{"id":37143,"date":"2024-01-02T15:27:28","date_gmt":"2024-01-02T14:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/701ca32f-03d5-4171-b0e5-8b0c660c9984"},"modified":"2024-01-04T21:39:57","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T20:39:57","slug":"sad-songs-10-of-the-most-melancholy-melodies","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/sad-songs-10-of-the-most-melancholy-melodies\/","title":{"rendered":"Sad songs: 10 of the most melancholy melodies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Hannah Nepilova\n <\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 02 January 2024 at 14:27 PM<\/p>

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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’d rather ignore.<\/p>

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

Sad songs, part 1<\/h2>

1. Dido\u2019s Lament – Purcell\u2019s Dido and Aeneas<\/h3>

Is it the yearning melody<\/a><\/strong>? The chromatically descending ground bass? That sense of distilled despair in the text? There\u2019s certainly something uniquely effective about this aria<\/a><\/strong> from Purcell<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s 1688 opera Dido and Aeneas<\/i><\/a><\/strong>, in which Dido, distraught at Aeneas\u2019s betrayal, prepares to kill herself.<\/p>

For all its surface simplicity, Dido\u2019s lament<\/a><\/strong> 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>