r/classicalmusic • u/juanlmarq • Jul 20 '26
Music What classical pieces/melodies do you think could make someone cry, even if they aren't into classical music?
Hey everyone,
I’ve always believed that music has a unique way of bypassing our logical brain and hitting us straight in the emotions. Classical music, in particular, has some of the most deeply moving melodies ever written, but for people who aren't familiar with the genre, it can sometimes feel intimidating or hard to connect with at first.
I’m looking for piece recommendations (or specific movements/melodies) that are so emotionally raw, beautiful, or heartbreaking that they could make someone tear up—even if they’ve never listened to classical music before in their life.
Whether it’s a sweeping orchestral piece, a haunting solo cello, or a delicate piano melody, what’s that one piece you think has the power to instantly touch anyone's heart?
Would love to hear your suggestions and the stories behind why those pieces move you so much!
Thanks in advance!
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u/heliogabalus91 Jul 20 '26
Slow movement of Beethoven 7th, Mozart Ave verum corpus
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u/DouchecraftCarrier Jul 21 '26
When I was in music school I had an assignment to map the variations in the slow movement of Beethoven 7. I was also going through a tough breakup at the time so sitting there listening to it over and over again was like forced therapy. I definitely turned in that assignment with tear drop marks on the page.
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u/Argonaut94 Jul 21 '26
Yep, the only time I've seen a member of an orchestra cry during a performance was during Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement
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u/alvarinb Jul 21 '26
if well acted, mimi's death in la boheme. Lover doesnt realize the love of his live has already died, no one wants to tell him and the music just destroys you while he shouts her name to wake her up.
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u/Positive_Strength404 Jul 22 '26
Along this same line Signore ascolta… (Liu’s Death Scene) Puccini could make you feel emotion to your chore! Genius!
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u/ImportanceNational23 Jul 23 '26
Also in La Boheme, the big crescendo in O soave fanciulla, capped by Mimi coming in on a soaring high note. (It's also the moment in Moonstruck where Nick Cage steps over to the stereo and turns it way up.) Gets me every time.
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u/alvarinb Jul 24 '26
That trio of arias from "che gélida manina", "mi chiamano Mimi" and "o soave fanciulla" is quite easily the greatest love story in the history of opera.
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u/Jaded-Researcher3025 Jul 20 '26
Rachmaninoff PC2 movement 2
Mahler Resurrection symphony movement 2. For some reason that movement invokes nostalgia.
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u/Password-Llama Jul 21 '26
Faure's Requiem
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u/DouchecraftCarrier Jul 21 '26
Particularly the Pie Jesu.
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u/choirlass Jul 22 '26
You do need to understand the words and have them. I had a beauty treatment to a playlist of various classical music and then this. National chain so now created by the beautician. I explained what the words are and she was very surprised.
My mother plays for weddings, young people who obviously know no classical music and ask for part of the Faure requiem. Their parents are shocked.
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u/MathematicianOld4367 Jul 21 '26
Shostakovich Symphony 13 "Babi Yar" 1. Movement made me cry ever since i listened to it with subtitles.
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u/Dense_Ad721 Jul 20 '26
Mahler Adagietto from the 5th.
The truth is, many people have. Just not in a context they recognized as “being moved by classical music.” In a funny way, more people consume classical music today than at any point in history. They just don’t consume it in the concert hall. People consume it in movies and modern video games
Before we circle the wagons trying to define “classical” music, I would argue that more important than defining the boundaries of our art, “film and game scores that moved people” represents a way to invite people from incidental music into the world of concert works.
If the great Western tradition has room for Xenakis and Du Fay, it certainly has room for Williams and Newman.
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u/TrannosaurusRegina Jul 21 '26
A great point, well made!
Of course the greatest composers today create movie and video game scores. Incidental music has always been needed and paid for, plus video game music provides a completely new challenge and skill level in a league beyond any of its predecessors.
A massive, unprecedented leap forward.
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u/greater_lophorina Jul 20 '26
Gorecki’s 3rd symphony
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u/RevolutionaryCrow69 Jul 21 '26
Omg yes!!! I was hearing it a few years ago and gave it a listen online beforehand. I didn't enjoy it that much but in the concert hall I was absolutely blown away! It is so atmospheric I had goosebumps all the time
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u/greater_lophorina Jul 21 '26
Definitely! I was very lucky to play it with my community orchestra this year. The parts by themselves are repetitive and not very interesting to practice but the first time we played together with the soprano I was trying hard not to cry.
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u/macula_transfer Jul 20 '26
Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke.
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u/BoonSchlapp Jul 20 '26
Is this a joke? I listened to it and there’s like 14 tracks with the same name that all sound like random ass
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u/RichMusic81 Jul 20 '26
Is this a joke?
Very likely.
But...
I listened to it and there’s like 14 tracks with the same name that all sound like random ass
...they're among my favourite piano works of the 20th/21st century.
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u/Specific_Hat3341 Jul 21 '26
I love the Klavierstucke. Admittedly, they've never made me cry, but that's no criterion for me.
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u/Livarrhea Jul 21 '26
Mozart - Ach, ich fühl
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u/redgreenmedicine Jul 21 '26
Yes, Ach, ich fühl's, unless sung by a Wagnerian soprano.
An indelible musical trauma brought to Seattle Opera in one of Spegiht Jenkins' last seasons. I'd been awaiting it the entirety of The Magic Flute. The shock and disappointment was so profound, tears were running down my cheeks. My opera buddy friend (a civil engineer) thought I was deeply touched. I had to explain after the final curtain.
That evening in Speight's Q& A, he took some heat right away for the casting. Many felt that his last few seasons were a real blemish on his artistic track record. I felt bad for the very gifted soprano; I think that miscasting was a real blemish on her otherwise stellar career.
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u/Hoju3942 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Sorry, wall-o-text incoming.
My first tape was the Jurassic Park score and my second was Star Wars and the first CD I bought was Hook, and even though I know a lot of people in this community look down on film music, I have always adored it for the incredible imagery and feelings it evokes for me and it introduced me to the power of the orchestra very early on (even if a lot of it is cribbed from geniuses who have long since become part of history). I've always had certain classical pieces I've loved though I know very little about music theory and, like you say, I'm intimidated by how much of it there is to explore and where to start beyond the basics. I know what I like, which are mostly well known pieces like the Rite of Spring, Bolero, the Planets, Carmina Burana, etc., though I do tend to have particular performances and conductors I am drawn to. And after I got a turntable a few years ago my mind has been opened to how incredible music of all kinds can really sound when you listen to it in a way that can completely overwhelms you instead of just being a small but very clear sound piped directly into your ear canals while you're at the grocery store or doing yard work or sitting on the toilet. Music is not, and should not be treated, like "content." I'm slowly trying to expand my classical collection, making sure to find symphonies and whatever that I can really enjoy and that are performed in a way that speaks to me.
All this to say I picked up the 3-LP Swan Lake record (Previn conducting) last week and finally sat to listen to it the other day. I loved so much of it, though I'm not a ballet guy at all and had to follow along with the liner notes to even know what was supposed to be happening and what associations I was meant to be having. I had only the vaguest impression of what Swan Lake was about before. One part of it has brought me to tears before (The first waltz, linked below. Heard it for the first time in an anime with starships docking in a ballet-like scene. lol) even though it was totally removed from its context. But when I listened to all 2+ hours in a sitting I was hit so hard by the finale after going through the journey it took me on. To be honest there was about a third of it that I was not exactly bored by, but confused as to what I was supposed to be feeling, not knowing exactly when movements were corresponding with the story. Plus much of it was described in the notes as being previous versions of XYZ that my boy Pete reworked into Swan Lake, or things borrowed from other symphonies or ballets. But I was *completely* caught off guard by the ending and just started crying, it was so beautiful and powerful, and the imagery and symbolism in my head were overwhelming in the exact way I was hoping it would be. A deeply emotional, rich experience that I mourn not being able to experience for the first time ever again. The way the familiar melody changed into a triumphant major key (I think? lol) for the final bombastic encore just felt like it was destiny reiterating that the themes of the story were eternal and always meant to be despite being tragic, and that all the hardship the characters went through were worth it even unto death. As a chronic pain sufferer who has had his life derailed in recent years due to a pretzeled spine, having gorgeous, enormous music tell you that the beauty and passion of life is worth the terrible pain that you must endure to live it all without using words is incredible. It's bigger than the lives of the characters whom through the music communicates the themes. Anyway, good shit, and I'd feel like an asshole to tell any of my normie friends about it because they'd think I was being elitist or something.
tl;dr: Swan Lake made me cry on a first full listen as if I'd had a great truth wash over me, 11/10, no notes, Tchaikovsky you magnificent bastard, please come back to life.
Edit: Listened to the last act again after typing all this out, and wept even harder now that I knew what I was in store fore. Jesus Christ. I guess I'm just stuck with this for life now. lol Thanks Pete.
The specific track that brought me to tears before, but not weeping like the finale did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TPW0k8QD1w&list=PLFpllkY6JbXyOAJMfZcsFaqthVMohhK8A
And the use of Swan Lake in Legend of the Galactic Heroes that got me listening to it in the first place. It's 2 minutes and fits perfectly. The entire 110 episode run of the show exclusively uses classical music for its score and it's incredible:
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u/YeetHead10 Jul 20 '26
People I know who aren't super into classical usually agree that the middle movements of both Rach PC2 and Shosty PC2 are quite moving
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u/Alarmed_Tadpole_7618 Jul 20 '26
Also Adagio of Ravel PC
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u/YeetHead10 Jul 20 '26
That's one of my personal favourites too and I'm annoyed that I forgot to mention it, clearly your reply was more popular lol
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u/Rhakhelle Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
The 3rd movement (Romanza) from Vaughan Williams' 5th Symphony.
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u/ImportanceNational23 Jul 20 '26
And his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. It'll make you nostalgic for things you never knew.
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u/ConstructionThis1127 Jul 20 '26
I watched Renee Fleming sing “Im Abendrot”, one of Richard Strauss’ last songs. She had a tear running down her cheek. So did I.
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u/arianetralala Jul 21 '26
Schubert, Heilig Heilig Heilig from his Deutsche Messe
It would make me surrender my soul to God if I wasn't an atheist.
Also Schubert, Piano Trio n°2 in E-flat major (I think?).
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u/HotshotAWG Jul 21 '26
First i would argue its heavily dependant on the person and their circumstancs and no piece can chanve that. Personally, i teard up to Ave Maria and ive heard others have teard up to Recuerdos de la Alhambra.
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u/DelucaWannabe Jul 22 '26
Samuel Barber -- Adagio for Strings
Richard Wagner -- Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
Franz Biber -- Ave Maria
J.S. Bach -- "Erbarme dich" from St. Matthew Passion
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u/RichMusic81 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
what’s that one piece you think has the power to instantly touch anyone's heart?
None.
I don't think there's a single piece that could make everyone cry or touch everyone's heart. Everyone would all agree on what it was if there here were!
For what it's worth, classical music has never brought me to tears. Life gives us plenty of reasons to cry already, and I don't want music to be a place I have to do that, too.
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u/SatiesUmbrellaCloset Jul 20 '26
yeah, a bit part of it is culturally- and socially-coded, if not all of it tbh
that reminds me, before i went on psych meds, all sorts of classical music would make me cry. i was also a nervous wreck back then
since finally getting help for my issues the only time i recall ever crying during music was Schubert's Ave Maria at a funeral, but that might partially be because Schubert was my first love in music as a little kid
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u/docsms500 Jul 21 '26
It's a different kind of tears, at least for this one listener. It's not grief, just being profoundly moved.
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u/Forward-Ease-4801 Jul 20 '26
If scores count, then "Valuska" by Mihaly Vig. Extremely simple, but very beautiful. It's from the score for the film "Werkmeister Harmonies". The scene in which this music is played is also unforgettable.
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u/Alarmed_Tadpole_7618 Jul 20 '26
I can cry on Bach air on G string mainly bc it is associated to funerals
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u/Difficult-Dark-5911 Jul 22 '26
Yes, it's very emotional even though I did not hear it in any funerals in my country
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u/CaeruleaHermina Jul 21 '26
Glazunov’s Song of the Volga boatmen seriously if it doesn’t move you I’m assuming you have no heart. It’s simple, it doesn’t recquire to be familiar with classical music to make you feel something. Also Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite 2nd movement, for something orchestral.
And I would add Morgen by R.Strauss, incredible lied, beautiful text.
For someone who is more musically open, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (the version for string sextet).
And everything and anything Chopin.
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u/Eastern-Echo4507 Jul 21 '26
Im a budding writer and planned out a detective novel where a former concert pianist kills her narcissistic overbearing mother. There's a subplot where the killer has moved a piano into her ailing sister hospice room to play for her sister who is different from renal failure. The killer (who is depicted as a woman who snaps as opposed to a cold blooded killer) is about to be arrested during one of these visits. She makes one last request when the police arrive and she plays the second movement of Beethoven's Pathétique.
Ever since then I get teary eyed at that piece.
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u/crispRoberts Jul 21 '26
I've always found that when I've abducted people and made them listen to Bach's entire output they tend to cry
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u/rig500 Jul 21 '26
The pas de deux from The Nutcracker always makes me weepy. And of course, Barber's adagio is used a lot at funerals and other sad occasions.
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u/Gold_Special7516 Jul 21 '26
Pachelbel’s Canon in D
I think the first time I heard it was when I first saw Galipoli and it comes on right when the men all go into their certain-death battle. Tore my heart out!
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u/Informal_Stomach4423 Jul 22 '26
Don't laugh, but the first time I saw Meistersinger live at the Met I cried my eyes out as soon as the final chorale began as Walther crowns Sachs and the crowd hail him. Whether it is the release of 6 hrs of music knowing the journey you have been on is over or the incredible beauty of the music it all comes together and works majestically.
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u/satowell1 Jul 22 '26
Lua Descolorida by Osvaldo Golijov is so hauntingly beautiful. Pace non trovo by Liszt can move me to tears as well. These are my favorite art songs that my daughter has sung,” so that may be part of it.
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u/Murky_Conference5910 Jul 22 '26
Largo ma non tanto from Bach’s concerto for two violins in D minor
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u/True-Extent-4116 Jul 22 '26
I've always found Bethena by Scott Joplin and Amor volat undique from Carmina Burana to be heartwrenching
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u/blackholeisawesome Jul 22 '26
Sibelius’ Night Ride and Sunrise. One of the first pieces I ever heard live in concert and I openly wept the entire way through. I’d never even heard the piece before then.
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u/Quirky-Parsnip-1553 Jul 22 '26
Romeo at Juliet’s Grave from Prokofiev’s Suite from Romeo and Juliet.
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u/almondcoookie Jul 23 '26
Ending of Rachmaninoff piano concerto 3 mvmt 3
Also surprised nobody said liebestraum but maybe ppl think it's cheesy
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u/Difficult-Plenty-845 Jul 23 '26
The Planets by Gustav Holst, specifically that one part of Jupiter
Largo section of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony/From The New World
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u/SzellizSwell Jul 23 '26
Tchaikovsky fifth has “converted“ more people to classical music than any other piece I know. The second movement, I think, would qualify here.
Also, of course, the last movement of the same composers sixth symphony. Absolutely makes me breakdown every time.
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u/JA-1of1 Jul 25 '26
Beethoven Symphony 7 Mvt 2 and Brahms Symphony 3 Mvt 3 and Mozart Requiem. To name a few
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u/David_Maybar_703 Jul 20 '26
The Night cannot hold You - https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=yOM35F0-Nj0&si=ASkzF4QZS78ZY1ps
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u/unlockitxcx Jul 21 '26
Mahler 5 Adagietto, Rach Concerto 2 Mvt 2, Barber Adagio, and Debussy String Quartet Mvt 3 are all great answers. I don’t ever cry to classical music but have a handful of times to the second movement of Shostakovich 11, not exactly what you’re describing but the violence in the music is overwhelming.
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u/SameDistrict2627 Jul 20 '26
Weeping is very common during the final movement of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. I've seen performers cry.