Why is everyone associating "comfort" with "inactive?" The pieces chosen
don't even go along with the agreed-on definition.  Strauss Waltzes are
definitely athletic.  Then the definition slides to allow "marshmallow"
harmonies.  There is nothing marshmallow about the Waltzes and lots of
other pieces suggested.  Then "slow," "Baroque."

Of course, Beethoven's Fourth and "the Pastoral" are comforting pieces,
but so are the First, Second and Eighth.  The Eighth you say.  That is one
of the most compact symphonies ever written.  You are out of breath before
its other.  That's comforting? Yes, why not?

To me comfort means assurance that no matter how dark things may be,
movement will change that as surely as night passes into morning.  That
is why Brahms' German Requiem is probably the most comforting music ever
written.  Not because it is slow.  It isn't always.  No because it is
easily melodic.  It isn't in many places.  Not because it doesn't face
hard reality.  It does.  But because running through is the theme that
"even this shall come to pass" and "death shall be swallowed up in
victory." Another composer who comes close to Brahms' transcendence is
Hugo Wolf in his breathless cradle song that John McCormick sang with
such aching beauty every Christmas Eve.

Victory, now that is the assurance we all seek. So any music that is
positive is comforting.

All of Bach is comforting, as is Haydn, a lot of Mozart, almost all
Beethoven, especially the Fifth for all its fury it ends on a note of
victory, that no obstacle is too great to overcome us.  Depressing music is
the exception to the rule in traditional classical music.  Most classical
classical music reaches for the triumphant.  Schubert's great songs, soft
and melodic as many are, are triumphant, i.e., die Forelle or the one about
the fisherman drawing strength from his work.

Modern music can be comforting, too, although now it has become the
exception whereas in classical music it is the rule. Try

Nielsen's Symphonies 1-5
Ives, Symphony #3 [Camp Grounds] very comforting in the soothing sense.
Mahler, #4 and the last movement of both the #5 and the #9 (I don't buy the
Bernstein view of the symphonies--I think that movement is closer to the
finale of the Pastoral than has even occurred to most.]
Elgar, Enigma Variations, Introduction and Allegro (wonderful, wonderful)
Vaughn Williams, #5
Janacek, Sinfonietta
Sousa, Marches [must have comforted a lot of young boys going off to war for
the first time]

Well I could go on and on and I was more interested in how comfort is
defined rather than particular examples.  All art in the end comforts
through catharsis.  That's what Frost mean about art being a stay against
confusion.

Andrew E. Carlan