If this isn't a tearjerker, than i just haven't studied enough music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYbi8CTB ... annel_page

Is it sentimental to any of you also?

I don't see what is so especially sentimental about this. It's a typical Tchaikovsky slow movement, shot through with typical Tchaikovsky bombast. You also have to see this in context of the entire sonata, which is decidedly unsentimental, and a great work in the right hands.

Isn't everything Tchaikovsky wrote apparently sentimental? That would be like saying his opus 35 violin concerto is just a concerto.

You should probably be avoiding Tchaikovsky, he does not seem to be the man for you.
I love that concerto BTW. Every bit as good as his piano concertos.

Hi Luke,




I don't know this piece, but your post gave me the opportunity to listen to it. I would not use the terms "sentimental" or "tearjerker". Both those words have a rather denigrating connotation, and are usually applied to music that is small-scale, somewhat popular, even hackneyed, and unsophisticated. Not many composers can write great sentimental music, but Chopin comes close in some of the Nocturnes (e.g. F# from op. 15). Louis Moreau Gottschalk wrote some truly sentimental music.

I suspect that you meant to say "moving" or "expressive", which it certainly is. But it is also noble, harmonically sophisticated, and written on too grand a scale to be called "sentimental" or a "tearjerker".



The Tchaikovsky violin concerto *is* just a violin concerto, but a great one. Both your comments, concerning the sonata movement and the violin concerto, tell us that you are very sensitive to the beauties of music, but such beauties cannot always be adequately described by any words, let alone the ones you chose. But yes, all Tchaikovsky speaks from the heart, is deeply felt and accessible to all. But those qualities do not make his works "tearjerkers" or "sentimental". It's just really a question of accepted usage.

I think the opening lines for the strings to his 1812 are more tearjerking than that sonata.

I apologize for my use of terms. I'm not very good with words, just music... You are correct that it is full of fantastic use of form, and using the full directional force of chords.