Has there been a piece that has changed your life?

Just as the title asks, has there been a piece of music that changed your life, or the way you composed, or the way you thought about music, ect. Just explain.

For me there are a few pieces that have different reasons.

Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op.95

I had been composing little things for a while and when I sat down with the score and just listened to the music, I knew that I wanted to do this. I wanted to compose music that was amazing and told a story and moved people. This piece made me want to compose seriously.

Britten's War Requiem

Again when I sat down and listened, its changed how I thought about the way I composed music. I knew from then on I wanted/needed to be more daring in my writing.

Corigliano's Symphony No. 1

Again I listened, and it made me want to make my music as personal as this was. Corigliano pour his soul right on the page, you can feel it. I knew that music needed soul, and I needed to put more of mine into everything I wrote.

This all may sound corny, but I am a firm believer in the statement that music cannot be seen, or heard, it must be felt.

Please, share your life-changing pieces! :)

i did that on arvo part thread.

There are lots of pieces that have influenced me, although many just in small ways here and there. The only piece I can say has had a "drastic" influence on how I composed were the six little piano pieces Op. 19 by Sch

Lovely little pieces :P I have to orchestrate one of them for a project in school... I'll probably do the 4th one, dunno.

It seems that a lot of composers start from Webern. Even Boulez and Stockhausen, they said that Webern was the way forward (and paradoxically, so did Cage and Feldman, albeit for completely different reasons). Webern is one of the most amazing composers of the early 20th century, and he only wrote so few things :(

I personally adore Varese (who also wrote very little), and I think composers who have influenced me a lot are (apart from Varease) Cage, Feldman and my teacher (Paul Newland), not so much in terms of style, but rather in terms of concepts and ideas.

Lovely little pieces :P I have to orchestrate one of them for a project in school... I'll probably do the 4th one, dunno.

It seems that a lot of composers start from Webern. Even Boulez and Stockhausen, they said that Webern was the way forward (and paradoxically, so did Cage and Feldman, albeit for completely different reasons). Webern is one of the most amazing composers of the early 20th century, and he only wrote so few things :(

I personally adore Varese (who also wrote very little), and I think composers who have influenced me a lot are (apart from Varease) Cage, Feldman and my teacher (Paul Newland), not so much in terms of style, but rather in terms of concepts and ideas.

i go with webern, feldman and varese with you.

the start of arcana gives me shivers.

and feldman, feldman gives so much space for thought. i used to write so often listening to feldman.

Var

and joseph schwantner's 'sparrows' amaze every time i hear it. and good old ligeti with his piano etudes. and aphex twin with his drugs, and scorn with his bass, and the doors and nirvana, countless as you start to count...

The quintessential answer... The predictable one... but... the honest one.

Beethoven's 9th symphony changed the way that I looked at music forever. I used to love rock music and occasionally listened to hip-hop music, but once I heard the Maazel recording with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, my jaw dropped. So much anger in the first movement! So much majesty in the second movement! So much love in the third movement! and yes! So much pure love in the fourth movement. The words that Beethoven chose for his fourth movement and the way that it was done completely changed my life. It was as if that Beethoven realized that all of the hardships of the past are done and that you should only look to happiness in the future. What a genius!

You can scorn me all you want :P . But I loved it and I always will.

Alright, I have a few...

Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major

Simply put, my jaw dropped at this one. I was so amazed by it. It was so different, so strange. It confused me. It intrigued me. I didn't understand it...but I wanted to. It was a piece of music that truly struck me as both original and powerful.

Someday The Dream Will End By Masashi Hamauzu and Nobuo Uematsu

I think I may be the only one here who will cite a track from a videogame as a life-changing one. :P But simply put, the first time I played through FFX and it got to the moment when this track played, it simply blew me away. For those who have played, they'll know that this is pretty much the climax of the game. And the music definetly play a role. It's just...greatness. The way I felt the first time I heard it is the entire reason why I want to be a videogame composer. To do for other people what this piece did for me.

You may all laugh now.

Debussy's Arabesque No. 1

This piece is what made me fall in love with Impressionism and draw upon it as an influence.

Boulez's Le soleil des eaux

Well, I saw no mention of this thread having to be about pieces of music that impacted your life in a *good* way so I'll mention this one. :P Simply put, this scared the s*** out of me the first time I heard it and ever since, I have been scared of anything with the label "12 tone" or "atonal" on it.

no

Not yet.

Mozart's Piano concerto in C major K.503.

Also to a lesser extent the one in Bb, K.595.

The C major concerto is really what got me hooked on classical music as a teenager..... I just kept coming back to it.......and take such joy in listening to that piece.

Strangely it's a work not so typical of Mozart.......or at least not so typical of the public view of him.... it's very personal, and not-showy, and .....absolutely beautiful.

If it wasn't for that concerto, God only knows what I'd be studying now.

Of course maybe I'd have found another piece - I loved listening to Bach when I was a child.

Mahler Symphony 8 E flat Major

Honestly I thank goodness That I was bored of listening to the 1812 overture over the summer of 2007 and decide to listen to a video entitled Mahler 8, on youtube. It came after the 1812 overture video was complete as a recommendation. The symphony of 1000 as it is called was being conducted by simon rattle and boy was it huge, I was bored naturally with the first few minutes, silly piccolo playing an G for 40 measures and harps doing glissandos, but I gained interest when the choir of 800 began singing so softly text from Goethe's faust. And then there was this sudden lush explosion of sound the choir instruments, everything, the emotions I felt were unexplainable it was joy and everything just muddled together. Finally the choir and instruments after singing for 4 measures "Zieht uns Hinan" which roughly in German translates to "Draws us (upward) on high" the choir reaches a climax that pulled everything out of me. Soon the brass instruments offstage would recap the main melody to the symphony (G F E-flat) in a fanfare of sound. Soon the drums come in, playing a haunting Eb for three measures...representing the rise to heaven and the power of love as the music really attempts to portray. Woodwinds and orchestra soon ensue in such a lush Chord, it is in this part of the work that I became a little girl and started tearing...seriously...the music was so powerful and overwhelming. After the melody is once more Played by the brass, a cymbal crash ensues...with the trumpets and trombones playing octave unisons...giving it an odd sound...another cymbal clash and the unison returns...a third and final clash..and the upward climb begins and reaches the absolute climax of the entire symphony...and then finally it ends..so suddenly and extravagantly.

Barber's Adagio for strings op. 11

I don't think this one needs explaining, if anyone has ever heard it..you'd probably understand..if you have not..please get a decent recording or youtube it :)

barber's adagio for strings makes me think of someone ordering me to murder my father..out of love.......spooky music....

Yeah, it's amazing how Barber builds the piece out of a single motif.

The closest I've come to hearing lifechanging music is Turandot. Before, I didn't like opera very much, but since then, I've loved to listen to vocal music, and most of my work so far has been art songs.

Bach's Prelude number 2 from the Well Tempered Clavier was the first bit of 'classical' music I really listened to - I remember being captivated by the way the two voices were moving in different directions yet still sounding together. From then I listened to loads of Bach, and Vivaldi and other late Baroque composers.

It was Brahms 3 that got my into Romantic music. I saw it performed by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra last April. This was my first experience of hearing a professional orchestra playing a piece I know back to front and I loved every second of it.

Mentions are also deserved by Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Sibelius 7

:)

pieces that considerably changed my life outside of music

Pet Sounds

Rite Of Spring a little bit

Has a piece of music changed my life?

When I was a baby, a Bach 2-part invention ran into a burning building and saved my life, pulling me to safety.

Seriously? No, nothing by anyone else.

On the other hand, writing my own first piece did put me on a new life path.

Has a piece of music changed my life?

When I was a baby, a Bach 2-part invention ran into a burning building and saved my life, pulling me to safety.

Seriously? No, nothing by anyone else.

On the other hand, writing my own first piece did put me on a new life path.

that's a great answer, how could i forget my 'hitler techno' days :toothygrin:

A Final Fantasy 6 town theme, 'Kids Run around the Corner' or something stupid like that. That was the first music I ever arranged for anything. Then came a slew of video game MIDIs.

Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was probably my biggest influence - it's the first piece I could play on piano. It's also why Aflat is my favorite key. ;) I also learned a great deal about form and structure from playing all that ragtime. Oh, and syncopation. Ragtime rocks!!

And then there's Nixon in China, John Adams' opera from 1987. I discovered this piece late in my 'minimalism' stage, and practically changed how I wrote music. John Adams is the man.

I probably told this story before a couple of years ago but...when I was 14, I attended my first opera, "The Marriage of Figaro" by Mozart. I'd never seen or heard anything like it before. I remember feeling with each number that it couldn't possibly get more wonderful, but it did. Delight after delight came, one after the other. By the time the final act came, and Count Almaviva, caught in the web of his own intrigues and attempted infidelity, begs his wife for forgiveness and is wholeheartedly forgiven (one of my favoute magical Mozart moments to this day), I was in tears. It was a great performance, and received many curtain calls...I wept through them all, and all the way home in the car. My family thought I was insane...all but my mother, who understood.

I was never the same as a musician, composer or person again. It didn't change the path I was on as a composer, but rather galvanised it.

Well not exactly, but I remember an experience I had that really made me change the way I thought about music in general.

I was listening on an mp3 player the Rite of Spring (a piece that I really love) being lost in the magical rhythms and melodies of the piece enjoying every moment of it. The piece ended at some point and I thought to turn off the player, but then without expecting it Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' concerto began playing (I thought that I'd set the mp3 player in replay mode). I cannot explain it, but at this moment I felt so strangely. What I was hearing was so beautiful, just like Stravinsky's work, but in a different way (don't get me wrong. I love Vivaldi, but this time it felt differently while hearing his concerto). And then while Vivaldi was playing in the background I started "playing" in my head music that I didn't really appreciate and found how beautiful it was. I realised the inherent beauty in music and sound and in its diversity something that I didn't really understand or appreciate before. I can easily say that it was an enlightening experience for me!

Alexandros

Yeah, it's amazing how Barber builds the piece out of a single motif.

Ah, then you should find Schoenberg and Webern to be most amazing!

Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings.

I don't know what it is, I've always been a sucker for strings, and this one is just so hauntingly beautiful. It gives me a lot of inspiration.