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On your Deathbed what would You listen to?

12K views 100 replies 71 participants last post by  AeolianStrains 
#1 ·
I don't know if this has come up before. Never seen it. In your final moments on Earth what music would you choose to be listening to and you must pick one and one only.

I wonder will we see lots of entries for people wanting to hear Xenakis, Birtwistle or Ferneyhough ... mmmm .. probably not.
 
#32 ·
Hmmm, probably James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing and Shake 'till You Feel Better!"

And if that one doesn't help I guess I would settle for the inevitable with some Strauss (four last songs...

Oh yes! A magnificent set of works. Or perhaps Der Abscied from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde... the version with Bruno Walter and Kathleen Ferrier is sure to guarantee not a dry eye in the house.
 
#33 ·
Resurrecting an old thread (pun very much intended!)... I was about to create a new thread but I thought this topic would come up (I was discussing this with my girlfriend the other day).

My first instinct would be Bach's sixth cello suite, probably Casal's recording (my favourite piece by my favourite composer). BUT, I've got to go with something a bit more sentimental: Beethoven's sixth symphony instead (please, no Soylent Green jokes!).

It was one of the very first pieces I heard consciously aware that I was listening to classical music and the magic of classical music.
 
#48 ·
My first instinct would be Bach's sixth cello suite, probably Casal's recording (my favourite piece by my favourite composer). BUT, I've got to go with something a bit more sentimental: Beethoven's sixth symphony instead (please, no Soylent Green jokes!).
Wow, exactly the two choices I was thinking of before I read this. I'll go with Beethoven 6 as well, since my favorite moment of it is in the first movement, whereas my favorite moment in the cello suite is in the 5th movement. Greater chance of living to hear what I really want to!
 
#39 ·
I wouldn't like to be stressed out about "what will be the last piece of music I listen to in this life??" in that situation. However I have a recording of Schubert's Litany for the feast of all souls day, transcribed for cello, by Anne Gastinel & Claire Désert; it's very soothing and something I would probably like to listen to before I drift off.
 
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#49 ·
Hmmm, a few come to mind. For different reasons.

"My Way" by Sinatra
Abschied from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (Klemperer/EMI)
Mahler's 2nd Symphony (Again, Klemperer/EMI - live recording)
Adagio for Strings by Barber
Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis
 
#56 ·
Oh my goodness YES!

Something by Arvo Part... I hear his Kanon Pokajanen is really really good, so I dunno. I'll check back in once I've heard it. The other composer I would consider for my deathbed is Edmund Rubbra. Fourth quartet or the Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn.
 
#57 ·
I listened closely to Beethoven's sixth symphony again tonight and it surprises me that for the past few years how much more this piece moves me (then again, I have been moved to tears more often and easily than I used to-- maybe I'm just becoming an old softie LOL). It isn't the first time for me, though it has been a more recent thing I've noticed is the "thunderstorm" movement also moves me to tears now-- and the past couple weeks I've been trying to articulate to myself why that is.

Its been many years since I've listened to it thinking of the suggested imagery Beethoven suggests in the titled movements-- I just listen to the notes themselves without any conscious extramusical associations, though I do think, upon reflection (not while listening) that I do make certain subconscious associations, usually things of a very personal nature. I'm begining to see this more and more in my listening habits (that is, when I am listening quite deliberately-- I don't always get that luxury).

But it strikes me that now the "thunderstorm" sequence gets to me as well and I wondered why-- not in any definite sense, but just an understanding of myself how this has changed in me over the past 25 years deliberately listening to music. Unsurprisingly, when I first heard this as an early teen, I used to not like the thunderstorm movement as much because of the loud dissonance-- as if it were an interruption to all the other more consonant music of the symphony. Years later I grew to appreciate the thunderstorm and appreciated it, but probably more strictly from a formal musical perspective, having a bit of contrast and it makes sense just prior to the final movement.

Over the past ten years, that has changed, and in the past five years its become much more an emotional experience for me and I hear the whole symphony much more as an integrated whole (this is true for a lot of music for me now too). I feel all the more that thunderstorm is necessary, but I was curious as to what sort of thing was going on for me, perhaps subconsciously while listening to it (I know I'm rambling LOL but there's a point to all this and what this has to do with death).

Tonight I remembered this passage from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
And that's when I thought about the thunderstorm-- I don't think of a literal thunderstorm, but the towering dissonances suggest the impression of terror-- "it is no longer just a wind and rain storm; it is a frightful cataclysm, a universal deluge, the end of the world," Berlioz said of it.

I've lived through a few things of emotional pain, fears, insecurities, and loss (who has not?). But many things (I'm thinking especially of my many fears and insecurites) I have worked through and come out the other side, all the better for it. I think on some subconscious level I hear those fears in that movement, in a way, relive them-- but then the storm passes-- there was nothing to fear-- it was just a bunch of flashing and noise. Like Rilke wrote, they were MY terrors, they belonged to me, they were of my own making, and I have been fortunate enough to have worked through many of those things. And I was reflecting on that tonight in connection with why would I want to listen to this piece "on my deathbed" (assuming that's how I go!).

All this I think I have subconsciously brought to my listening of this symphony. I don't think of any of this as I'm listening-- I listen to the notes themselves and it moves me-- you should see the heap of tissue here at my desk! LOL Of course all this is subjective-- this is strictly what I make of it myself. I was just trying to articulate what it is that perhaps moves me so much about that one particular movement (it certainly doesn't "de-mystify" it for me).

I'm surprised how Beethoven helped to teach me something about myself tonight, through his music (even though he would've had probably very different thoughts). But I wasn't expecting that tonight.

I know this is a bit of a rambling personal and emotional post and not quite on-topic, but I wanted to share that. :)
 
#62 ·
Not a terribly realistic question. I would imagine that, at that moment, listening to music (not to mention choosing from a long list of candidates) would be of relatively less importance, so busy would I be with labored breathing, uncontrolled bowel and bladder functions, and that annoying taste in one's mouth which, it is alleged, accompanies the experience in general.
 
#64 · (Edited)
Depends how I am feeling and how much time I have and a lot of other factors. If you are saying I have some free time, then it will probably be an opera on DVD that I really like, which may be different from what I really like now. If an instrumental work, perhaps Beethoven's Sixth.

Ah yes, posted before looking above. Boothvoice has the right idea. Handel's Messiah would definitely be the best deathbed work--especially the third part. Will squeeze the other stuff in if there is enough time.
 
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