The music that makes you shiver or cry

It has nothing to do with logic, taste or even quality. I’m going to guess that you have one or more songs that bring on the tears or goose bumps or just knot the stomach into an emotional ache every time.

I’m not talking about great compositions necessarily, though the music that makes you cry, that really moves you may be brilliant. I can listen repeatedly to pretty much anything by Bach–from the Mass in B Minor to the cello sonatas and piano concertos. It’s always a revelation.

But tears? shivers? Three songs which cannot hold a candle to Bach but which rattle my emotional cage every time I hear even the first few bars:

1. Donna Donna (“On a wagon bound for market, there’s a calf with a mournful eye, high above him there’s a swallow, winging swiftly through the sky…”) Is it my genetic connection with the Eastern European melody? The inevitable and imminent demise of the calf? Who knows. Here comes the knot in my stomach.

2. The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Oh this one always brings on the crying. No kidding. Really, please, do not ask me why. I haven’t a clue. Julia Ward Howe wrote new lyrics for “John Brown’s Body” and the song became totally connected to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, and somehow neurologically connected to my tear ducts. Go figure.

3. That’s How I Got to Memphis. This one, less well known, makes sense as an emotional trigger for me. For my late husband and me, it was “our song.” Somehow there was a parallel in the lyrics about a man searching for his beloved in a strange town and our story of relocation in order to be together. Sung by the late great Solomon Burke, this is the ultimate tearjerker for me.

Your turn. Share the music that goes right to your emotional heart. Doesn’t have to be great music. Just curious to see what does it for other people.

Tags: battle hymn of the republic, music, songs