hauntingly beautiful music

[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.