Most achingly-beautiful music


Ultimately, we listen to music to be moved, for example, to be elated, exulted, calmed or pained. Which are the 3 most affecting pieces of music do you find the most affecting?
hungryear
Tubegroover---"Don't Worry Baby" is just gorgeous! My first live concert was The Beach Boys in the Summer of '64, and when Brian sang the line "and she makes love to me" in DWB, the girls in the audience went completely insane. But I didn't really know insane until seeing The Beatles the following Summer. The screaming was absolutely deafening! I hate to say it, but The Beatles live were only okay, as far as I could tell. I was pretty close to the P.A. column on John's side of The Cow Palace stage, and could sort of hear the vocals.

Things were changing so rapidly in those times. Two years later I was seeing Cream, Hendrix, The Who, and The Grateful Dead live, and sound systems had come a long way in those two years. The stacks of Marshall and HiWatt guitar and bass amps and speaker cabinets were mostly for show, 'cause there was only one mic put in front of one driver in one cabinet of each player's stack. If you were close enough to the stage at The Fillmore or Winterland, however, you could hear sound directly from all the drivers in all the cabinets. My tinnitus proves I was!
I responded in this thread a few years ago, citing Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3. On a very different note, and at the risk of taking some heat for being a sentimentalist, I'll mention "Tammy," by Debbie Reynolds, from 1957.

Regards,
-- Al
Speaking of popular songs from the 1950s, another one that I feel deserves mention in this thread is Al Hibbler's 1955 recording of "Unchained Melody."

The 1965 recording of that song by the Righteous Brothers, BTW, is probably the best known of the countless other covers which have been recorded, but IMO doesn't hold a candle to the Hibbler version.

Regards,
-- Al
First time I heard it Al from a movie score no less. I agree it is a great interpretation of that song, thanks for the link!
Saw Tom Harrell at the Vanguard this week...he played a song called "Journey to the Stars" (duet - piano and trumpet). It was as close as I've experienced to hearing a person's spirit, rather than his body, playing music...it was as though he disappeared entirely. Profoundly beautiful experience.