Re: Saddest, most tear inducing music?

Chris Cathcart wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > (There's a reason things like "Ride of the Valkyries" and "Prelude and
> > Liebestod" are known as "bleeding chunks.")
>
> You seem to have it in your mind that you'd have to know ahead of time
> whether a piece of music was composed for "something else" or part of
> something larger before you can like or enjoy or appreciate it on its
> own. Nice of you to mention "Ride of the Valkyries," seeing as
> -Apocalypse Now- (and perhaps even -My Name is Nobody- :-) as it has
> been made is quite hard to imagine without it. And yet it was
> originally composed for something else, and is only a small part of it
> at that. Is the viewer and/or listener supposed to know all of this
> ahead of time to evaluate it as a piece of music?

Certainly the viewer of *Apocalypse Now* (which I have never seen) was
expected to be familiar with the piece. The helicopters are made, by
association with the music _in its context in the opera_, to be
understood as transporting the dead heroes of Vietnam to Valhalla.

Likewise the "Blue Danube" in *2001*. The other selections, including
the opening fanfare, were not well known before the movie opened in
1968. (I had heard *Zarathustra*, but there were very few recordings and
it didn't get programmed in concerts, and of course there's about 30
more minutes to it -- it's like people thinking all of *Carmina Burana*
sounds like "O Fortuna.")
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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