I do not think that what moves us the most is necessarily also what we consider the most beautiful. Or at least, it isn't for me.
Emotions can come from moods, from memories, from moments in life, from people we have loved or wished for and who did not want us - alas - and... I could go on.
Often the songs that have moved me particularly are linked to someone or something, to a moment in my life, and they were not the most beautiful, but for me they were the most significant at that moment, of my being alive.
I could say that all light music, pop - with one exception that I will mention later - is linked to a certain moment in my life; after that, having passed it, it remains as a pleasant memory and every time I happen, by chance, to listen to it again, it takes me back to that moment, with a pinch of nostalgia, sometimes regret, sometimes even a sense of fear: it always depends on that moment, doesn't it? But if I had to look for it today, I wouldn't! Not because I no longer like it - quite the contrary - but because it no longer moves me.
Classical music, for me, is also only partly so. It is so with certain composers, with certain pieces of music. I don't know: Tchaikovsky is linked to my childhood, Mozart to my adolescence and youth, Liszt, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov... all composers that today I listen to en passant and which are linked to other moments in my life.
I cannot say, as you claim, that only songs can arouse emotions. I have spent entire evenings and afternoons listening to a symphony, an opera, a concerto, dreaming of parallel lives, and if they hadn't existed, I would have felt truly much more alone.
I don't know, the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo comes to mind: how many times I listened to it during my adolescence, and I won't tell you what that second movement made me think of. I think of Cavalleria Rusticana, how many tears with that opera...
I think that we listen to the music in which we best recognize ourselves and, for this reason, it can change diametrically during the periods of our lives: today I no longer have the desire to listen to pop music, not because I consider it inferior to other music or inferior to that of the past - in reality, I practically don't know it - but because, having reached what is the final phase of my life - it is so, it is a fact - I need to sum everything up and stay alone with what truly matters to me. And musically, much - not all - music from the past and certain 20th-century and contemporary music matters to me. I need to dedicate myself to it, exclusively to it.
But it is light music that we must talk about here, and so I was saying that in the field of light music, there has been a single exception in my life, and it is Fabrizio De André. Since his passing, any interest in pop music has disappeared within me. This is what happened. You will say it was a grave mistake and, surely, you are also right. But only also!
La guerra di Piero (Piero's War)
I met Faber one afternoon at my grandmother's house. The instrument was an already old record player, the medium was a 45 rpm record. I was listening to all the various records of my uncles and aunts, and suddenly that record came into my hands. I was 8 years old and I was attracted by the fact that it spoke of war. On the back, there was this other song:
La ballata dell'eroe (The Ballad of the Hero)
which seemed to be a continuation of the first, or so I believed.
In my child's mind, that soldier who died because he did not want to kill one of his own, without having known the truth and with his wife who, inconsolable, now slept alone in a bed, was distressing. I loved that music very much afterwards. Probably from there began my aversion toward any war, toward any violence...
De André, with his lyrics, his songs, has been a beacon for me, up to his last song:
Smisurata preghiera (Immeasurable Prayer)
As to why it moved me, Faber himself explains it to you!
Elogio della solitudine (Praise of Solitude)
