When you are in a sombre mood…

[albion]

One of the very best discs for such an occasion is an all-too-rare excursion into the delights of late-Victorian and Edwardian musical comedy, courtesy of supreme tunesmith Lionel Monckton (1861-1924) -




Hyperion CDA67654

Despite a release-date as recent as 2008, this is now an "archive only" release from Hyperion, but is well worth getting by whatever means possible. Fantastic numbers from many Daly's and Gaiety productions including The Circus Girl (1896), The Toreador (1901), A Country Girl (1902), The Cingalee (1904), The Girls of Gottenberg (1907), The Arcadians(1909), Our Miss Gibbs (1909) and The Quaker Girl (1910) are guaranteed to raise the spirits:

Two Little Sausages

MITZI Once in the window of a ham and beef shop
Two little sausages sat!
MAX One was a lady and the other was a gentleman,
Sausages are like that!
MITZI He fell a victim to her simple charm,
And her form he would have embraced.
MAX But a sausage, you see, never has any arm,
And the lady hadn't got any waist.
BOTH What a pair of happy little sausages!
Theirs was a very pleasant fate.
So they snuggled up together
In the chilly winter weather,
Both on the same cold plate
Well it wasn't such a very cold plate!

MITZI One sad day those sausages quarrelled,
Ended was all their joy.
The reason was that she said she caught him winking
At a saucy little saveloy.
MAX 'Pooh, my dear', said the gentleman sausage,
'You may think I'm a flirt? Well I am!
But I've seen you sitting on the same bit of parsley
As that wicked old knuckle of ham!
BOTH What a pair of silly little sausages!
Theirs was a bitter, bitter pill;
For they very quickly parted
And it left her broken hearted,
While he joined a bad mixed grill,
Yes, it really was a very mixed grill!

MITZI Long years after on a luncheon counter
Those little sausages met.
MAX She was engaged to the wing of a chicken,
But he hadn't got off yet.
MITZI Soon they were reconciled, and then, of course,
She consented to name the day,
MAX So the barmaid dressed her in a tissue paper frill.
And the waiter gave her away.
BOTH What a pair of jolly little sausages!
Nothing their happiness can dash.
And on any day you'll meet 'em,
For there's no one wants to eat 'em,
He calls her his own sweet mash,
So you see that they are sausage and mash!

[vandermolen]

Berwald's symphony no 4 in E flat major.

Yes, that's a lovely work.

Recently I have been cheered up by Vaughan Williams' 'Sea Symphony' - a work I ignored for decades.

[Peter1953]

Thank you all for your interesting posts with some good suggestions! However, some of the mentioned music makes me feel even more sombre, but then, it's all very personal of course.

[X. Trapnel]

Dvorak, Symphony no. 6, especially the last movement, leaping, untrammeled joy.

[Lionel Harrsion]

Dvorak, Symphony no. 6, especially the last movement, leaping, untrammeled joy.

Or the last movement of Dvorak's Symphony no. 8!

[Jonathan]

Well, I have been feeling a bit sombre as an old friend of mine died on Sunday.  She had a brain tumour.  I'd seen her twice in the last 3 months, the first time she was fine and seemed perfectly healthy the second (only 3 weeks ago) she was bedridden and hardly recognised me.
I think I'll try some of these suggestions.
Thanks.

[JimL]

Scherzo from Dvorak's 5th does it for me.  Of course, it's hard to separate it out from the slow movement, since they're linked.

[chill319]

Strauss's Don Quixote makes me laugh out loud.

[alberto]

A second mini-list for vocal items.
I put the singers first, the composers second.
Jill Gomez "The Lady in Red" (comp. Allie Wrubel; CD Hyperion CDA66500 "South of the Border"-1990; cond. B.Wordsworth, Nat. Phil.Orch.)
Susan Graham "Vagabonde" (comp.Moises Simons; CD "French Operetta Arias" , City of Birmingham Orch. cond. Y. Abel, Erato 2002. Also in S.Graham's Artist's Portrait -Warner).

[Amphissa]

When I'm in a somber mood, I want to enjoy my melancholy to the fullest. As Victor Hugo put it, ""Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad."

I aggressively avoid anything bright, lively, happy or inspiring. Instead, I sit down with a bottle of excellent old bordeaux or cabernet, and OD on minor key works, surpassingly beautiful pieces and elegies, the more pathetique the better. Barber's Adagio for Strings, Rachmaninoff's cello sonata, Tchaikovsky's elegiac string quartet, Myaskovsky's cello concerto, etc.

By the time I've worked my way through the bottle and the pile of albums, a good night's sleep and my catharsis is complete.

"Sweet bird, that shun the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy!" John Milton