What Music makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?

Flamenco Sketches - Miles Davis.

Consciousmess, you start many threads with a question, but why not tell us your answer? For me there are many, usually sparsely arranged female vocal songs. June Tabor's version of 'Waltzing Mathilda' comes to mind, as well as her version of 'Hard Love'. But that said, Mozart's 'Miserere' is another. 

Many pieces for me, picking a few:

Meet on the Ledge - Fairport Convention (live versions especially)

One True Friend - Gregg Allman

Beethoven String Quartet No. 16 Op 135, especially the part where the Muss Es Sein theme moves to the beautiful lyrical interplay

Dimming of the Day - Richard and Lina Thompson (and Bonnie Raitt, Alison Krauss, Emmylou's versions)

Beethoven Symphony No. 9, especially when the Ode to Joy reaches full force

Schubert Der Tod Und Der Madchen - Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and also Brigitte Fassbaender's version

Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

God, I could go on for pages, I'll stop now.

Eoink posted:

 

Beethoven Symphony No. 9, especially when the Ode to Joy reaches full force

 

 

 

 

I would go for the live version of the Eroica conducted by Tennsesdt.

The Strat (Fender) posted:

Eoink posted:

 

Beethoven Symphony No. 9, especially when the Ode to Joy reaches full force

 

 

 

 

I would go for the live version of the Eroica conducted by Tennsesdt.

How could I forget the Eroica? It was 11 September 2001. I was driving home, listening in a numbed state of shock to the news on BBC R4 of the horrifying events earlier that day in NYC. I switched to hear the promenade concert on Radio 3. It was a concert by the Orchestre de Paris under Christoph Eschenbach. Instead of playing the planned overture, the Creatures of Prometheus, he chose to play the second movement from the Eroica symphony, the Marcia Funebre. I'm sure the musicians were equally subdued, it may have been unrehearsed, but it was a slow, measured and breathtaking performance. I had to stop the car to listen and to wipe away the tears. 

Having stopped I've come back, partly to say how moving Clive's post above is, and partly to add:

Bach St Matthew Passion - Harnoncourt/CMW (and every other performance I've got recorded or that I've heard live).

Now, for me, this is a question that could simply be answered by listing the music that I have spend my entire life listening to since I generally avoid music that somehow does not intrigue me emotionally and cause the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  Emotion is the key word here.  Perhaps I will also step on some theological point here by emphasizing that the so called 'PRaT' is not necessarily the key element for this either.  In fact, PRaT is more about an energy which leads to a physical response (ie. tapping your toe, dancing, snapping your fingers plus things like physically feeling the beat and turning the volume up etc.) while emotion is simply a spiritual response on the most human level.  

This 'religious' experience is heightened by my awareness that I am participating in a very private conversation with the composer.  I know that the very points in the music that cause the hairs on my neck to raise or tears to fall are very special moments of connection as I am quite sure many tears of joy fell on these same spots of the score as the composer bared their soul to those willing to experience this intimacy.

As a secondary interest to me is just how a composer can create an emotional image without words and in classical music you can see how they do this through symbolic means creating motifs etc. and also through musical triggers like tempo, rhythm, dynamics etc.

Honestly, I am nearly at a loss of words as I would love to list some very special moments in music (for me personally) but I would have to cover the music of at least 300 or 400 years worth of music in the classical realm (Renaissance through early 20th century).  A thousand examples want to come out at once and so I will simply try to randomly spit the first few in no order:

Beethoven:  Piano Sonata in A-flat major (Op. 110) - the third movement Arioso dolente (and its return during the climax in the fugue section that follows) is one of the greatest examples of a composer torn to bits as he leads us through an autobiographical struggle he faced (perhaps going deaf is but one source of this turmoil).  I'll leave it to Vincent d'Indy who described this Arioso most succinctly as "one of the most poignant expressions of grief conceivable to man," and the fugue as "an effort of will to shake off suffering."  The return of the fugue (after the return of the Arioso) is "Will asserting itself against the forces of annihilation...the resurrection!"

Schubert lieder:  Winterreise oder Schwanengesang.   Example are perhaps Der Leiermann oder Der Doppelgänger... 

Chausson - Concert for Piano, Violin and String quartet, op. 21, third movement marked Grave.  There is no irony here in the marking of Grave.  This is seriously one of the most visual depictions of evil vs. good and whether you believe in this or not the symbolism involved in where you will go when you face death is palpable.  For example, the underlying struggle has the musical forces pulling you downward while the countering musical forces symbolically pulling you upward.  The climax resolves this with a full downward thrust against a rising full keyboard thrust upward.  This raises the hair on the back of my neck as the struggle builds and builds and words will not suffice in every musical example I could give.

Bach (Walter Rummel transcription): Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen which is taken from the Cantata "Herr Jesu Christ, wahr' Mensch und Gott," BWV 127.   

This doesn't even scratch the surface.  For me personally, the hairs on the back of my neck will stand up when the environment is right as well.  For listening as well as spending time at the piano you need to be focused (no distractions) and the time of day and lighting and other such things really need to be in order.  For example, on the piano it may take about an hour of warming up and working out before you can get in to the 'zone' where special phenomena begin to be possible.

Eoink posted:

Having stopped I've come back, partly to say how moving Clive's post above is, and partly to add:

Bach St Matthew Passion - Harnoncourt/CMW (and every other performance I've got recorded or that I've heard live).

No kidding!  Of course, one of the greatest works of music ever conceived... 

One example only of how Bach was no stranger to raising the hair on the back of our necks.

Cannot forget the opening of Johannespassion which if it isn't a raise the hair on the back of your neck material then I don't know what is:

I visit Jerez in southern Spain once a year or so. Most times we will encounter a religious procession, usually in the evening, with floats and a marching band. The trumpets in the band play slightly off key (and very loudly) and this combined with the drums and other instruments is truly hair raising. I'm not religious, btw.

Every Goldfrapp album - even the stompy ones - has at least one hauntingly lovely track on it - usually something synthy and ethereal which frames AG's voice beautifully.

Thus:

Felt Mountain: Felt Mountain, Deer Stop, Pilots

Black Cherry: Hairy Trees

Supernature: Let It Take You

Seventh Tree: Clowns, Monster Love, A&E

Head First: Voicething

The Singles: Yellow Halo

Tales of Us: All of it, but especiallyt Stranger and Jo

Silver Eye: Faux Suede Drifter, Black Zodiac

Music itself is very emotive for me, so I have a lot of those moments at times. Here's a few that come immediately to mind as having given me a chill, on more than one occasion, regardless of playback gear:

Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Scorpions (I know, weird) - Always Somewhere

Kathy Mattea - Where've You Been?

Kris Kristofferson - Why Me Lord?

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Etta James - At Last

K.D. Lang - Bird On A Wire

Radiohead - Creep

Earlier this year I saw Hazel O'Connor with Clare Hirst (ex-Belle Stars) on saxophone. When Clare played the sax solo in "Will You?" I think the whole crowd has the hairs on the back of their necks standing up. Stunning with a well deserved standing ovation.

Walter/NYP Mahler Symphony 1 4th movement finale. Tennstedt/CSO also is terrific. Can't get much better than this 1990 live recording.

Stravinsky conducting his own Firebird. This finale always gets me. wish I could have been there.

Save

Too, too many.... at least 30% of my small collection. The percentage increases daily as I get older and more decrepit. Too many memories of my youth (last Thursday these days). 

Hair on back of neck? Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", entrance of Scarpia in Act I of "Tosca", the Lacrymosa of the Berlioz Requiem as just some examples.

BUT, wringing out from me all emotion....the last movement of Mahler's 9th symphony and "Der Abschied" from Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde".

Stephen

2 live pieces from Eric Clapton.  First from his 1979 Live At Budokan where he delivers a soaring version of Otis Rush’s Doube Trouble.   Second his take of Robert J’s Malted Milk on Unplugged particularly the lyric “Baby fix me one more drink and hug your daddy one more time’. 

Saturday 11th April 2009.

Susan Boyle - I Dreamed a Dream.

This was her first audition on Britains Got Talent and she absolutely smashed it out of the park.

It gets me every time I see and hear it, go Subo!

• Night Comes On - Leonard Cohen
• Listen to the Lion - Van Morrison
• No More Tears - Anita Baker
• Good Morning Good Morning - The Beatles
• Street Fighting Man - Rolling Stones
• By The Time I Get To Phoenix - Issac Hayes
• Ode to Billie Joe - Bobbie Gentry

My current favourite is Carmen Gomes Sings The Blues. An absolute cracker of a live album. I just keep playing it again, and again, and again.

So many to choose from , a few to start

God only knows - Beach Boys

Love and Mercy - Brian Wilson 

In the Garden - Van Morrison

Wild Children - Van Morrison

Oye coma va - Santana 

Midnight Rider Gregg Allman

Alone again or - Love

Fool on the hill - Beatles

Nimrod - Elgar

......and many more

Bob F 

Wrote a Song for Everyone - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Suzi Mac, a local girl from Cornwall, breathtaking voice live... Amazing Grace is seriously hair standing stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8xoP6w5V0k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htjex5gg75o

She was support act for Imelda May at Falmouth back in August.

And they asked me if I would
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
She said
"Tell me are you a Christian child?"
And I said "Ma'am, I am tonight"

every time! Even just reading them and hearing the song in my head.

many others of course but at this moment.....

Brangäne‘s Warning from Act Two of Tristan.

Final scene Act 3 of Parsifal