Mood Altering Music

[Keemun]

Okay, but I'll buy more Beethoven anyway.......just in case.   

It definitely won't hurt.  Medications do have their limitations.   

[gomro]

I was in a bad mood for a while this afternoon, but I just finished listening to the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, and I feel that my mood has improved some.  I've had similar experiences with other works, but cannot really remember them right now.  What works do you find have the power to affect/alter your mood, and in what way?

I suppose all music affects the mood in some way; every person receives it according to their ability to receive. One is moved to tears by some sappy country and western song about a little girl and Jesus; that same person switches off Bach's St. Matthew Passion and gets nothing at all from it. Someone else enjoys the Bach and not the c&w ditty. Another accepts both. So all I can say is arbitrary and may not work for anyone else, but these pieces all elevate me, as Beethoven said, into that "higher world of knowledge:"

Stockhausen - Stop und Start; Refrain; Engel-Prozessionen; Ceylon; Stimmung; Lichter-Wasser; Trans; Mantra
Penderecki - Kosmogonia; Magnificat; De natura sonoris I and II; Credo; Violin Ctos I & II; Symphony #2 ("Christmas")
Hanson - all the Symphonies; "The Mystic Trumpeter;" Piano cto; Lament for Beowulf; Mosaics
Yoshimatsu - Symphonies 3, 4 & 5; Saxophone cto "Cyber-bird"; Trombone cto "Orion Machine"; White Landscapes
Xenakis - La Legende d'Eer; Orient-Occident III; Terretektorh; Akrata; Jonchaies; Eonta; Pleiades
Reich - Music for 18 Musicians; Different Trains; Three Tales; Tehillim; Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ
Ruggles - Sun-Treader
Ewazen - Chamber Symphony; Ballade, Pastorale and Dance; Palace of Nine Perfections; Down a River of Time
Moravec - Time Gallery; Tempest Fantasy

and I'm sure I could list a billion others. Haven't even touched on Wuorinen, Feldman, Copland, Varese, Yashiro, Crumb, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Too much music, too little time!

[EmpNapoleon]

What music doesn't alter mood?  Every music does this.  If it doesn't change the mood, it elevates, calms, etc.  Music is the most powerful art, in terms of making a person feel something (the basis of aesthetics).  Painting rarely makes someone cry. 

[jochanaan]

  You might want to hold on to the medication, it's probably more effective and reliable. 

Not at all.  Great music always lifts me out of depression--the greater, the more effectively.

What music doesn't alter mood?  Every music does this.  If it doesn't change the mood, it elevates, calms, etc.  Music is the most powerful art, in terms of making a person feel something (the basis of aesthetics).  Painting rarely makes someone cry. 

Oh, I've seen pictures as strong as any music.  Especially if you look long and deep.  But yes, music does seem to have a more immediate cathartic effect than any other art except drama.  (Why do you think they invented opera?  Double the cathartic effect--if done well.)

[marvinbrown]

Okay, but I'll buy more Beethoven anyway.......just in case.   

  One can never have enough Beethoven hornteacher  0:). 

  If you want to lift your spirits stay away from Chopin- melancholia unlike anything youv'e ever heard.

  marvin

[EmpNapoleon]

But yes, music does seem to have a more immediate cathartic effect than any other art except drama.  (Why do you think they invented opera?  Double the cathartic effect--if done well.)

Good point.

[Haffner]

When I'm tired, only the 'Eroica' Symphony will rouse me.

Ditto. Mozart's k545, Haydn's Creation and op.54, Lvb's Missa Solemnis (Gloria, Sanctus, and Kyrie) and Hammerklavier, Mahler's 6th, Wagner's Rheingold and Meistersinger Preludes, Ride of the Valkyrie.

[Haffner]

The overtures of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro always put a smile on my face  . 

  marvin

Marvin said it!

[Florestan]

   If you want to lift your spirits stay away from Chopin- melancholia unlike anything youv'e ever heard.

It's strange, but everytime I listen to Chopin, even to his most melancholy works, my heart fills with joy.

[marvinbrown]

It's strange, but everytime I listen to Chopin, even to his most melancholy works, my heart fills with joy.

  Don't get me wrong I love Chopin but in the words of Oscar Wilde: "After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own".

Personally I find Chopin's Nocturnes and Preludes have that effect on me. But I guess we all respond to music in different ways.

  marvin

[Florestan]

  Don't get me wrong I love Chopin but in the words of Oscar Wilde: "After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own".

Personally I find Chopin's Nocturnes and Preludes have that effect on me. But I guess we all respond to music in different ways.

  marvin

Don't get me wrong ( ) : Chopin's sadness and melancholia is very effective on me and there are pieces that can bring tears in my eyes. But in the end, when the last chord fades away, I feel some bittersweet joy.

[Haffner]

Don't get me wrong ( ) : Chopin's sadness and melancholia is very effective on me and there are pieces that can bring tears in my eyes. But in the end, when the last chord fades away, I feel some bittersweet joy.

I often rejoice when I hear just how personal and revolutionary Chopin's Nocturnes are. His music was often a testimony to the power of self-expression. One can almost always hear Chopin's music (or strident imitators of such) and know it's Chopin's work.

[Haffner]

1st Movements of LvB's 3rd, 4th, and 9th.
Der Heilige Dankesang
The first Act of Wagner's Die Meistersinger
4th Movement of Mozart's Jupiter
Second Movement of Haydn's op. 76, no.5

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Eroica's Marcia Funebre improves your mood?!
Sibelius Symphony 3, 2nd mvmt (Andantino) awakens all spring feelings in me and makes me whistle.

[Keemun]

Eroica's Marcia Funebre improves your mood?!

Yes, but only Karajan's 1962 recording. 

[Ugh!]

I don't really think about my moods when I'm listening to music. I'm listening to music!

But, having said that, I did notice a couple of years ago, when I was working a really stressful job in a large corporation, that 60 or 70 minutes of Merzbow would be really soothing.

Ha ha , kudos!

It made me recall a Supersilent concert I once attended, at which the sheer volume of the bass frequencies in the room made my entire column vibrate, not too dissimilar to the way Aboriginals utilized the frequencies of their didjeridoo in healing sessions I imagine

Otherwise I feel that there are certain parts in musical pieces that are able to elevate me into satori, but I have to listen to the full piece in order for it to really affect me (walking the entire way). For instance, there is a point in Nicolas Maw's Odyssey, first part, at which the brass build into a powerful atonal melody after the orchestra has come in wave after wave of crescendos and diminuendos. I think it is around 7 minutes into the piece, and it never fails me. There is also a part in Stravinsky's Renard that has a similar effect on me, however in this case the culprit is a bass riff

Right after the birth of my first child, I was able to compose a part for my Assemblages work that embodied a powerful and particularly joyful celebration of the miracle of life, working among other things with fragments from Carl Orff's works. I remember raising my hands in spontaneous celebration.

But of course, to get my feet moving as well, only JB will do 

[Superhorn]

   Music can certainly affect our moods, and can certainly leave us with good feelings. Depending on our subjective tastes, it can be viscerally exciting, stimulating,soothing, boring,irritating or puzzling.
   But let's remember that music should not merely be a means to an end, but something of value purely for its own sake.

[Diletante]

When I'm feeling down I don't usually listen to classical music. I put on Latin music, or pop, or upbeat rock.

There is, however, one classical piece that always makes me feel cheery: the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

[Haffner]

For invigoration: The first movement of Beethoven's 1st or 3rd; Mozart's Jupiter or the Prelude to Le Nozze Di Figaro
For feeling of calm acceptance, peaceful resignation: the brilliant second movement of Joseph Haydn's op. 76, 5.
For a feeling of brisk,  Nordic revitalization: the opening movement of Beethoven's 9th; Strauss's Die Alpensinfonie; Wagner's Die Meistersinger (the entire first act).

[jowcol]

I could wail on this thread forever-- the relationship between music and states of consciousness is one that fascinates me no end.  I'd also have to agree that nearly all of the music I listen to has those properties-- for some sort of mood or another.

Bach and Vivaldi always send me-- as well as the French impressionist school on piano.  My favorite stress reliever after a bad day is to sit in a dark room and listen to the middle movement of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit over and over... 


I think my non-classical musical obsessions (jazz (mostly Trane and Miles), Blues, and Indian Classical, and some "jam band") are all really similar in that the types I like work with simple modal structures in a fairly sophisticated rhythmic groove, and this really creates a structure where you can really spin off your own melodic lines in your head, and get "lost".  But Bach gives me the same feel as well. And some of the minimalists, when I'm in the mood.

I much prefer minor keys-- to echo some of you-- the melancholy makes me happy.  (I love Mussorgsky).  this of course also ties into blues I guess-- it hurts so good.  At least it's honest.  When I hear music that is too happy, I don't think I'm hearing the whole story, and I feel cheated. 



Your mileage may vary.