Many different types of people cry at early music events that contain music from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque eras. In most cases, this is a natural reaction to the intense feelings and visual impressions stirred up by the music. We look at who could be moved to tears at these kinds of concerts and why:
Fans and Experts in the Field of Music
Those who have a deep love for the history, creative methods, and distinctive soundscapes of early music may find themselves overcome with emotion. An intense feeling can be aroused by the complex polyphony, the authenticity of the period instruments used, and the mastery of the musicians.
Connection and Nostalgia: For some, listening to music from the early 20th century brings back fond memories of bygone eras and a feeling of nostalgia. The music has the power to stir up sentiments and memories from bygone eras, which may be quite poignant.
Artists and Entertainers
The technical and emotional challenges of performing early music can make other musicians and performers emotional, especially if they specialize in the genre. They understand the artists’ experiences and can enjoy the finer points of a performance.
A musician’s emotional investment in a performance piece is a kind of self-expression; this is particularly true if the musician has a link to the repertory from their own life. They may be taken back to their own performances or life events by the music.
Members of the General Public
Audiences may have profound emotional resonance when listening to early music because of the prevalence of religious and spiritual themes. Concerts, held in often-historical buildings or cathedrals, can have a calming effect on listeners due to the combination of the music’s beauty and purity with the space’s acoustics.
Many find that going to an early music event takes them on a voyage into the sublime and otherworldly, providing a welcome respite from the stresses of contemporary life. As a normal reaction to such a powerful sensory and emotional event, this might be so intense that it overwhelms the person.
Learners of the Past
The music may bring historians and academics who study early music to tears when they hear it played live since it symbolizes the zenith of their research and their love for the topic. Realizing you’re listening to a piece as it may have sounded hundreds of years ago is a very emotional experience.
People with a Spiritual and Religious Life
Link to the Divine: There is a strong religious and spiritual undercurrent to a lot of early music, particularly Baroque and Renaissance works. These performances have the power to move people to tears of spirituality, especially those who have strong religious or spiritual views.
Release from Emotions
Every Person’s Life: Early music performances have the power to move people emotionally regardless of their upbringing. Tears can be a release for pent-up emotions while listening to music that combines lovely melodies, harmonies, and the expert interaction of voices and instruments.
The fact that people still cry during classical music performances today is proof of music’s ability to touch people’s souls. Whether it’s a result of a profound intellectual understanding, an intense emotional bond, or a spiritual encounter, early music has the power to move people to tears, bringing them together in a common reaction to the profound beauty and meaning of the music.
Similarly, individuals don’t become emotional about any old song, unlike if the passage of time were the only important factor. Romantic music is more likely to make them cry. Music by Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, and occasionally Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, and Chopin moves people. Almost never will you hear music from the classical, Renaissance, or contemporary eras; instead, you’ll hear the tired old standbys.
Also, unlike Baroque and contemporary operas, Romantic operas (e.g., those by Massenet, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, and Gounod) elicit sobs from audiences. Well, I’ve heard that Monteverdi, Handel, and Josquin des Prez may elicit tears from some listeners, but I’ve never heard someone weep over Schönberg, Webern, Nancarrow, Carter, or Stockhausen. And anyhow, who gets emotional during performances of early music?
One outstanding exception is a musicologist who, despite his extensive knowledge of the St. Matthew Passion, nonetheless becomes emotional whenever he performs it. That, however, is an example of the rule being shown by an exception. Romantic music is typically the first to evoke emotional responses.
Romantic novels from any era, from the late 18th to the early 20th, may be argued in the same way. Modernist and postmodernist works of literature like Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Calvino, and Pessoa, as well as cinema by Gagné, Robbe-Grillet, Bresson, Buñuel, and Deren, do not elicit emotional responses from audiences. Romantic romances make people cry, even if they aren’t the greatest works of writing. Not only are Harlequin romances stories about love, but they also have a lineage that begins with Romanticism, which makes them romantic in and of itself.
One could argue forever about what constitutes a modern or postmodern work, but the vast majority of commercially successful literature and film rely on concepts, symbols, narrative structures, goals, and even ideas of emotion and psychology first proposed by the Romantics in the early nineteenth century.
Romanticism had a greater impact on fiction and cinema than on most 20th-century painting. So, maybe (this is a very wide assumption), the fact that most popular novels, films, and symphonic music are still Romantic is another reason why fewer people cry over paintings than over novels, films, and orchestral music.
Modern classical music and the works of Brahms and Joyce are more closely associated with twentieth-century art than with the Brontës or the late Joyce. Reading emotional novels, going to the opera or symphony, and, most of all, watching Hollywood movies all evoke romantic feelings, which might lead to tears. Cinema is not just a form of artistic expression; it is also a kind of Romantic temporality.