There are some classical pieces that can really get to me. Mozart's piano concerto 21, 2nd movement, popularly known as the Elvira Maddiggan concerto, is very personally evocative. It conjures up to me a the entire list of really, really attractive girls/women that I liked A LOT, and somehow we never quite hit it off.
It would be those cases where there seemed to be mutual attraction, but I somehow mishandled it. In one instance a very attractiv and playful young woman I had a class with actually made a playful advance to me. I really liked her--I've always been a sucker for a playful sense of humor.
It turned out that she was in a relationship with a guy who basically mistreated her--not physically, but treated her very shabbily. Now, well after the fact, it seems like what she was probably doing was trying to get out of the relationship and hoped I could bring this about. No fighting or any silly stuff, just give her a place to go where she was with a guy and felt comfortable. I have no doubt that I could have made this happen, but I was far too dumb at the time to correctly read this. I thought, "Well, she's already got a guy, so what's the point?"
Very bittersweet and wistful. Piano concerto #21, 2nd movement...
There's Ride of the Valkyries, and no more need be said.
There's Carmina Burana, which is overwhelming in its impact.
Sansaens (sp?) The Fish, from Carnival of the Animals...completely wistful and somehow, *doomed*, fated...was the main theme in the old movie Days of Heaven.
And here's a very funny story about a profound evocation--frankly it *scared* me, disoriented me, and made me very uncomfortable all at the same time.
I like to go to sleep with the sleep timer set to 90 min, on the local classical station. One night I must have forgotten to set the timer, and it played on and on...
All of a sudden I came out of a sound sleep profoundly disturbed--no dream, just really uncomfortable. The radio was playing Erik Satie's Gnossienne #1. Not sure I ever hard it before, but I kept listening and was even more disquieted.
There's no specific reason for this that I can see.
I have a personal theory that music can communicate not only non-verbally, non-lingusitically, but it basically does an end-around run past all normal conscious filters. It can, therefore, evoke a mixture of emotions that never occur in waking life, and for which there is no concise or meaningful terminology.
It speaks right past thought and language, somehow.