Classical Sunset Music: 7 Beautiful Evening Compositions

It’s that quiet time of the day. The day is ending, and the sun sets, leaving the sky filled with colour. Of course, in the winter, for those in northern climes, this happens far too early, and for those even further north, it doesn’t happen at all for months. Imagine, however, that you’re somewhere where sunset happens at the end of the day. When we looked at sunset music, we found a great number of bittersweet melodies and not a little melancholy.

Georgios Axiotis (1875–1924) was born in Ukraine, moved to Athens when he was 12, and then studied music, as many Greek composers did, at the Conservatorio di Musica di San Pietro a Majella in Naples. Upon graduation in 1901, Axiotis returned to Athens and became the first director of the Conservatory of Piraeus (1903–1905). He was a strong nationalist and fought against the ‘Germanization’ of music and music education that he saw happening at the Athens Conservatory. He advocated for music that was still connected to Greek folk music and to the character of the countries around the Mediterranean.

His orchestral work Sunset, which received its premiere in 1923, uses some Greek modal harmonies. The orchestration is subtle and dark, conveying more of a melancholic look back on the day.

Sunset on Mykonos

Georgios Axiotis: Sunset (restored and edited by B. Fidetzis) (New Festival Opera-Symphony Orchestra Sofia; Byron Fidetzis, cond.)

In Richard Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie, Op. 64, sunset comes at the end of a long, fraught day for our mountaineers – they’ve transversed a glacier and suffered through a mountain storm, complete with thunder. Now comes the end of the day, when the world around them goes from blue to pink to orange.

Sunset on Mount Blanc, 2013 (photo by Henk Monster)

Richard Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), Op. 64, TrV 233 – Sonnenuntergang (Sunset) – (Weimar Staatskapelle; Antoni Wit, cond.)

Richard Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), Op. 64, TrV 233 – Ausklang (Final Sounds) – (Weimar Staatskapelle; Antoni Wit, cond.)

In his little piano piece, Ken Harrison gives us a sound image of loneliness in My Soul is an Empty Carousel at Sunset. The music plays and horses go around but there’s no one riding and the colours fade with the light.

The Empty Carousel

Ken Harrison: My Soul Is an Empty Carousel at Sunset (Htennek Niwhsa, piano)

Klaus Paier’s Sunset, for accordion, saxophone, and orchestra, finds the colours of the sunset in the colours of sound, building to the point when the sun disappears.

Klaus Paier: Sunset (Klaus Paier, accordion; Charlotte Lang, saxophone; Camerata Sinfonica Austria; Davorin Mori, cond.)

Inspired by a particularly colourful sunset on the coast in the west of Scotland, Stain on the Sunset tries to depict that sunset as it framed the mountains. Richard Hinsley juxtaposed the tranquillity of the setting versus the violent colours of the sky.

Evening colours on the Isle of Skye

Richard Hinsley: Stain on the Sunset (Richard Hinsley, piano)

On an album of guitar music dedicated to his late father, Masahiro, composer Masatora Goya imagines a sunset on the Hudson River, the travelling sailor who was his father, home at last.

Masatora Goya: Sunset on the Hudson (Oren Fader, guitar)

Although he did write a song cycle entitled Songs of Sunset, we want to look at a different work by Frederick Delius, his Summer Night on the River. The river in question is the River Loing, which runs at the bottom of Delius’ garden in Fontainebleau. The light is fading, fireflies skim the water’s surface, and it’s as though we’ve entered an impressionist painting.