Rage can be a funny emotion, as long as you’re not the one who is feeling it. Musicians are lucky – when we have emotions bottled up within us, we can play music to blow off steam or come to terms with our feelings.

We usually don’t associate Art Music with feelings like rage, but when you feel this way, you have to find an appropriate outlet. When you’re too worked up to play something calming, and too frazzled to play something structured, you have to find something barbaric. Enter Béla Bartok, and his Allegro Barbaro. Bang those keys, make it ugly, until everyone knows how angry you are!

When faced with such a senseless, horrible tragedy, we turn to music to help us find some peace, to help us heal, to help us move on.

A Requiem is a Roman Catholic mass said to pray for the soul of departed person. Today, Requiems are still said (and sung) in a liturgical setting; however, the beauty of the words and the human obsession with death have caused many composers to write their own Requiems, regardless of their faith (or lack thereof). Particularly famous Requiems include those by Mozart, Berlioz, Brahms, Faure, and Verdi – and ironically, none of these is known to have much, if any, faith. After those, there are a number of “underdog” requiems that are known by choirs, but not by orchestras. Among these is the Requiem by Maurice Duruflé.

This serenely beautiful work takes the melodies of the Gregorian Chant Requiem and dresses them up with lavish accompaniment by organ and orchestra. The result is a work that expresses the sorrow we feel when a loved one dies, but also a sincere hope in an afterlife. Unlike the more famous Requiems I mentioned earlier, Duruflé’s does not paint a terrifying picture of the end of time, with God as a cruel judge; instead, we are left with a calm, peaceful vision of heaven, where tragedies might be finally explained.

Often, non-living “characters” play important roles in stories or staged dramas. I’m not referring to a mountain that magically speaks, however. I’m thinking of landscapes, weather, or other things that metaphorically relate to the actions and emotions of the human characters: for example, a movie where, at the moment of greatest tension, a thunderstorm breaks; or, a dry, desert landscape when the story has reached a point of despair and emptiness.

Peter Grimes is an opera by English composer Benjamin Britten, which was first performed less than a month after the European fighting of World War II ended. The plot is dark and disturbing; I wonder, though, if it didn’t seem so creepy when it was premiered, considering the destruction that British audiences saw during the war. From this opera, four musical interludes have been excerpted and used as concert repertoire by orchestras. Within the opera, these “Sea Interludes” set the scene both by painting a landscape, and by establishing a mood.

The first interlude is titled “Dawn”. Unlike the sweet, cheerful “Morning Mood” of Grieg, this morning reeks of a small, poor, fishing village, of closed-minded, spying villagers, of a brutal man, and of the impending doom of a young boy. It’s peaceful, but unsettling at the same time.