What are some really sad or really depressing pieces of classical music preferably from post-18th century?
One of the most funereal is the really depressing tone poem, Rachmaninov’s “Island of the Dead’, inspired by an eerie painting of a cypress-covered island surrounded by still water, the last resting place of the dead in a mythological setting. Here is a description: “The tone poem The Isle of the Dead was inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s 1886 painting of the same name, which Rachmaninov saw in Paris in 1907. Written in 1909, it is a relatively early work, but already contained something of the dark Russian spirit which still tints Rachmaninov’s last major orchestral work, the Symphonic Dances of 1940. Philip Hale writes of the Böcklin painting: The island … was as solemn as a pyramid. It was a hidden nook for the dead that wished to lie undisturbed. Böcklin expressed this rest of the dead in a place remote and forgotten by the word. The sea is still, there is no cry of bird, no fluttering, no voice. The boat approaching the little harbour of the island with its towering blue-green cypres
