There are many things that can cause terrible feelings of grief: death, divorce, separation, job loss, the victory of the president that you didn’t vote for, etc.
Paulo Coelho once said: “Grief is like an ovum. It is alive. It is hidden in a deep, safe place, but sooner or later it will grow, fed by the navel cords of our mind: our memories and emotions. The grief will expand and the pressure and the pain will increase. Don’t deny your feelings of grief, give birth to them. With the Caesarean section of our mind: music.”
Ok, I admit it. I made up that quote, but it could have been a cheesy Paulo Coelho quote, couldn’t it? And everybody who has experienced grief knows that all the cheesy quotes about grief are true. You know why? Because we humans are simple pre-programmed machines. We experience grief in 5 stages.
The famous psychiatrist, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, introduced them in her book On Death and Dying.
You may recognize them:
1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance
Music can help you through the last two stages of grief, but not all music is suitable. “I like to move it” or “Gangnam Style” won’t help you. What you need is a good classical tearjerker. Luckily you read The Bacon Post, because we made a list with the best tearjerkers.
Adagio in G Minor (Tomaso Albinoni)
Peer Gynt – The Death of Åse (Edvard Grieg)
Theme of Schindler’s list (John Williams)
Pictures at an Exhibition – The Old Castle (Modest Mussorgsky)
Ballad for Violin and Orchestra (Ciprian Porumbescu)
Requiem Mass in D minor – Lacrimosa (Mozart)
Adagio for Strings (Samuel Barber)
Symphony No. 6, 4th movement (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
Elegy for solo viola (Igor Stravinsky)
Götterdämmerung – Siegfrieds Trauermarsch (Richard Wagner)
Image by Max Baum, CC BY-SA 2.0
