Today’s guest post comes from Chris in Owatonna.
How many times have you been to an art museum, looked at a certain painting or sculpture, and started to choke up or cry, feel joy or triumph?
I certainly don’t recall any extreme emotional moments looking at art.
How many times have you looked at a photograph, read a book or a poem, watched a play, or experienced any other art form, and been moved to tears or other powerful emotions?
Once or twice? I’ll admit I’ve done that on rare occasions. A few years ago, I surprisingly choked up at the climax of The Help by Katherine Stockett. And yes, it was the book, not the movie.
Now, how many times has music brought you to tears of either extreme joy or great sorrow?
For me, dozens of times.
Right now, I bet some of you are saying, “Wait a sec. What about movies? Lots of movies make me cry. What about the ability of the filmmakers and actors to elicit such powerful responses?”
To that, I say try watching the movie with the sound turned off or the music edited out somehow. Example: the scene at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life where Harry makes the toast to “My big brother George, the richest man in town.” Everyone singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing sets up that line. Without the music, it’s just a happy party. The song signifies the town coming together for George and the apparent miracle that saves him. That’s why my waterworks start. The old cliché, “Cue the violins,” rings true because without an effective musical score, most movies would carry much less emotional impact.
This leads me to my point. I’ve stumbled across another one of those rare moments: a song that is arranged and sung so powerfully, so perfectly, that it stunned me into silence, then brought tears to my eyes. The last time that happened was the first time I heard Eva Cassidy sing Over the Rainbow on the Morning Show way back in February of 2000. I remember that day as vividly as September 11, 2001. It was just before 8:00 and I was cleaning up my breakfast dishes. Through the whoosh of the water, I heard this sweet voice and simple accompaniment. Mesmerized, I turned off the water, went to the living room, turned up the volume, and listened attentively. When she hit the last high note, then finished with that gorgeous chord progression and final arpeggio on the guitar, I melted. I couldn’t buy the CD fast enough, and when I got it, listened continuously for days. I’m sure I listened 100 times that first day, putting it on endless replay. By now, I’ve listened to Eva sing Over the Rainbow THOUSANDS of times. It can still make me cry on occasion, at the right moment for whatever reason.
This young man’s name is Sam Robson, and the performance I’ve linked of him belongs in the rarified strata of Eva’s best singing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. I only wish he’d put it onto a CD so I could buy a copy. In the few weeks since I first heard this, I’ve listened at least 100 times and can’t get it out of my head. Please listen on your best speakers, or better yet, with a good pair of headphones. And no distractions or multitasking. Just soak up this most beautiful noise.
What music moves you to tears?
Trail Baboon 
Thank you, Chris, what a treat to wake up to. Glorious and passionate singing. I’ll have to listen to it a few more times before I can move on to answering your question and other comments on your post. I do know this, today will be a grand day of the trail. Thanks again.
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What a gift this guy has, he’s incredible. Love this one:
Be sure to not miss the final cord.
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I’ve listened to his other 90+videos. He does some note-perfect covers of Take 6 tunes, plus many more beautiful hymns as well as other solo a capella arrangements.
Chris in Owatonna
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Thanks, Chris. I’ve never heard Sam Robson before, and he is truly good.
A number of years ago–and it might have been the winter of 2000–I sent that first Eva Cassidy CD to Tom Keith and Dale with a note urging them to listen to her. I remember saying she had an unusual ability to make people cry, and I recommended her version of “Over the Rainbow.”
A song with a surprising ability to make me cry is “The Mary Ellen Carter.” I’m also moved to tears by a song called “Between Girl and Gone” by Karen Savoca. I know why, in that case: the song encapsulates some difficult personal history for me.
I’ll look forward to what others report.
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Wow, Steve, looks like I have you to thank for my Eva obsession! That was one of the great things about the Morning Show. Dale and Jim Ed were more than happy to listen to their listeners, play requests, let us participate in the show, and they even replied to the few emails I sent them over the years.
Chris in Owatonna
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Joshua Bell doing the Bach violin partitas.
Paul Winter’s “Canyon”
Kiri te Kanawa “I Know that My Redeemer Liveth”
Annie Lennox and the final song of the Movies “Lord of the Rings”
Simon and Garfunkel “Kathey’s Song”
Nanci Griffith “Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather
Eric Capton “Tears in Heaven”
Chieftans “May Morning Dew”
Christine Hitt “Sitting in a Tree” (Former studenmts fo mine whose album had a Grammy nomination
Bagpipe version of “Amazing Grace” a la LGMS or my daughter doing it on flute
Aaron Neville The Lord’s Prayer
M. C. Carpenter “Only a Dream”
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I think Aaron Neville, singing any song, might be able to bring me to tears.
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I not only cry when i hear music, I also have been known to cry when I perform music. Just about any well-played song or instrumental piece can get me misty-eyed. I remember times playing in the band during college when I found myself crying during a performance of a particularly powerful or poignant piece. It is kind of hard to maintain breath control when that happens.
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Many years ago I heard a deeply moving interview, with Scott Simon interviewing Bonnie Raitt. She doesn’t actually cry when singing, but she made it clear that she is powerfully moved by those heartbreak ballads she sings (like “I Can’t Make You Love Me”). Raitt said that when she performs one of them she is so messed up she has to do a few other kinds of music before doing another heartbreak song.
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OMG, Renee. I thought I was the only one who choked up while performing, and in college band to, with Dr. Bencriscutto at the U on many occasions. That man had such a passion for great music that his love rubbed off on me for sure, and I think many others in the bands.
Chris In O-town
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Chris, were you at the State Capitol grounds many years ago when Dr. Ben and Major Latimer were conducting what we hoped would be the world’s largest orchestra? As it turned out, we didn’t break any world records, but it sure was a lot of fun trying, and what a spirited and joyous occasion.
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Major Latimer! That’s a gone one, of course I meant Mayor Latimer.
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No, I missed that one. I might have been living in Chicago at the time.
Chris
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My college band director was a grad student of Bencriscutto.
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Good morning. I am a fan of many kinds of music. I believe there must have been a time when I was brought to tears by music. I don’t remember what kind of music did that to me or when it happened. Due to the wide range of music I like, I have trouble picking any single song or preformer that would be most likely to bring me to tears. I think that under the right conditions a recorded version of one of the songs of the great country singer and song writer, Hank Williams, might bring me to tears.
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A great song. Hank’s version doesn’t tear me up, but others have in the past. Can’t remember offhand. But the lyrics alone, my gosh, how sad.
Chris in Owatonna
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This is the first one that comes to mind:
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…and I know there are some Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins that will float through my head presently. Thanks, Chris!
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There are a few hymns that will cause me to sniffle and stop singing at church – ones that I remember singing with my dad that, even after 4 years of singing them without him, still bring on the waterworks (some Christmas carols and Easter hymns can totally sideswipe me – the Hallelujah chorus stops me in my tracks…that bit of Handel was a surprise ending coordinated with the church choir and organist at my dad’s memorial service).
Other tunes include “John’s Garden” (the song about the pumpkins deciding whether or not to become jack-o-lanterns), “Feet of a Dancer,” a Beethoven symphony will also open the faucets some days. I’m sure there are more…
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Over the years, my roster of tear-jerking music has grown slowly but steadily. Some of my faves are: the Tonight “Quintet” from the West Side Story soundtrack; the ending of the fugue portion of Britten’s Variations and Fugue on a theme of Purcell (AKA The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra); The Great Gate of Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky; Whitney Houston’s Super Bowl version of The Star Spangled Banner; Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral, from the Wagner opera Lohengrin; the last movement from Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony; I could go on and on as one composition triggers a memory of another.
Oops! Who could forget Peter Ostrushko’s heart-melting rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” on the live farewell broadcast of “The Morning Show”? I get misty-eyed merely thinking about that morning at the Fitz. I was fortunate to be in the audience, and when I heard the voices around me rise up in soft but perfect harmony with Peter, I tried to sing, but I turned into a blubbering fool.
Chris in Owatonna
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Chris – I was there blubbering as well!
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I came undone at the Tom Keith memorial show at the Fitz when those bagpipers marched in at the end.
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bag pipers are meant to do that
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Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”
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I have quite a different memory about that one, BiR. There was a time when I kissed my college girlfriend for the length of that piece. Nice memory!
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How Steve Goodman could get through performing this song is beyond me. Chokes me up every time I hear it:
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yep
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Another great Steve Goodman sentimental song: “Old Smoothies.”
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Yes, and that reminds me of this one:
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Oh PJ – I hadn’t heard that before. Sniff…
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Another one for my list, Sherilee.
Chris in Owatonna
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i have turned into a crier. i used to be very stoic and can sh=uck it up with the best of them. recently i have begun to realize that there are all these people out therewho do amazing things for us and all we have to do is be there for them when they happen.
i remember seeing the lion king when it started in minneapolis all those years ago and just crying at how beautiful it was, the movement the music the pageantry the costumes and all this came from the ability to feel and visualize. i do i have to admit cry at museums, i cant believe they can do that. its just paint its just bronze and yet look… books all the time, poems well duh… come to think of chris. what kind of heartless bastard are you that it takes music to move you.
somewhere over the rainbow is as good as it gets. eva was a gift for us all to remember how fragile life is. kate wolf,
john denver, lenny bernstien, george gershwin. mozart, bach …he just plays with the notes and listen to what he gets.
steve goodman, tom waits, miles davis, vincent van gogh, jackson pollack, el greco, ee cummings, jon hassler, it does go on and on.
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I always tear up in the Art Building at the State Fair tim, for a similar reason – those paintings were done by people I walk among daily – it just blows me away to see what people can do with their passion.
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I’m more aurally than visually oriented, so music and spoken word get a more ready response from me. But visual works can have that effect, too. Sometimes that resonance, the feeling of “Yes, that’s me, too,” brings a tear.
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This piece by Shostakovich always does me in. It’s so beautiful it makes my heart ache, just transports me to someplace else:
Books make me cry as well. Certain paintings also speak to me very powerfully. One of my very favorite painters is Valentin Serov. When I lived in Moscow I would go to the Tretyakov Gallery at least once a month. I’d sit for hours in front of his magnificent huge paintings, completely mesmerized, especially by his portraits.
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i looked him up and i love that brushstroke, pastel feeling. nice stuff. you could study for hours
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One of the first paintings that really struck me was “Song of the Lark” by Breton. I saw it in Chicago when I was a teenager. It took my breath away. I tried to find a youtube that had the painting, but only found it as part of an inane look at all the posters in somebody’s bedroom…. I’m not torturing you all with that!!!
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OT – Don’t know if there are any organ aficionados in the group, but there’s going to be a FREE organ recital on Thursday evening at the St. Paul Cathedral. Olivier Latry, the master of organ at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral will be playing. I heard him once before, and he’s marvelous…if you like that kind of thing. It starts at 7:30 PM.
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For a variety of reasons, the first floor waiting room at my work needs some music playing at all times to increase privacy when people check in with the receptionist. We decided that we didn’t want a TV, radio stations around here are terrible, there isn’t anything in the budget for something like Sirius radio, and the State IT department won’t allow us to access the internet to live stream anything due to using up state system band width, so we are going to play music off of a laptop using Windows media player. My husband and I have an extensive collection of folk/rock/world/bluegrass/jazz cd’s(no surpise why we like Radio Heartland) and one of our colleagues was a professional piano player in dance bands for years, and he has hours of recorded music, mostly decades of rock and roll. I finagled my way into the position of being in charge of compiling all the songs that will be played. I figure we need about 1000 tunes a week to cover the 10 hours a day when people check in with the receptionist, and I estimate that between our two music collections we have about 3 work-weeks worth of music. I am so excited to be able to do this. Maybe I will make people cry in the wating room.
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Why would you want people to cry in your waiting room, Renee? 🙂
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Some of them will be crying already.
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That’s what I figured.
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I had nasty plans of programming opera arias for the guys in the domestic violence group to have to listen to while they wait for group to start.
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I hope it works, Renee. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,” ya know. 🙂
Chris in Owatonna
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That does sound like a great project, even if an arduous one.
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I don’t know if people will even notice what is playing, but I want it to be good quality.
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Some of your patients may not, but I’m sure that whatever employees are subjected to the music, day in and day out, will appreciate the variety. Husband once worked in a furniture store in Minneapolis where every few hours Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons would cycle through the store-wide loudspeakers. Drove him nuts.
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I know there’s many more than this, but “Un Bel Di” from Madame Butterfly, “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Mille “Singing for Our Lives” by Holly Near, and Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze” are some that make me verklempt. Bagpipes tend to get me that way, too, regardless of what they’re playing.
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I sang this lullaby for my voice recital in college. (I didn’t do the recitative… wish I had!) When I first learned it I could not sing it without crying.
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Wow, Holly. There are parts of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” that have always made me cry…
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There are dozens and dozens of songs that trigger tears for me. I don’t cry much over other things in life, but conserve my entire budget of waterworks for music.
There is something about a brooding country song in three-quarter time that I find particularly affecting. Here’s one by Steve Young, written by Utah Phillips, partly original lyrics with some borrowed from an Irish folk song. A simple, spare arrangement with gorgeous harmony by Tracy Nelson. A haunting whole that is somehow more than the sum of its parts.
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Thank you all for your thoughtful responses to my original post. I love discovering what makes Babooners tick … and cry… and laugh… and … well … Thanks.
Chris in Owatonna
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Thanks for a thoughtful and inspirational guest blog!
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Thanks, Chris, for introducing us to Sam Robeson. Didn’t get much done today, too busy listening to his various recordings. What an extraordinary talent, and I love that he so obviously loves singing; radiates joy.
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Damn, can’t even spell his name right.
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I’ll post this as a fond farewell to Jerabek’s, a bakery and coffee shop four blocks from my place. Went out of business last week.
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Oh, that is too bad – PJ mentioned it recently, and I wondered…
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Too bad. Closed without much warning at 2 PM on Saturday. A long-time West Side institution gone, and with it the dreams and aspirations of Russ and Ronda, the owners. Hope things look up for them.
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Another one that’s been nagging at me: American Tune (Paul Simon), and there’s some song that I can’t sing all the way through without weeping, but can’t bring it to consciousness. Maybe by morning…
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I know that my musical tastes are uneducated and blue collar but Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” has to be added to my list.
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always loved that one
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Found it! This song has to find me in the right mood, but it chokes me up because it’s vaguely, remotely, barely similar to my baseball career. I loved pitching, but did something to my arm when I was a teen, and never even got past high school ball. But it’s the last verse that really gets me.
https://myspace.com/tompaxton/music/song/my-favorite-spring-28378791-28191177
Chris in Owatonna
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love that one too
thanks chris fun day great topic. fun responses
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The two songs that give me goosebumps and tears are both songs about war or recovering from war. And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle, and Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon. I heard John tell the story of playing a concert somewhere in Europe (must have been a long time ago), and having all these really old guys file in and stand at the back. After the concert, they told him. That was us. Makes me tear up just thinking about it.
txutxi
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good additions txutxi theose tow get me everyime too . masters of war off the old dylan collections is in that vein too.
good to see you back
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Thanks. Good to be back. Hope I can keep my distracted mind focussed enough to stay for a while.
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I’m a bit late on this, but I will never forget hearing “The Dutchman” by Steve Goodman on the Morning Show. I can listen to that song over and over again and never get sick of it.
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