The Most Beautiful Music Ever?

Chopin's Funeral March gets me happy. I don't know why, either, because it's a depressing-sounding piece, but lifts me up!

Classical music is for people with patience and taste. I have far too little of either, but I enjoy it in small doses mixed in the right atmosphere.

I don't think it has to be classical to qualify.

Doesn't have to be classical. Jazz could do it. Folk? Blues? Hopefully you're not thinking of the last Bright Eyes album....

Moonlight sonata, for obvious reasons.

Peter Blegvad's "Daughter" is another incredibly moving song.

The orchestral version of To Zanarkand.

Paul Robeson's version of Shenandoah almost makes me cry.

I came in here just to name moonlight sonata but Phil beat me to it. There's just something about that song that always keeps me coming back to it. It's sublime.

That famous bit from Swan Lake just wrecks me. Also that whole Bon Iver album. And Slow Show by The National, for some reason.

From the Art of Mirrors by Max Richter is the most perfect piece of music i've ver heard. Especially the last ten minutes, which remove me entirely from existence, to the point where what is and what is not, what i am and what i am not just kind of drifts away and i'm perfect and i'm everything and i'm absolutely nothing.

I know i've mentioned that piece a lot, but it really is just about everything, all fifty two minutes of it. I wish i could link it in here or something, but i can't.

In Jr. high orchestra, this was one of the first "serious" pieces we ever played. Our conductor loved to tell us the stories behind the music, and his explanation of Bach's life and all the goings-on that led up to this piece. It was great to connect music with the life of the artist, and really made me realize that there were so many more levels to orchestral music.

I think this is the best version of this song, and it makes me want to weep at times.

Pink Floyd's Echoes is one of the few pieces of audio I seldom am not content with actually sitting and listening to.

Nessun Dorma as sung by Pavarotti:

Utterly phenomenal.

Chokes me up every time I listen to it.

Song for Athena by John Tavener. I believe it was the Vienna Boys Choir who sang it at Princess Diana's funeral.

We sang it in A Capella choir in high school. Tavener is easily my favorite living composer. This song is just beautiful.

This recording is awful, it distorts a little here and there, but it will give you a pretty good idea. I think you can buy a professional recording of this and it's really haunting to hear the paulbearers walking by. I can go over the music theory behind it sometime if anyone's interested, it's amazing how he composed the song, the form and structure. Really cool techniques used throughout.

Listen to the drone that underpins it throughout. That was my part, and when we did the song in school, we got to do the solo at the end.

Basically, we all centered on that pitch, then each soloist would sing out and by changing the shape of their mouth, the vowel sound, they could produce different notes in the reverberating harmonics of the room. So we all sang the same note, but we each had a solo line at the end.

None of that is on this recording, since this event was dedicated to Princess Diana and they didn't want to take away from her by doing solos. But that technique is just so cool.

I could go on for hours about Tavener...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3e-zLKyZLw

'Breaths' by Sweet Honey in the Rock. What acapella is meant to be.

EDIT: This one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-YGzsUc2iE

Oh, Nina Simone's cover of 'I Shall Be Released': beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyCn8IC5RpE

The Avett Brothers- Go to Sleep
This song has a very conflicting effect on my emotions. It may sound cheesy, but if you've ever had someone close to you die; it feels like the bittersweet moment when you realize they're gone physically, but they'll be with you forever in other ways.

Nice. "January Wedding" would get my vote if I had to pick an Avett Brothers song.

This isn't the best performance or video to showcase it. But Rain by Dryve is just an incredible piece of work that whenever I listen to it and close my eyes I feel like I'm having an out of body experience.

I'm not sure "cute" is the right word.

This gives me the chills and moves me to tears, every time. So beautiful.

Mark Linkous made some of my favorite music. He was a brilliant man, angelic as Elliott Smith, but with some idiosyncratic musicality akin to Tom Waits. This song is one of my favorites.

And this is another one where i just become utterly lost.

love this.

I've literally listened to this song on repeat all day before.

It's so simple and so elegant. It fills me completely and reminds me that i'm whole and alive and i wish it would never end most days because it's perfect and i'm perfect and it's all i need or have ever needed.

Für Elise and Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 both do things to me, but differently.

I am coming across as a pretentious longhair by this time, so I shall try to think of something more modern/pop tune. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien is the first thing that comes to mind, especially if it's a scratchy recording, but that may still be too "uppity".

Dead Flowers by the Rolling Stones has personal connotations for me. I played it, and only it, non-stop for a week after Leticia died. probably in poor taste, but it felt right at the time.

Je ne Regrette Rien is a beautiful song. Edith Piaf, oh man, she's just something else.

Toss-up between that and La Vie En Rose, really...

Speaking of switch, i quite like Louis Armstrong, even his english rendition of that. I'm not much of a horn man, but Louis Armstrong did some great things. I'd actually like to listen to him right now, but it looks like he was on my dead computer, which is a shame because i probably won't want to listen to him in the morning.

+ another song by The Flashbulb called La Tristesse Durera Toujours.

Arvo Part - Silouans Song

Probably many more songs that I'm forgetting now.

This song is incredibly moving. I associate it with a lot of crap that happened in my life, so I'm more likely to cry than drift into happy memories, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.

You know those songs that you haven't heard in forever, but then you hear the first note and your skin prickles up and you squeal from excitement? This is one of those songs for me. Unfortunately I couldn't find a non-live, official version of it; fortunately, I found a version cut to some awesome footage of Children of Men on Vimeo.

Built To Spill, "Broken Chairs"

Forgive me for skipping to the bottom and not reading anyone else's posts: believe me I will read 'em, but the second I read your post Tuffy this immediately jumped to my mind.

I recently came across the Oscar winning soundtrack for Crazy Heart, and one song in particular moves me immensely. It's an amazing song, but it tends to be two lines in lyrics that just gets me every time.
The tune is The Weary Kind, theme for the movie (lame obvious choice, but what can you do, you don't pick the music, music picks you). In particular, the lines about this not feeling like home and how the days and nights feel the same just resonate me.

I also discovered the documentary Grizzly Man not too long ago, and heard the song Coyotes by Don Edwards. The story is achingly sd, well for me at least. i always felt I was more of a country boy than the city I was raised in. But the song also speaks on life as well, changes and how things leave you. Oddly enough, it's the coyote-yips Edwards does that nearly tears me up.

And finally this tune, this tune I use to go for nightly walks with on the outskirts of town with the moon illuminating the escarpment resting beneath it, coincidentally I use to always hear coyotes yipping off in the distance, sadly not no more.

I guess I'm a lyrics man (Lennon what!), the story's gotta be there for me. Which is not to say I've never been moved by anything instrumental, but I like my stories.

Oh yeah, the first chord or strum or whatever you musicians call it, heard on Farmhouse by Phish immediately takes me away to some other place.

I agree with a lot already here, especially the National and more or less all of Eddy's picks (Sparklehorse really deserves more kudos, was listening to that album yesterday and it's fucking great). Two of my favourites are:

'Down River' by David Ackles. Can't find a good quality version on Youtube but it's worth downloading. A one-sided conversation from a recently released prisoner with his old lover, and discovering she has a new lover. I've never heard so much done with so few lyrics.

Also, Nina Simone's 'Wild is the Wind':

the album i've listened to more than any other over the last decade or so is the incredible and no more shall we part by nick cave

and the newly released mike patton project, mondo cane, has some pretty amazing pieces on it

This kid named Jason Becker was a virtuoso guitar shredder emerging in the late '80s, then got stricken with ALS at 19 shortly after replacing Steve Vai in David Lee Roth's band. Now he's in a wheelchair and has to communicate by blinking. Anyway, he started composing music on the computer this way, then having musicians perform it. On his first album like this called Perspective, there's a track called "Higher" that gets me every time (the second half of it, anyway). It's very Bach, and is sung by some folks from Voicestra (Bobby McFerrin's group). I can't find a free version online, but it's quite moving.

Try not to weep.

The audio quality is kind of low as there is no official video but this is one of my all time favorite songs.

I think it was Madame Butterfly that inspired Weezer's Pinkterton. Rivers is a big opera buff.

this song kills me everytime. perhaps moreso now that i'm married. it's so perfect.

Cool question. This caught my eye.

Roxy Music's "Avalon" is not my favorite song ever, but maybe the most beautiful to me.

And Buffalo Springfield's "Broken Arrow," the moment right after the last chorus, when Neil Young sings, "Did you see them? Did you see them?"

In a totally different vein, "Stay Free," by The Clash, right near the end, just after he pauses and says, "stay free," and then the guitars amp up and go freaking NUTS! Takes my breath away.

The Pixies, "The Happening." Delirious.

Okay, Kit, in the conjugal happiness department, I see your At Last and raise Your Precious Love.