Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner what are your favorite sad piano pieces?

Also,

Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit II.LE GIBET.

Some less frequent suggestions:

Tchaikovsky's "Dolly is ill", and "Dolly's funeral" from "Childrens' Album", "Lark's song" from "The seasons"

Leevi Madetoja's "Fairy tale"

Anton Arensky's "Tears" from "Six children's pieces" (4 hands)

Grieg's "Little bird" - there is something bitter and melancholic in the thrills

Mendelssohn's "Lieder ohne worte" 27 in style of a funeral march.

Hmmm, where should I start...
I'll do it by composers.
Chopin:
concerto no.1, both nocturnes in C Sharp minor, Ballades 1 and 4, etudes op.10 no.3, op.10 no.12, op.25 no.11, op.25 no.7.
Prokofiev:
Piano Sonata no.4, piano concerto no.2, visions fugitives.
Beethoven-
Pathetique, Tempest, Appasionata, Op.111
Schumann
Piano concerto
Kinderszenen (recomended)
Brahms:
Intermezzos, Ballades
Debussy:
Clair De La Lune
Arabesque No.1

That enough for you?

definitely Gaspard De La Nuit, and also Miroirs Oiseaux Tristes and Le Valley de Cloches

I can't believe I haven't seen Scriabin yet! The first four sonatas=omgsosad. Haha seriously though, he wrote the 4th right after his only daughter died, and he was broke!

sara


If you really listen to it, it's about a butterfly looking for love. In the beginning it's just fluttering around frantically looking for love, in the middle section it's trying to be beautiful and it's singing and saying 'please look at me, please pay attention to me and love me!' and in the end it's fluttering around again in search for love when suddenly, when the piece hits the high F at the very end, that's like a bullet hitting the butterfly, and the passage going down right after that is the butterfly falling to its death. And then the piece ends. So it's all about a butterfly looking for love, who doesn't find it, then gets shot down ruthlessly in the end for no reason.

It makes me so sad every time I listen to it, but I love the piece and I'm learning it right now


This sounds a bit like the programs that von Buelow added to Chopin's Preludes which Harold Schonbert writes about in his wonderful 'The Great Pianists".

- ' ... one of the paroxisms to which CHopin was subject on account of his weak chest. In the left hand we hear his heavy breathing, and in the right hand the tones of suffering wring from his breast. At the 12th measure he seeks relief by turning on the other side; but his oppression increases momentarily. At the stretto he groans, his pulse redoubles its beat, he is neat dath; but toward the end he breaths more quietly (the chords must be breathed rather than played). His heart-throbs grow slower and fainter; at the chord resting on B flat they suddenly cease for a moment. Four 8th notes must be counted to every half note, so that these beats, although not audible, may yet be felt. The final chord shows that he sleeps"

and somewhat like yours (about the prelude in C# minor #10)

"A night moth is flying around the room - there! it has suddenly hidden itself (the sustained G#); only its wings twitch a little. In a moment it takes flight anew and again settles down in darkness -- it's wings flutter (trill in left hand). This happens several times, but at the last, just as the wings begin to quiver again, the busybody who lives in the room aims a stroke at the poor insect. It twitches once --- and dies."

and my favorite - about prelude 9 in E:

"Here Chopin has the conviction that he has lost his power of expression. With the determination to discover whether his brain can still originate ideas, he strikes his head with a hammer (here the 16th's and 32nd's are to be carried out in exact time, indicating the double stroke of the hammer). In the third and fourth measures one can hear the blood trickle (trills in the left hands). he is desperate at finding no inspiration (Fifth measure); he strikes again with the hammer and with greater force (32nd notes twice in succession during the crescendo). In the key of A flat he finds his powers again. Appeased, he seeks his former key and closes contentedly.:

The image of a man being hanged, looking at his last sunset, correct?

that is what ravel was envisioning while he wrote the piece, or at least that is what has become known, dnephi. the peice itself really does have that element of sadness but when u think about the meaning of the piece, it adds so much more.

With churchbells beyond the horizon --

Here a translation of the poem by Aloysius Bertrand upon which Le Gibet is based

THE GALLOWS

Translated by Michael Benedikt

What's that up there, still stirring on the gallows?--Faust


Ah! What's this I hear now, might it perhaps be the cold north wind whining, or a hanged man
sighing his last sighs atop the gallowstree?

Might it perhaps be some cricket singing, ensconced within the carpet of mosses and ground-ivies
that so mercifully enfold the forest floor?

Might it perhaps be some fly in its flight, hunting down its prey and tooting its tiny horn into ears
otherwise gone deaf to the sound of triumphant trumpet-calls?

Might it perhaps be some beetle in its wayward, erratic flight, plucking a single, bloodstained hair-strand
from out of that dead bald skull?

Or might it perhaps be some spider, weaving from a half-measure of muslin a long tie for his strangled neck?

No: it's a bell slowly tolling from the walls of some distant city beneath the horizon; and
a hanged man's corpse, swinging back and forth, reddened by rays of the setting sun....

This poem inspired Debussy to write Clair de Lune. It was written by Paul Verlaine, a French poet from the 19th century. It is more beautiful in its original French, but the English is beautiful as well. It makes me very sad, and it helps me realize the context of the piece when I play it.


Clair de Lune (Moonlight)

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life's largesse
And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite
Reluctant to believe their happiness,
And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,
Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,
And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming--
Slender jet-fountains--sob their ecstasies.

I dont know if anyone has heard Balakirev's transcription of Glinka's the Lark? It is a beautiful and sad melody (yet tender and hopeful),, great in its original medium, but im a pianist .

Also, several of glass' works... metamorphosis... some of the etudes, dracula, quartets etc.

Chopin's etude op.10 no.6 is the pinnacle of sad. You can hear a mourning, longing for something that is never quite sated. Everytime I hear it, I can't help but curl up into the fetal position, while rocking back and forth on the floor, in a monotonous haze while sobbing myself to sleep. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but its depressive.

Schumann's Traumeri ("dreaming" scenes from childhood) -- I know there is a history behind this piece: it was played in Soviet Russia when Germany surrendered. Horwitz played it for his encores. This piece is not depressive -- rather the opposite -- it has to be one of the most bittersweet, upliftingly sad pieces. This is a goodnight piece, like the last chapter of a book. You can hear tones of reminicience; the repetitions in the piece seem to recall those bygone days, along with the hesitation and acceptance to let those memories go.

How about Schubert's Winterreise?

Or Brahms itermezzo 117/2?

According to a Russian pianist I knew, when Neuhaus heard a performance of this piece(at a master class?)he began crying during the last few measures.

The first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.It's like the echo of my thoughts when I am by myself late at night.

Yes amazing piece. I think it loses some of its immediate charm with its Russian name-Zhavoronok hahaha

It's a problem when people start searching for hidden meanings, scenes or anything in music, which is the most abstract of arts. Can't people just love music for and by itself?

We all experience music in our own highly individual way. Listening to music apparently conjures up visual things for some people. And certainly some musicians have attempted to represent certain tangible things such as bird song, landscapes, the ocean, etc. in music.

My husband sometimes asks, "Do you get a vision of something when listening to this music?" I'm always a little puzzled by that. More often than not, the "vision" thing doesn't work for me. I experience music as emotion more than anything else.

And pianoid: one person may envision a piece of music as being about a butterfly looking for love, while to another it is a lamb frolicking through a meadow, or any number of other things.



Jeanne W

It's interesting how differently we interpret or relate to the music we listen to and play. Many of the pieces mentioned as "sad" here don't seem so to me. As an example, Brahms 118#2 in A seems a love duet or dialog to me as well as an intimate love making and merging of selves. Not sad, but perhaps knowing, warm and tender.

But let me cast my vote for Milonga del Angel by Piazzolla. This is a wrenchingly beautiful, melancholy ballad of love, age and loss. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The piano score is published by Tonos. Several recordings (some by Piazzolla himself playing the Bandoneon) are readily available on YouTube. Check it out and see if you don't agree.

Mike

I am really really surprised that no one has mentioned the second movement of Ravel's G Major Piano Concerto. I think it takes the cake for the most weepy melody ever.