Music that makes you cry (warning: leave your machismo at the door)

[KilgoreTrout]

[ QUOTE ]
I am surprised that so many know it

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe I'm in the wrong. My grandfather was off-the-boat Irish, emigrating in the 1920's following the unrest that ultimately led to Irish independence. He would have been 12 or 13 during the Easter Rising, so I'm sure that left its impression. He used to sing what he called protest songs when he had a few in him, and The Band Played Waltzing Matilda was one of them. The Irish and the Aussies aren't too far removed.

[John Cole]

Well, I don't know if these two really make me cry, but they both produce powerful emotions. Both are by Ralph McTell: "Streets of London" and "From Clare to Here." Perhaps it also helps to have some Irish blood. Here's the lyrics for the second:

From Clare To Here
Ralph McTell

Four who shared this room and
we were caught up in the crack
Sleeping late on Sundays
and we never got to Mass

(chorus)
It's a long way from Clare to here
It's a long way from Clare to here
It's a long, long way
It gets further by the day
It's a long, long way from Clare to here

When Friday comes around
we're only into fighting
My Ma would like a letter home but
I'm too tired for writing

(repeat chorus)

It almost breaks my heart
when I think of my family
I told them I'd be coming home with my
pockets full of green

(repeat chorus)

The only time I feel alright
is when I'm into drinking
It can sort of ease the pain of it and it
levels out my thinking

(repeat chorus)

I sometimes hear the fiddles play,
maybe it's just a notion
I dream I see white horses dance upon
that other ocean

[KilgoreTrout]

[ QUOTE ]
The only time I feel alright
is when I'm into drinking
It can sort of ease the pain of it and it
levels out my thinking


[/ QUOTE ]

Jolly bit of craic, that.

[diebitter]

It' doesn't make me cry, but I find Springsteen's 'The River' deeply moving.

[Myrtle]

Here’s a few more that may touch one’s soul……..

Ralph Vaughn Williams – Symphony #1 “The Sea Symphony”. 2nd movement. “On the Beach at Night Alone”

Gustav Mahler – Symphony #2 “Resurrection” 4th Movement. “Ulricht”.
Symphony #3, 4th Movement “O Mensch!”

Giacomo Puccini – Madame Butterfly “Un Bel Di Vedromo”

Enjoy them again if you know them.....

Enjoy them even more if you search them out and listen for the first time.

[John Cole]

Here's a nice piece written about one of my favorites of Brahms:

Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Opus 78
Brahms spent three consecutive summers–1877-79–in the small town of Pörtschach on the Wörthersee in southern Austria, where he could escape the heat of Vienna and enjoy a setting of unbelievable beauty. To a friend he wrote to marvel “how all the mountains round the blue lake are white with snow, while the trees are covered with delicate green.” In 1878, during his second summer at Pörtschach, Brahms wrote for the violin. From that summer came the ViolinConcerto, and he quickly began a sonata for violin and piano, though that would not be completed until he returned the following June. The dramatic concerto and the gentle sonata could not be more dissimilar, and it is tempting to think that Brahms may have used his fiery and extroverted ideas for the violin in the concerto, reserving the more lyric and intimate ones for the sonata.

The First Violin Sonata is–like the Second–based in part on music from Brahms’ songs, in this case two songs Brahms had written in 1873: Regenlied (“Rain-Song”) and Nachklang (“Memories”). It is unusual in that it is unified around a tiny rhythmic cell that appears in many guises throughout the sonata. This cell–a simple dotted figure–is heard at the very beginning of the Vivace ma non troppo. The piano opens the sonata with quietly-tolling chords, and the violin quickly enters with the gentle main theme: the violin’s first three notes, all D’s, form the cell that will shape much of the sonata. There are several other themes in this sonata-form movement, but the music is remarkable for its consistent lyricism–Brahms avoids extroverted gestures and keeps the mood reflective, almost nostalgic. The dotted rhythm of the opening cell reappears here in many forms before this movement comes to its quiet close.

Solo piano introduces the main theme of the Adagio, and only gradually does the violin take up this melody. The emotional outbursts absent from the first movement appear here, and near the end of the movement the violin–in double-stops–gently restates the main theme. The rhythmic cell of the first movement appears in the Adagio as a quiet accompaniment figure.

The haunting finale, Allegro molto moderato, is a rondo in G minor, based on the violin’s opening melody. This opening is a direct quotation from Brahms’ song Regenlied, and the text of that song is very much a part of the spirit of this movement. In the song, a speaker looks out through a window as rain falls against it, stirring his memories: “Pour down, rain; awake in me the songs we used to sing in the doorway when it rained outside. Would I could listen again to you, hear that sweet splashing and dissolve my soul in the wonder of childhood.” Once again, the first three notes of the violin’s theme, all D’s, repeat the sonata’s rhythmic cell, which will be heard throughout this movement. Beneath the violin’s flowing melodic line, the piano keeps up a patter of sixteenth-notes, clearly the sound of rain tapping gently on the window, and this lulling sound continues through much of the movement (a generation or two ago, this sonata was in fact nicknamed the “Rain” Sonata). Brahms breaks the rondo with several episodes, and in a remarkable touch, one of these is the theme from the Adagio, which soon threatens to take over the end of the movement. At the coda, the music moves to G major (marked dolcissimo), and Brahms weaves together the heartfelt Adagio theme with the main theme of the finale as this ravishing music soars to its gentle conclusion on the quiet patter of rain.

Many years later–in 1890–Brahms’ good friend Clara Schumann wrote to tell the composer that she had just played the sonata with their mutual friend Joseph Joachim and that she had once more been astonished and moved by the final movement. Her concluding words capture perfectly the spirit of this radiant music: “I always wish that the last movement might accompany me on my journey from here to the next world.”

[Grisgra]

kinda have to listen to it to get the full effect.

John Prine - Angel From Montgomery

I am an old woman named after my mother
My old man is another child that’s grown old
If dreams were lightning, thunder was desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago.

Make me an angel that flies from Montgom'ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go.

When I was a young girl well, I had me a cowboy
He weren’t much to look at, just free rambling man
But that was a long time and no matter how I try
The years just flow by like a broken down dam.

Make me an angel that flies from Montgom'ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go.

There’s flies in the kitchen I can hear ’em there buzzing
And I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today.
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.

Make me an angel that flies from Montgom'ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go.

[fyodor]

Gris:
Good choice. I've never cried to Angel but I sure like it a lot. A lot of good John Prine out there. - Donald and Lydia, Sam Stone, Hello in There - all from that same Souveniers album

[TheDudeAbides]

Grisga - probably one of my favourite songs of all time. Great call.

[diebitter]

this is gonna sound nuts, but from the film 'A Mighty Wind', there's a song done by Mitch+Mickey called 'A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow' that I find really beautiful.