Most fatalistic, pessimistic, or despairing composers?

[relm1]

Some composers go through a rage, fatalistic, pessimistic, or despairing phase.  Mahler and Shostakovitch could be considered as examples of having phases of this but they also inhabit beauty, faith, humanity, grandeur too.  What composers and works do you think best represent this negative head space?

[Mirror Image]

This is a difficult question for me to answer as I rarely listen to music that solely has these qualities. Perhaps Penderecki? Most of Pettersson? Nono?

[Mahlerian]

I don't consider Mahler especially pessimistic at all.  None of his works fit that description, save for perhaps the Sixth; even works like the Kindertotenlieder which one might expect to be morbid are focused more on consolation than despair.  Probably the bleakest music he wrote is to be found in the first part and the intermezzo of Das Abschied, but these are swept away by the ending.

[relm1]

I have a theory that scandanvian composers are the ones who most inhabit this sadness.  Pettersson, Sibelius, etc.

[Mahlerian]

I have a theory that scandanvian composers are the ones who most inhabit this sadness.  Pettersson, Sibelius, etc.

Possibly Russians too?  Tchaikovsky certainly had a melancholy personality, exacerbated by his personal conflicts with society, and Shostakovich you did already mention.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I think Pettersson is way out in front of all other composers in this department. For him it wasn't "just a phase" - it was his whole life.

[Mandryka]

Some composers go through a rage, fatalistic, pessimistic, or despairing phase.  Mahler and Shostakovitch could be considered as examples of having phases of this but they also inhabit beauty, faith, humanity, grandeur too.  What composers and works do you think best represent this negative head space?

It's not the composition that has the emotion, it's the realisation,

Some things by Froberger maybe are like what you're after. There's a recording by Sergio Vartolo of some late Froberger which seems to be particularly despairing, I think it's really special for that reason.

The Gesualdo responsoria may fit the bill too - I've never really got on with this composer so someone more sympathetic may feel differently.

Interesting to think about Dowland in this respect too, thought I would say that in the Lachrimae cycle I don't think it need be despairing, nor should it be.

And i recall recently listening to Chopin op 28 played by Artur Moreira-Lima and thinking that he was also extremely despairing, especially in the last dozen or so preludes. Maybe also Peter Ella's Art of Fugue also, from memory. Maybe also the Schreier/Richter Winterreise, despite the three suns. And some things by Glen Wilson - Louis Couperin, WTC?Hantai's second Goldbergs?

From more recent music, there's Peter Kotik's recording of Feldman's For Samuel Beckett and Turfan fragments. And Grisey's Quatre Chants.

[zamyrabyrd]

It's not the composition that has the emotion, it's the realisation..
And I recall recently listening to Chopin op 28 played by Artur Moreira-Lima and thinking that he was also extremely despairing, especially in the last dozen or so preludes. Maybe also Peter Ella's Art of Fugue also, from memory. Maybe also the Schreier/Richter Winterreise, despite the three suns.

It's interesting you say that about Chopin. I felt in many of his works a fight against downward motion that usually wins in the end. Frequently his codas as in the 4th Ballade and the Fantasie-Impromptu are sheer dissolution. His earlier works perhaps are not as depressing, in particular those with orchestra.
In many works, Schubert does manage to rise above the forces that would bring him down but much of the Winterreise is very bleak indeed. Die schöne Müllerin starts out happy but ends in despair by the brook.

[Turner]

Schnittke´s music has a solid dose of those characteristics, of course.

[The new erato]

In many works, Schubert does manage to rise above the forces that would bring him down but much of the Winterreise is very bleak indeed. Die schöne Müllerin starts out happy but ends in despair by the brook.

One can hardly think of more despairing stuff than Der Leiermann.

[Marc]

One can hardly think of more despairing stuff than Der Leiermann.

I must admit that I hear a lot of empathy in it... but I'm a hopelessly optimistic man.

[Jo498]

Schubert: d minor and G major quartet, the slow movements from the last two piano sonatas. A bunch of songs, not only Leiermann, but also some of the Heine settings from Schwanengesang (Doppelgänger, Die Stadt etc.) and others...
The brook's lullaby is so achingly beautiful that it seems more a "transfiguration", almost like an Ovidian metamorphosis. Some of the "positive" Schubert songs seem like "whistling in a dark cellar", defiant but not really optimistic, like "Mut" from Winterreise, "An Schwager Kronos", "Auf der Bruck"

Agree with Chopin: (late) Mazurkas, b flat minor sonata, some of the Preludes.

Some late Brahms, although it is more often melancholy than fatalist, sometimes also defiance like the final Rhapsody in op.119

I'd say Mahler's 6th does qualify but Mahler in general has usually turns to the positive, or it is more wistful resignation, e.g. "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen", sometimes also with a hint of "transfiguration", (not necessarily christian, some people invoked notions like nirvana for the finale of the 9th

Berg can be quite dark, the last mvmt. of the lyric suite, or Wozzeck or the orchestral pieces op.6

[Mandryka]

I must admit that I hear a lot of empathy in it... but I'm a hopelessly optimistic man.

I'd be curious to know what you make of Trekel/Eisenlohr if you can hear it easily. It's interesting because of the piano/voice relation, particularly tragic I think sometimes, but the voice part is so beautiful and can sometimes sound as though it's defying the discordant piano, an act of defiance, maybe that's what Winterreise is about.

Has anyone read Mattieu Enard's Boussole? One way of reading the book is as a study of Winterreise, maybe. Recommended.

[zamyrabyrd]

Agree with Chopin: (late) Mazurkas, b flat minor sonata, some of the Preludes.

Oh indeed, when Chopin gets very chromatic as in the last movement of the 2nd Sonata, everything seems to revert to its atomic state. I'd say that was pessimistic coming from him, (not necessarily anyone else).

[Marc]

I'd be curious to know what you make of Trekel/Eisenlohr if you can hear it easily. It's interesting because of the piano/voice relation, particularly tragic I think sometimes, but the voice part is so beautiful and can sometimes sound as though it's defying the discordant piano, an act of defiance, maybe that's what Winterreise is about.
[...]

Short reaction: I always considered the last song's message as something like "even a lonely soul can find a soulmate."
If f.i. Die Nebensonnen had been the last song, then I probably would have thought otherwise.

[Mirror Image]

Some of Mahler, Penderecki and Shostakovich really seems this, but I think it is more determined on the cultural/historic background.

Penderecki, is the only one of the composers put under the category with Messiaen's school that actually seems this.
Tone clusters aren't automatically bleak, fatalistic, despairing and painful, how about that! 

Penderecki gets my vote based solely on his Christmas Symphony, which doesn't evoke the holiday season at all unless you consider Santa Claus strung out on crystal meth while his elves are going door-to-door and blowing people's brains out, Christmas-like imagery.

[Mirror Image]

Oh my 

Pettersson seems this too, yet his music isn't intense in the same way.

Well, Penderecki is just as painful to listen to as Pettersson, so I put them in the same category. But, seriously, I do like a few works from both composers, but I doubt I'd ever call either one of them favorites of mine.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Well, Penderecki is just as painful to listen to as Pettersson, so I put them in the same category. But, seriously, I do like a few works from both composers, but I doubt I'd ever call either one of them favorites of mine.

I can't listen to either one. Still waiting for a good price to sell my Pettersson Symphonies set.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Mozart. What a way to end a career.

[Ken B]

Mozart. What a way to end a career.

I was wondering when someone else would mention Mozart. There's a lot of angst and anguish in Mozart. Not the obvious breast-beating kind, woe is me. The irredeemable kind sometimes though. He was my first thought actually.

Wagner should be mentioned. Gotterdamerung and all.

I have another not so obvious nominee. Weill. More particularly, the shows done with Brecht. Happy End.