hauntingly beautiful music

[Serendipity]

Badger - I'm with you there.
As the saying goes, I can't carry a tune to save my life (funny saying, actually) but that doesn't stop me from enjoying and envying the talent of others and just about any kind of music.

Also doesn't stop me from singing along but only when no one else is within earshot.

[Crankin]

I enjoy it, but sort of in a background way. I can't sing and never had a desire to play an instrument.My older son was in the band (trombone) and plays the guitar and bass quite well. He can sing, but his voice is undeveloped. He had a band (duo really)that was performing in clubs until recently when his real job just got too busy. I liked going to the band concerts when he was in high school, like you Mimi, but it was so competitive at their school, with all of the kids being required to take private lessons and half of them going into Boston to take lessons from various "maestros." It was nice that the music kids had as much status as the sports, but I stayed uninvolved in that i never was a "band parent." My younger son, while he never played an instrument, knows the name of every song and artist from the 80's until now. We bonded over cycling, which was more in my sphere!
I don't know the name or artists of the popular songs either, although I recognize the songs themselves from the radio. I never buy CDs and don't know how to download music. Someone once asked me if I thought my education had been lacking because I couldn't play an instrument; I was like "what?" No one in my family did!

[beccaB]

Local community colleges probably teach music appreciation classes. It would be worthwhile and very enriching. I would really like to teach a music appreciation class for adults in a community school setting. I just happened to grow up in a classical music home, and started taking flute lessons when I was 9. I have a music performance degree I'm not really using, other than I play in everything as a volunteer! I also like some really head bangin' rock an roll too.

[Pedal Wench]

Local community colleges probably teach music appreciation classes. It would be worthwhile and very enriching. I would really like to teach a music appreciation class for adults in a community school setting. I just happened to grow up in a classical music home, and started taking flute lessons when I was 9. I have a music performance degree I'm not really using, other than I play in everything as a volunteer! I also like some really head bangin' rock an roll too.

My degree was in music, but music engineering, and I'm still working as an audio engineer, so it's all neatly tied together. I grew up in a 'classical home' too - my parents still go to the NY Philharmonic, some 40 years later!

[Zen]

I can't believe no one mentioned "Ashokan Farewell"

[Meaux]

Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" makes me bawl. We played it as the recessional at our wedding and I always thing of it and cry. There's a Bach piano concerto that also makes me cry because it makes me think of my dad. There are actually a lot of music pieces that make me cry, it's funny, I'll just get in the car and something will come on and I'll get all teary eyed.

[bikerz]

Great thread! I'm late to the game...

Beautiful and haunting music for me is mostly classical.

- Faure's Requiem, absolutely (although I have heard it at so many memorial services recently that it is almost unbearably sad for me now)
- Bach's Cantata 82 (Ich habe genug) sung by the late, extraordinary, mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
- The duet 'Au fond du temple sant' from The Pearl Fishers by Bizet - I know it's sentimental, but gets me every time
- Mozart Piano Concert #23 - I find the Adagio achingly beautiful
- Bach's Solo cello suites - so mesmerizing
- Bach's St Matthew Passion and the B Minor Mass - all the way through and at a decently loud volume - wow.
- Beethoven's 5th - Andante - I've loved it since I was a (geeky) kid.

Sometimes it's only a few measures that really hit me, other times the whole piece in different ways.