Pessimism

[Florestan]

Interesting question so I will have to give a multi layered answer.  First, I tend to seek music that matches my mood.  So if I'm in a dark place, I don't want to hear whimsy.  If I want to relax, I won't want to hear bombast for example.  Meanwhile, there are works and moments in works that give me a physical reaction that I don't fully understand.  For example, Mahler 8 or Mahler 2 ending chords literally gives me goosebumps every time.  I somehow have a physical reaction to notes.  I don't know if that is something that happens to other people at that same moment but it is consistent for me.  So I assume for others, this reaction might happen somewhere else and NOT happen for me there.  So I think there is a combination of factors here...that the music has an effect on my mood at a very deep (maybe primitive) level and also that I seek out something that matches my feelings or at least falls within a sympathetic range for my mood.  I have found some music to be devastatingly effective but I was probably already in that mood range when listening.

Interesting answer, thanks.

I get goosebumps each and every time I listen to a music I like, be it sad or jolly, sorrowful or merry, melancholy or exhilarating.

I don´t usually listen to music according to my mood. Perhaps the opposite: if I feel blue, I´d rather listen to some music to cheer me up, and if I feel happy, then I´d rather listen to music that will enhance my cheerful mood. But I have noticed that, whatever music I listen to, if I like it then it makes me feel good, even happy, regardless of the character of the music in itself. Be it gllomy or sunny, be it Tchaikovsky´s Sixth or Mozart´s Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, my feelings while listening are decidedly positive --- ie, I love what I hear --- and after the music´s over, I want more, not less. If I just like the latest gloomiest music I´ve ever heard, then my crave for living on in order to listen to the next gloomy music out there is enhanced, not lessened.

I guess that I can safely subscribe to Yvonne Lefebure´s dictum: I cannot live without music because music is life. --- many thanks to George for it.

[starrynight]

Now, I can't quite agree about these pieces' "pessimistic" nature, at least the concerto and symphony.  The concerto ends brilliantly and joyously in the major, while the symphony, though it ends in the minor, is so vigorous as to deny any pessimism.

I don't think pessimism denies vigour at all, unless it's some uplifting or a kind or defiant vigour.  If it's desperate vigour then it's most certainly pessimistic.  Of course these things depend on performance as well.  But normally when I think of Mozart's G minor symphony in some of the more exciting performances it ends more desperately than defiantly in a whirlwind of aimless energy.

[johnshade]

I read somewhere that Bartok #6 String Quartet is pessimist. I like to listen to it as absolute music.

[Marc]

[....]
Then JS Bach is, by his own admittance,  the archetypal Romantic.

I recall Harnoncourt once said in a Dutch 1990s interview: every music/art epoch is romantic.

Unlistenable final movement, I'm a Brit, I like stiff upper lips. I like the waltz.

It's not a waltz, it's an anti-waltz in 5/4.
Which makes it, IMO, more uneasy to listen to.
Anyway, I don't hear stiff upper lips in it.

But at least now I understand your difficulties (as you once wrote) with Bach's BWV 686.

About the thread topic: in most cases, I don't experience 'pessimistic' music as pessimistic. To me, it's a comforting thought that a great composer is willing to share his 'suffering' with a retard like me. The feeling of not being alone in my sadness provides a little relief. So, even the end of Tchaikovsky's 6th can be experienced as a mood boost. Great composition btw; my favourite romantic-or-whatever symphony.

[jochanaan]

...And this brings me to a question: do you --- I mean, you gentlemen reading this --- really feel sad or sorrow or pessimistic when listening to perceivably sad, sorrow or pessimistic music? I mean, do you really feel like a father who has just just lost his son after listening to Schubert´´s Erlkonig? Do you feel like the world has really come to an end and there is nothing more to be hoped for after the final chords of Tchaikovsky´s Sixth are over? Do you really weep over Handel´s Lascia ch´io pianga?

There is music that makes me sad, but it's not most of the great classics.  When I hear something like Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 or Piano Trio, or Mahler's Sixth Symphony or Das Lied von der Erde, or Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, or even Poulenc's Dialogues des carmelites, I feel as if I am experiencing a catharsis; and afterwards, I feel, not depressed, but cleansed.

[vandermolen]

There is music that makes me sad, but it's not most of the great classics.  When I hear something like Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 or Piano Trio, or Mahler's Sixth Symphony or Das Lied von der Erde, or Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, or even Poulenc's Dialogues des carmelites, I feel as if I am experiencing a catharsis; and afterwards, I feel, not depressed, but cleansed.

+1

[Florestan]

I read somewhere that Bartok #6 String Quartet is pessimist. I like to listen to it as absolute music.

I have never been able to grasp the concept of "absolute music".

[jochanaan]

I have never been able to grasp the concept of "absolute music".

It's a relative term.

[Marc]

There is music that makes me sad, but it's not most of the great classics.  When I hear something like Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 or Piano Trio, or Mahler's Sixth Symphony or Das Lied von der Erde, or Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, or even Poulenc's Dialogues des carmelites, I feel as if I am experiencing a catharsis; and afterwards, I feel, not depressed, but cleansed.

What I tried to say, yet better expressed.

[Mirror Image]

There is music that makes me sad, but it's not most of the great classics.  When I hear something like Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 or Piano Trio, or Mahler's Sixth Symphony or Das Lied von der Erde, or Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, or even Poulenc's Dialogues des carmelites, I feel as if I am experiencing a catharsis; and afterwards, I feel, not depressed, but cleansed.

I can certainly get onboard with this ideology.