the saddest music

[sidoze]

what is?

finale of Tchaikovsky's 6th sym -- after all those cathartic screams, right at the end, the orchestra lets out two deep, all-too-human sighs. That moment is about as sad and personal as music can be. Really captured perfectly in this Kondrashin recording, not overplayed, just like human sighs.

[gmstudio]

May be cliché, but Gorecki 3.

[PerfectWagnerite]

May be cliché, but Gorecki 3.

Yes very cliche indeed.

what is?

finale of Tchaikovsky's 6th sym -- after all those cathartic screams, right at the end, the orchestra lets out two deep, all-too-human sighs. That moment is about as sad and personal as music can be. Really captured perfectly in this Kondrashin recording, not overplayed, just like human sighs.

Strikes me as bit over-the-top.

My vote goes to Gustav Mahler's Songs on the Death of Children.

[Brian]

I'll go with Chopin's posthumous C sharp minor nocturne, as recorded by Wladyslaw "The Pianist" Szpilman in 1948.
In addition will second the Tchaikovsky, and award an honorable mention to the flute solo in the finale of Brahms' Fourth.

And, just because Gorecki's Third became popular doesn't mean it's cliched!   

[mahlertitan]

finale of Tchaikovsky's 6th sym -- after all those cathartic screams, right at the end, the orchestra lets out two deep, all-too-human sighs. That moment is about as sad and personal as music can be. Really captured perfectly in this Kondrashin recording, not overplayed, just like human sighs.

i agree

[techniquest]

This kind of depends on whether you mean music which sounds sad and which creates this kind of emotional response from the listener, or music which is designed by the composer to reflect sadness. Although the Pathetique would fall into the latter, for me it doesn't really work for the former as much as -say - the second movement of Vaughan Williams' 2nd symphony or 'Lento' by Howard Skempton.

[71 dB]

Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet is sad music.

[hornteacher]

The obvious one for me is the "Lacrimosa" from Mozart's Requiem.

[Todd]

Mahler's Kindertotenlieder; wide swaths of the Adagio of Mahler's 9th; the slow middle section of Chopin's first Scherzo (in the right hands).  Schubert wrote a good amount of such music - some of those lieder, don't listen if you want to smile.

[Brian]

I forgot Barber's "Adagio". Some will once again call it cliche, but I was fortunate to stumble on it only relatively recently. It has a feeling of a man trying to find his soul, trying to discover a lost self, as he grows more and more desperate and eventually gives up.


...or maybe it's just me 

[not edward]

Off the top of my head:

Mahler 9, for sure, but I'd almost go for the first movement--at least in a performance which emphasises the Lebewohl theme (CSO/Boulez for example).
The closing bars of the Adagio of Bruckner 9...absolutely desolate.
The first movement of Schubert's D960, at least as played in the Richterian manner, not to mention a lot of his later lieder.
Pretty much the whole of Shostakovich's last quartet.
The funeral scene in act 3 of Schnittke's Peer Gynt. Plus the slow movement of the 8th symphony.

[BachQ]

what is?

finale of Tchaikovsky's 6th sym --

yes

[Varg]

The second part of Pettersson's 6th (that's around 30 minutes of the saddest music i've ever heard).

[greg]

Mahler 10 and this:

May be cliché, but Gorecki 3.

[c#minor]

what is?

finale of Tchaikovsky's 6th sym

Yes very sad but i think i can beat it in the same symphony.

About 13 min. into the 1st movement right after, the timpani fades and then the strings almost cry out and the brass answers. And this call and answer lasts for about 1 min and 30 seconds. Every time i hear it i shiver and want it to end because there is so much despair, yet it is sublime. To me without a doubt it is the saddest minute and a half of music ever written.   

[Ten thumbs]

The obvious one for me is the "Lacrimosa" from Mozart's Requiem.

Precisely so!
Also "Dido's Lament" (Purcell)
And some less obvious ones - obscure but very hard to beat:
Medtner's Funeral March
Th. Kirchner's 1st Legende Op 18, an extraordinary achievement for a minor composer.

[lukeottevanger]

Shall I go with the one I traditionally go with when this subject comes around? I think so:

Schnittke - Psalms of Repentance. Takes dolefulness/woe/lamenting etc. to new levels

[marvinbrown]

 The Four Last Songs- Richard Strauss


  marvin

[The new erato]

The second part of Pettersson's 6th (that's around 30 minutes of the saddest music i've ever heard).

Spot on! And sad without being selfindulgent, which is a hard trick to pull, and which I think several of the works discussed in this thread are.

[Mark]

I'm surprised no one (sidoze especially) has mentioned Chopin's Fourth and Sixth Preludes - the latter even more so than the former. That Sixth Prelude conjures up images of a lonely, elderly man - perhaps living in a Paris apartment in some foreign language film noir - looking alternately at letters from a lover long lost, and at the rain-soaked cafe chairs that line the empty streets below his window. Attached to one of the letters, a faded photograph of a woman, taken many years ago in happier times. Very moving indeed.