “what painting?” So it’s better
to tell the truth, even if it makes me a Philistine. In my defense, however, I
can say that some places have a history and a grandeur that almost spurs the
lachrymal glands into action. There’s St. John the Divine in New York City, and there—for entirely
different reasons, was the battlefield of Gettysburg. And a month or two ago, I felt
something akin to awe by just being in Carnegie Hall.
But then I
stopped to wonder—have I truly been moved to tears by a piece of music? And if
so, was it really the music, or was it the circumstances around myself at the
time, or the memory of particularly emotional moments with which I had
associated the music?
Because,
let’s face it: there are times of great pain and loss—deaths, divorces, job
loss—when you are crying at anything. When my father died, just looking at the
garlic press hanging next to the little wire that he used to clean it (it was
perhaps his least imaginative invention, but who else keeps a little wire next
to their garlic press? Everybody else just scrubs harder….) was enough to
trigger wails. And if I had taken the press and the wire to my brother? We
would have been wailing in each other’s arms.
The
problem? There’s nothing intrinsically sad about a garlic press.
Then
there’s music that somehow has gotten associated, either in your or in
everyone’s mind, with a particular event. For a lot of people, Barber’s Adagio for Strings is 9 / 11, punto.
And that, of course, makes sense, because the music exactly defines the
wrenching sorrow of the event. That’s—news flash, here—why they chose it.
All right,
but what about the music that is genuinely sad, gut-wrenchingly sad, music that
makes you reach for the razor blades? Has anyone ever compiled a list? Surely
the Internet could fly in some pieces, since at the moment I can only think of
five or six that I would absolutely include.
Fortunately,
the Internet came through, and with some surprising choices. Oh, and I must say
at the outset that two of the three lists I consulted had ten selections, the
other one had only six.
OK—time to
guess: what was the piece—and the only piece—that made all three lists?
“Dido’s Lament,” from the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell.
In fact, it
made my list as well, among other reasons because I cannot get through the
piece, even if I’m manic, without sobbing.
Curiously, Dido is on all three lists, but not one piece
of music is on any two lists, which is to say that there are no duplicates. And
here, starting more or less from earliest to latest, is what there is:
Miserere, by Allegri—hmmm,
absolutely beautiful, to be sure, but sad? Sad enough to move me to tears? In
this period, I can think of wrenching music—an Amen, for example, from the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin by Monteverdi,
or some of the William Byrd sacred music.
Bach, predictably, makes the lists, but different pieces. “Come, Sweet Death” is on one site—but the piece is for
organ, and guess what? I neither like nor dislike organ music, it just doesn’t
get in. So I skipped it, after a minute of listening. Then there was “Cum sancto spiritu” from the B Minor
Mass, which posed an
interesting question: are we to include music that is so joyful that it makes
you weep? That’s what the site says, and I’m willing to buy in. But following that
argument, I’d vote for “Et in terra pax,” also from the B Minor.
The rest
were, if I may say so, outliers. OK—there was Albinoni’s Adagio,
which is pretty sad. There was Mozart’s Requiem, as it was depicted in the movie Amadeus. Then, there was Adagio for Strings.
The rest
was all over the map, from the lento movement of Shostakovich Fifth, to Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs to the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Oh, and speaking of Tchaikovsky, his violin concerto—or at least the second movement—lands on
another list. An interesting pick was Richard Strauss’s
Metamorphosen for strings; confession—I didn’t know it, I tried three
minutes of it, and decided that not knowing was the preferred option.
Orchestrally,
what’s not there? What piece would you expect that is strangely out behind the
building, taking a cigarette break? Mahler’s
Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony.—I
just started to listen to it, in order to make sure it was what I thought it
was, and yes, there are tears on the keyboard.
And what
about opera, surely good for a cry or two? Well, La bohème makes it on two of the lists, but on one it’s the first
aria of Rudolfo, and on the other list it’s the last aria of Mimi. On another
list, Verdi’s V’ho Ingannato from Rigoletto appears; Wagner turns up with the funeral music from Siegfried on the third list.
Chamber
music? Well, there’s the second movement of the string quintet of Schubert,
which yes, definitely would be on my list. Besides that, there surprisingly
little chamber music.
There were
pieces I didn’t know—most particularly “Amor
mío, si muero y tú no mueres,”
from an astonishing poem by Neruda. Here, it’s sung by the composer’s wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died less than eight months after
the recording.
Lastly,
there was a song by George Butterworth
based on the text of A. E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad.” The song did
nothing for me, but it did lead me to Vaughan Williams’s
treatment of an old folksong, “Whither Must I Wander” And if you are dry-eyed at the end of
it?
Check for a
pulse!!
(P.S.—here
are the links:
