Looking for Dark Classical Music

Hello,

I know essentially nothing about classical music, but I'm looking for compositions that evoke feelings of darkness or sadness...

If you know of entire CD's or albums that I can obtain with such a vibe, it would be much appreciated. Because I know so little, I may be pointed in the direction of a particular piece, but then it's a question of the conductor, players, etc... so the closest you can get to a direct album/CD suggestion would be best. But any suggestions would be great.

Thanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwaEOyOw9tk

Hope this is going to be a nice thread!

Also some Glass stuff:

Samuel Barber - Adagio For Strings

Don't know what version this is, but the version of the London Symphonic Orchestra is popular

Arvo Pärt - Cantus In memory of Benjamin Britten

i reccomend the version on this album http://www.discogs.com/Tasmin-Little-Arvo-P%C3%A4rt-Martin-Roscoe-Bournemouth-Sinfonietta-Richard-Studt-Fratres/master/197420

Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre Du Printemps (The Rite Of Spring)

Rachmaninov - The Isle Of The Dead

Arvo Pärt - all

Some modern classical albums:

Deaf Center - Pale Ravine; Owl Splinters

Kreng - L'Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu; Grimoire

Jacaszek - Treny

Marcus Fjellström - Schattenspieler

Indignant Senility - Plays Wagner

Hildur Guðnadóttir - Without Sinking; Mount A

Jóhann Jóhannsson - And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees

Need to build my classical library.

contemporary neo-classical (or whatever the hell it's called):

Max Richter - On The Nature Of Daylight from the album The Blue Notebooks

This was on Shutter Island? I really need to see that movie and stop postponing it

anyway, you'd want to check out more of Max Richter

Johann Johannsson - Odi et Amo, from the album Englaborn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdfdN4uAdFY

Henryk Gorecki - Symphony 3

melancholy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_56vEztiXA

post melancholy:

  On 6/27/2011 at 9:17 PM, patternoverlap said:

Henryk Gorecki - Symphony 3

Yes. This.

Also, Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet no. 8 (op. 110)

2nd Movement:

But it's better to listen to the whole, the other parts are slower and more melancholic, and it was meant to be played in one go, with little or no rest for the musicians

Performers in the vid are Emerson String Quartet, but I don't know any other recommendations about performers/cd's on that one, sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQUFQ_N0JI8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDo0a0MVLyw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7JRrMW_7V8

Charles Ives - The Unanswered Question

Don't read the annotations popping up (hide them if you have to). Altought very informative and interesting, it's best to just hear it first without reading about it at the same time.

Quite a vague specification...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-j497I2DfA

That's about as dark and melancholic as anything the entire history of classical music. As far as I can remember it was written around the time the composer's wife left him.

Schnittke was also a troubled fellah, piano quintet in particular suits your description.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYLpMmw_DUE

elliot goldenthal - alien 3 soundtrack

Yes, Schnittke, love the man

Check out Collected Songs Where Every Verse Is Filled With Grief. This was originally written by Schnittke as a vocal piece, but the Kronos Quartet translated it to strings:

(no youtube. it seems to be deleted there)

http://video.yandex.ru/users/georgs53/view/4182/

Also:

Giacinto Scelsi - Uaxuctum (Or: "The legend of the Maya city, destroyed by themselves for religious reasons")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GZgbt9sTcY

condctor: Jurg Wyttenbach

Sibelius-The Swan of Tuonela

feels like you are in an abandoned spaceship

Chopin - Nocturnes, all of them

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata

Eric Satie - Gnossienes, all of them

suicidal madness and depression

he wrote that shit after he found out his wife was having an affair with his friend, a painter, who later killed himself

schnittke is one of my main heros

  On 6/28/2011 at 3:44 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Sibelius-The Swan of Tuonela

 

 

feels like you are in an abandoned spaceship

YES. This was going to be my pick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGEOw6cThuU

edit: lol @ youtube freeze-frame.

Elliot Goldenthal's entire repertoire

Schoenberg

John Adams

Clint Mansell

Mahler 9th

Bruckner 9th

Berlioz's Symphony Fantastic

Tchaikovsky's 6th (some still say he killed himself after that!)

Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Enfant Defunte

Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgYgHDhrQ_g

^

I played this once for my mom, who thinks of RVW as pretty pastoral Englishness, and she was all "euuuuurggghhh."

That's how you know it's good.

Well, it is pretty.

No one does it like chopin

This is originally a piano piece (surprise!) but this guy does an amazing solo violin rendition

great bach performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC7qRPXmrw4