{"id":32890,"date":"2023-09-05T15:27:28","date_gmt":"2023-09-05T13:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/?p=187927"},"modified":"2023-09-05T16:39:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T14:39:59","slug":"sad-songs-10-of-the-saddest-songs-in-history","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/sad-songs-10-of-the-saddest-songs-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Sad songs: 10 of the saddest songs in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our round-up of the saddest and most haunting songs in musical history <\/p>

By Hannah Nepilova\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 05 September 2023 at 13:27 PM<\/p>

\n\n

Few things grab you by the lapels like the most powerful sad songs.<\/strong> They haunt us, move us to tears, and occasionally chill us to the core \u2013 making us reflect on issues we\u2019d rather ignore.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never claim to be the ultimate authority on sad songs: there are too many of them to count. Nevertheless, here are just ten \u2013 plucked from all corners of the musical repertoire \u2013 that have, over the years, imprinted themselves on our memories.<\/p>\n

1.Dido\u2019s Lament \u2013 Purcell\u2019s Dido and Aeneas<\/h2>\n

Is it the yearning melody? The chromatically descending ground bass? That sense of distilled despair in the text? There\u2019s certainly something uniquely effective about this aria from Purcell\u2019s 1688 opera Dido and Aeneas<\/i>, in which Dido, distraught at Aeneas\u2019s betrayal, prepares to kill herself. For all its surface simplicity, Dido\u2019s lament is full of musical sleights of hand, not least its leaning appoggiaturas in the vocal part, and ornamentation in the strings, all of which conspire to make this one of the most tragic, and famous arias in the history of English opera.<\/p>\n