My Emotional Journey Back to Music and the Lack of "Emotional Range" in Music Today

After a 2-3 year hiatus I have started listening to classical music again. The reasons I stopped were a combination of depression and the more practical fact that I had been moved into a new environment where I drove my car less -- that's where I had listened to music most. Over the past few months I've started listening again, and the memories and emotions flow back at a rate that's often a challenge to face, more on that later.

I wasn't raised on classical music, I was first drawn to it for it's complexity of sound; both in the number of instruments and the resulting range of colors and the complexity of form. That's the main reason I am drawn back to it, but another reason now more than ever is the complexity of emotion. Many complaints can be made of popular music today, but the one I will make is that the emotional range is both limited and overt, there’s nothing very subtle out there. Rock and "Alternative" today has a spectrum of happy, sad and pissed-off; and it's the same throughout the song, its one big episode. There's no ever-changing kaleidoscope of emotion.

Take Sibelius' "Night Ride and Sunrise," even if you've never heard it I think you will understand what I am getting at. To me it has three sections -- it begins with a exuberant, bouncy repeated theme on strings, eventually joined by a serious, "folk-like" theme on woodwinds which rides above but is driven by the turbulence below. The mood is extremely serious, exciting, driven, dark and entirely life-affirming. This climaxes like a whirlwind and then slowly disintegrates into the second, short middle section which is pure beauty; long, slow melodies on strings come at you like waves of pure emotion. The third section begins quietly with low pizzicato strings and short, playful woodwind motifs, later noble brass chords play under the introduction of the "Sunrise" theme introduced on woodwind. Variations of this carry us to grand but not bombastic climax.

This all takes place in 15 minutes. When's the last time you heard anything like that on the radio?

While there are emotions in classical music which you can't exactly label, there's also soundscapes and emotions which I can get close to "defining," and will list below. I don't find anything in music today that is expressing these neglected and complicated emotions the human spirit is capable of feeling.

A Nocturnal World
Shostakovich - Symphony 6 Movement 1
Honegger - Symphony 2 Movement 2
Sibelius - Symphony 3 Movement 2
Debussy - Nocturnes for Orchestra
Mahler - Symphony 7

Respect for the Rugged and Coldness of Nature
Vaughan Williams - Symphony 7
Sibelius - Symphonies 4, 6 and 7
Bax - Almost all the Symphonies
Rautavaara - Cantus Arcticus

The Nostalgic
Vaughan Williams - Symphony 5 Movement 3
Moeran - Symphony in Gm

Realistic Reflections on Death and Dying
Mahler - Symphony 9 Movement 4
Shostakovich - String Quartet 15
Beethoven - String Quartet 16
Rachmaninov - Isle of the Dead

Giddy/Exuberant
Lilburn - Symphony 1 Movement 1
Milhaud - Many of the Symphonies

"Transcendental"
Bantok - Hebridean Symphony Movement 1
Vaughan Williams - Symphony 9
Bach - Toccata and Fugue in Dm, Fantasia and Fugue in Gm
Bruckner - The Symphonies
Mahler - Symphony 10

Sad but Noble
Elgar - Symphony 2 Movement 3, Cello Concerto
Mahler - Symphony 5 Movement 5

Dramatic but Noble
Atterberg - Symphony 7 Movement 1
Dvorak - Symphony 9

Fevered and Stark
Bartok - String Quartets
Chavez - Symphony 5 Movement 1
Shostakovich - Symphony 4 Movement 1
Pettersson - Late Symphonies
Sessions - Late Symphonies
Penderecki - Symphonies

Pastoral
Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending, In the Fen Country
Beethoven - Symphony 6 (of course!)

Darkness and Desolation
Sibelius - Symphony 4
Shostakovich - Symphony 8, String Quartet 8
Tchaikovsky - Symphony 6 Movement 4
Miaskovsky - Symphony 13
Pettersson - Almost Anything
Tubin - Almost Anything

These descriptions are all very general of course; each of the pieces above contains a world of its own.

When I say that this is an emotional journey for me personally, I am serious. I could not say how many memories are invested in some of this music. This isn't disposable art, I could listen to this stuff my entire life, and thus the memories within it go way back. You don't notice it, but music incorporates itself into you're life without your awareness. If you're depressed like I was, more emotion often isn't the medicine for it. People who don't think classical music is the most emotional and can even be the darkest music out there have only heard Mozart and Beethoven. Composers of the 20th century (Modern period) produced music that, to me at least, really "speaks" in a very realistic way that can't be brushed aside as emotional excess like we have today.

I'm not going to say that people are emotionally simplified now because I am still drawn to this music and I think its part of human nature to have a sensibility for more than just a few colors, however I do think it requires patience.