AIBU to keep crying at beautiful classical music?

[MrsPatrickDoyle]

NC.

I'm 51, DC at university, I hate my empty nest and I'm menopausal. That's just for context. On the plus side, DH and I have reinvigorated our sex life. Wayyy-hayyy!

I came to classical music late in life and I can't get over how beautiful some of it is and I can't stop snivelling. So currently I am wailing at Beethoven's 7th symphony. Last night we watched Sense and Sensibility and I bust into tears over Patrick Doyle's theme tune. I also can't cope with his Harry Potter waltz. I've decided I want to marry him hence NC.

Yesterday I was driving to work and Panis Angelicus came on and I arrived at my breakfast meeting with red puffy eyes.

WTF is wrong with me?

YADNBU.

It shows you have a heart.

I took a course on classical music my senior year in high school. It was one of the best classes I’d ever taken. It introduced me to a whole new world. Try “Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2, Part 1, Lever du Jour” and “Pavan for a Dead Princess,” both by Maurice Ravel. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

More recent compositions that make me weep are the theme songs to the movies “A River Runs Through It” and “Schindler’s List.”

Elgar's Nimrod
Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
Debussy's Claire De Lune
Allegri's Miserere

I'm very much a Classic fm listener as you can probably tell but the above always make me well up. Especially Vaughan Williams.

I love everything by Patrick Doyle... except that bleeding Harry Potter waltz. It’s just so twee.
Peri menopausal- I can cry at pretty much anything.

Before I even opened the thread I thought of the Sistine Chapel, just from your title

That was an absolute corker, I think it made it into classics.

I actually went to Rome last month and stood there in the Sistine Chapel, crammed in like a sardine, looking up and thinking of that thread!

I don’t usually cry at good music,apart from the St Matthew Passion and Verdi’s Requiem. But the first note of Love Changes Everything and I’m a blubbering wreck!

Another recommendation: Rachmaninovs 2nd piano concerto. If you can dissociate it from the film Brief Encounter, or maybe even if you can't, it is sublimely beautiful. Especially the 2nd movement.

I just adore Strauss 🥰🥰🥰

I also came to Sistine Chapel!

Wtf am I missing re Sistine chapel comments?

It’s Chopin and Rachmaninov for me. ❤️

If you want uplifting, listen to madrigals and the Officium Defuntorum requiem by Toma Luis de Victoria, preferably in a dark room with no distractions.

Actually, listen to anything by de Victoria. O Magnum Mysterium is amazing.

And Faure's Requiem in D minor is something.

I'm a music teacher & I play in a couple of orchestras. Sorry but I hate Elgar and the only thing it does is bore me. Same with Einaudi.

If you want a good cello concerto, Dvorak's is the best, and Shostakovich 1 runs him close. I agree about Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis but I can't stand The Lark Ascending. I do love Beethoven and his 7th symphony is my favourite. I love Mahler too; the last movement of his 2nd symphony and slow movement of his 4th are divine.

If you are new to classical music, the slow movements of Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony and Dvorak's 9th (New World, used in Hovis ads years ago) and Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus are approachable and delightful. I can't remember which opera by Mozart it is from (Cosi fan tutti?) but the aria that gets played over the loudspeaker in the prison yard in the Shawshank Redemption gets me every bloody time. Even thinking about it, I'm welling up!

On a more eclectic list, try the slow movement of the serenade for strings by Suk. It is gorgeous. I love Richard Strauss' 4 Last Songs, especially the 3rd & 4th which both get me going. I agree about JS Bach too. The B minor mass is amazing. I could go on, but can't see the screen very well as there are tears in my eyes...

is the piece I keep returning to time and time again this year. I must have listened to it over two dozen times now end every time it makes me tingle all over and my eyes well up. His voice! Oh my God his voice! Utterly sublime.

The Strauss 4 last songs get me too.
Vaughan Williams variants on Dives and Lazarus gives me the tingles.
Butterworth's Banks of green willow. Mainly as it's just so poignant.

Elgar's Nimrod too. Memories more than just the music though.

Faure requiem or the cantique de Jean Racine

another one who saw the thread title and had to see if this was the 'Sistine Chapel' weeper. Great minds and all that

I cried today listening to Verdi's Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves on Classic FM while in the car, then the presenter said that when Verdi died in Milan in 1901, 300,000 gathered in the streets (more than half the entire population of the city), and sang the chorus ‘Va pensiero' and that made me cry more! I am an emotional woman of a certain age too.

Ditto Sistine Chapel 😂

I went to watch my sister in a choir competition. Most of them were ok, but there was one with a soloist whose voice was breathtaking. She wasn’t singing in English but she was so expressive I just ‘felt’ what she was saying. It was incredibly moving.

Hahahaha The moment I read the title, I thought 'Sistine Chapel' too

It's only happened to me once and it was during Soave S'Il Vento from Cosi Fan Tutte at Glyndebourne, and the only time I'd gone to an actual performance (I've been to quite a few dress rehearsals).

I couldn't work out what would be least disturbing: sniffing and snuffling or rummaging in my bag for a tissue.

Oh ffs TELL ME ABOUT THE SISTINE SODDING CHAPEL

As long as you're not the Sistine Screamer and wailing aloud at public performances then it's fine.

Try Dido's Lament by Purcell, and the chorus that follows it. Never fails to make me cry. Also Gorecki's Sorrowful Symphonies. Beautiful and so emotive. The one I'm struggling to sing in my choir (but loving anyway) is The Long Day Closes by Arthur Sullivan. Just don't think of an elderly relative when singing ...

Someone linked the Sistine Chapel thread earlier, scroll back and you’ll find it.

For the explanation about the Sistine chapel, look at the link posted 8 posts in.

Loved that, @ScribblyGum thank you!