History TearJerker / ClassicalMusic

* Music/EnnioMorricone's ''Ballad of Sacco e Vanzetti'', as performed not just by Morricone himself, but also by Joan Baez and George Moustaki. Now also available by Lisbeth Scott over the end credits of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4''. Yep, still a tearjerker.

* Pick an "Ave Maria", any "Ave Maria" -- some particularly noteworthy examples include Verdi's (from ''[[{{Opera}} Otello]]''), Yoko Kanno's (from ''Anime/CowboyBebop''), Schubert's, Gounod's (using a Bach prelude as an accompaniment) and the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3SQmI1I9i0 sublimely bittersweet minor-key version by Vladimir Vavilov]]. Remember the cliché slogan "You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy (whatever)"? Well, "You don't have to be Christian" to be moved to tears by [[Music/FranzSchubert Schubert]]'s "Ave". (Although technically Schubert originally wrote the music as a setting of an epic poem, only later re-setting it to fit the "Ave Maria".)

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cTN1x5BN6o "Ach, ich fühl’s"]] Pamina's lament from ''Theatre/TheMagicFlute'' when she thinks Tamino no longer loves her. It ends with the line "So wird Ruh' im Tode sein!" ("I shall find peace in death!")

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cTN1x5BN6o "Ach, ich fühl’s"]] Pamina's lament from ''Theatre/TheMagicFlute'' when she thinks Tamino no longer loves her.

* Michel Colombier's ''Emmanuel'', written as a tribute to the composer's late son of the same name, who died in infancy. It's best known for its usage in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLaPLw9DRrQ this]] incredibly moving sign-off bumper for French TV channel Antenne 2 (now France 2), animated by Jean-Michel Folon.

---> "But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and [[DrivenToSuicide I would have ended my life]] -- [[DoingItForTheArt it was only my art that held me back.]]"

* Jenkins' ''Cantata Memoria'' is also an incredibly depressing work. It is a somber elegy for the victims of the 1966 Aberfan Disaster. 144 people, including ''116 children,'' were killed when a pile of refuse from coal mining flooded the small village of Aberfan following a heavy rainstorm. In the cantata, we hear the destruction of the Aberfan, the Welsh folk song Myfanwy, a funeral march where the choir ''sings the names of the victims,'' the choir calling out the National Coal Board for failing to prevent the tragedy, a somber lament with a high, screeching violin solo and finally remembering and honoring the fallen children.

* Josef Suk was the son-in-law of the great [[Music Antonín Dvořák]]. Suk's early music is cheerful and energetic, mainly influenced by his happy, loving marriage to Dvořák's daughter Otilie (Otilka). So it should come as a [[MoodWhiplash shock]] that Suk's most famous composition is a work of great tragedy. In a span of 14 months, both Dvořák and Otilie died, prompting Suk to compose the ''Asrael Symphony'' (named after the Biblical Angel of Death). Suk even quotes from Dvořák's music, representing the influence the great Czech master had on him.

* Josef Suk was the son-in-law of the great Antonín Dvořák. Suk's early music is cheerful and energetic, mainly influenced by his happy, loving marriage to Dvořák's daughter Otilie (Otilka). So it should come as a [[MoodWhiplash shock]] that Suk's most famous composition is a work of great tragedy. In a span of 14 months, both Dvořák and Otilie died, prompting Suk to compose the ''Asrael Symphony'' (named after the Biblical Angel of Death). Suk even quotes from Dvořák's music, representing the influence the great Czech master had on him.

* Josef Suk was the son-in-law of the great Antonín Dvořák. Suk's early music is cheerful and energetic, mainly influenced by his happy, loving marriage to Dvořák's daughter Otilie (Otilka). So it should come as a [[MoodWhiplash shock]] that Suk's most famous composition is a work of great tragedy. In a span of 14 months, both Dvořák and Otilie died, prompting Suk to compose a funeral symphony entitled Asrael (named after the Biblical Angel of Death). Suk even quotes from Dvořák's music, representing the influence the great Czech master had on him.

* Jenkins' ''Cantata Memoria'' is also an incredibly depressing work. It is a somber elegy for the victims of the 1966 Aberfan Disaster. 144 people, including ''116 children,'' were killed when a pile of refuse from coal mining flooded the small village of Aberfan following a heavy rainstorm. In the cantata, we hear the destruction of the Welsh village, the Welsh folk song Myfanwy, a funeral march where the choir ''sings the names of the victims,'' the choir calling out the National Coal Board for failing to prevent the tragedy, a somber lament with a high, screeching violin solo and finally remembering and honoring the fallen children.

** While we're on the Russians, the Soviet anthem is absolutely horrifying when you think of the millions of soldiers inspired to march to their deaths, the millions of civilians who lost their lives, and the war crimes committed by the [=USSR=] that were denied for decades (The Katyn massacre, submarine attacks on civilian convoys fleeing Sakhalin, and the downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007, to name three) and then read the bright and cheery lyrics.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HqOowRwGxA Nimrod]] from the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar as played at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sundays. Even more so when you consider who inspired it - the close friend of Elgar that convinced him not to give up on composing.

* Music/FryderykChopin's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNAyKL2GHvA "Étude Op.10 No.3 in E major - Tristesse"]] is already beautifully melancholy, and it is used to heartbreakingly bittersweet effect in the score of the series finale of the [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist 2003 anime adaptation]] of ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''. Chopin himself thought it was the loveliest melody he'd ever written.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qgg1IZWMdw "When I Am Laid in Earth"]] from Purcell's ''Dido and Aeneas'' is quite a downer. While singing before committing suicide is common in opera, Dido's swan song is much more melancholy than any Wagnerian heroine's... and, unlike most opera songs, it's in English.

* Michael Daugherty's cantata ''Letters from Lincoln'' contains a movement entitled "Letter to Mrs. Bixby." As the name suggests it is a setting of Lincoln's famous Bixby letter (with some extraneous text omitted). The short letter was addressed to a woman named Lydia Parker Bixby, who lost ''five sons'' during the Civil War. The letter is well-known for its consoling, yet empathetic message and there's something particularly charming about hearing the letter set to music.

* One of the toppers - Pachelbel's Canon in D, when played right, or if the mood's right, ''will'' reduce people to tears. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeI8ntXFIO0 Even if it's part of a commercial]].

* Maurice Ravel's ''Pavane pour une infante defunte'' (Pavane for a Dead Princess). Ironically, this isn't meant to be a tear-jerker at all; its status as one is based on a misunderstanding of the title. It was meant not as an elegy for a deceased princess, but rather to evoke a dance that would have been danced by a princess from an earlier age, while she was alive ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVBlFUb0g60 the pavane]] being a popular dance among nobility during the Renaissance). It was supposed to sound nostalgic, not like a funeral hymn, and evoke a very young princess -- "[[https://painting-planet.com/infanta-maria-margarita-daughter-of-king-philip-iv-king-of-spain-by-diego-velazquez/ such a little princess]] [[http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth200/velazquez_lasmeninas.html as painted]] by Velázquez" -- at her first formal party. Ravel himself admitted that he only used the words "infante defunte" because he liked the alliteration. He also intended the piece to be played extremely slowly – more slowly than almost any modern interpretation, according to his biographer Benjamin Ivry.

* "Che Faro Senza Euridice" from Gluck's ''Orfeo et Euridice''. A bad singer will turn it into {{Narm}}; a good one will break your heart.

* Michael Daugherty's cantata ''Letters from Lincoln'' contains a movement entitled "Letter to Mrs. Bixby." As the name suggests is a setting of Lincoln's famous Bixby letter (with some extraneous text omitted). The short letter was addressed to a woman named Lydia Parker Bixby, who lost ''five sons'' during the Civil War. The letter is well-known for its consoling, yet empathetic message and there's something particularly charming about hearing the letter set to music.

* Michael Daugherty's cantata ''Letters from Lincoln'' contains a movement entitled "Letter to Mrs. Bixby," which as the name suggests is a setting of Lincoln's famous Bixby letter (with some extraneous text omitted). The short letter was addressed to a woman named Ludia Parker Bixby, who lost ''five sons'' during the Civil War. The letter is well-known for its consoling, yet empathetic message and there's something particularly charming about hearing the letter set to music.

* Michael Daugherty's cantata "Letters from Lincoln" contains a movement entitled "Letter to Mrs. Bixby," which as the name suggests is a setting of Lincoln's famous Bixby letter (with some extraneous text omitted). The short letter was addressed to a woman named Ludia Parker Bixby, who lost ''five sons'' during the Civil War. The letter is well-known for its consoling, yet empathetic message and there's something particularly charming about hearing the letter set to music.

* Karl Jenkins's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGbHnJCDMyE Benedictus]] from his mass ''The Armed Man.'' The entire mass has a rather depressing atmosphere, but this is the penultimate and (arguably) most iconic movement. The Benedictus contains a solo cello part that is notated unusually in treble clef (cello normal reads bass or tenor). The cello is designed to be a middle to low range instrument, but its high register produces a forlorn sound that no other instrument is capable of. The [[EtherealChoir choir]] eventually enters with the Latin text, matching the cellist's melody. The movement represents the toll that years of war and violence take on the human mind; all of the pain and suffering comes crashing down at once.