The Guardian’s Stephen Moss recently wrote a short column on the last time a piece of music made him cry.

At the first night of the 2006 Proms in a “hot, crowded, ultra-responsive Albert Hall” and with “too many glasses of white wine” inside, it was the chorus’ rendition of Deep River, from Michael Tippett’s, A Child of Our Time, that proved too much for Moss, who wept at the beauty, wonder and hazy tipsiness of it all.

It’s interesting how an audience’s tears are considered such a high prize for creators. More than joy, laughter, hope or dismay, to make an audience weep is to hit the emotional jackpot for a writer, composer, poet or director. Perhaps it’s because tears are such a tangible manifestation of emotion, an outward signal of supreme inward reaction, that their elicitation is so sought after.

Or maybe they just indicate, more than any other emotional response, that the artist has touched upon a universal truth, that highest of all creative goals.

I’ve never cried because of a videogame (and even if I had, it’d be tough to admit because a. I’m an adult, b. I’m a man and c. I’m British). Outside of a cut-scene, it’s a difficult response for a gamemaker to draw from a player, probably for the same reason it’s difficult to successfully execute a traditional joke structure in a game: the timing is all in the player’s hands.

Films succeed at making their audiences cry because they have had their emotional build and release timed and conducted with microscopic precision, pulling together multiple disciplines of writing, editing, direction, audio and performance to orchestrate a multifaceted assault on the viewer. This kind of coordination is near impossible in the freer boundaries of a videogame, especially when the player dips in and out of the experience over a period of days and weeks, rather than in a single, concentrated 90-minute period.

Anyhow, for once I’m not here to talk about games. A couple of days after I read Moss’s column (and in the middle of July!?) I was blind-sided by John Taverner’s Christmas Proclamation (conducted by Christopher Robinson and sung by the choir of St John’s College, Cambridge). The piece came on when I was listening to some shuffle music and made my stomach heave and crunch. In the light of that, I thought I’d put together a list of songs and pieces of music that have made me cry, or at least brood darkly, to try and work out if there’s a pattern or principle.

A good friend studied music at King’s College London and he tells the story of when the class was asked to talk about the most beautiful piece of music and why they thought it so. Each class member stood up to speak abut their particular choice and began by taking a mechanical, self-consciously musical approach to explain why it made them feet the way they did. ‘…a technical marvel’, ‘…the emotive chord sequence’, ‘…such a surprising melody’ and so on.

But in the end everyone in the room let their intellectual guard drop and told the truth, that their favourite music was music tied to precious memories; that the beauty in the composition was brought to focus, heightened and perfected by the lens of life.

Moss agrees, saying: “Musical tears are the result of association – childhood memories, the circumstances in which you are listening, your state of mind, factors external to the music rather than the music itself. Chopin’s lilting Etude No 3 from his op 10 set doesn’t usually make me cry, but it might if I recalled the packages of silent movie classics it used to introduce at Christmas-time in the 1960s, multiple lost worlds.”

It’s a truth that’s almost impossible to escape when compiling a list like this. No matter how objective you want to be in your choices to be, almost every piece of music that we love is the soundtrack to a fond memory, a link to another time and place, a sentiment, a smell, a significance.

When you’re putting together a ‘favourites’ list – any list – for a public forum, you’re acutely conscious of the reader. You want to appear wildly eclectic, for your tastes to be perceived as noble and mature, to endorse canon while exhibiting some individuality. But these concerns are the enemy of honesty.

Self-consciousness risks robbing items on your list of the power they once had, as you start to analyse the choices, question your tastes and focus on others’ perception of those tastes. In that light you begin to fear that you’ve mistaken beauty and meaning for something that’s actually twee and shallow. I’ve compiled loads of favourites lists before but this is the first time I’ve been conscious of the forces that drive my choices, and it’s made me wonder how useful any public list truly can be. Still, I’ve tried to be honest and things that I initially discarded, I’ve re-included in the interests of integrity.

These things are super fragile too. Some of the music here, which once moved me, now washes over me, its punch deadened through familiarity. Searching Youtube for video links (the easiest way to present compositions without having to worry about legality) spoils the purity of much of the music, moving images bringing with them new and alien associations and purposes.

Then you question what it as that moved you in the first place: something true and wonderful or just a cultural, memetic fashion. Did I put Devil’s Got My Woman on the list because Skip Jones’ playing makes me ache for (and for) the past or because it’s inextricably linked to Daniel Clowes and hipster favourite, Ghost World? Is this just a posing, Juno-esque parade of neat things that I know exist?

I almost certain that I don’t think so. Anyway, woah! I’ve been writing for like a million words. This has definitely been over-thought…

I hope you find something pretty, or interesting or beautiful or moving or unsettling here. Where possible I’ve included a Youtube link to the piece (many of which are unofficial videos or, um, slideshows…). Where not possible I’ve included an .mp3 to listen to.

Here’s the first half, in no particular order (in a particular order).

20. Jacques Brel – Ne Me Quitte Pas

Because Brel’s is a voice that could light a cigar, and nobody sings melancholy like a dour Frenchman. The words are OK in translation, but in French they dip and roll as a landscape, addendum after addendum till the verse shudders to its conclusion.

“Ne me quitte pas,
Il faut oublier,
Tout peut s’oublier,
Qui s’enfuit deja,
Oublier le temps,
Des malentendus,
Et le temps perdu,
A savoir comment”.

There’s a symmetry and feel that’s attractive even if the words are meaningless to the listener. That’s ‘Cellar Door’ in song.

19. Lali Puna – Faking the Books

This is one of those songs that would stop me dead in my tracks a few years ago, but now just makes me reminisce warmly about unspecific things. The contrast between the robotic hi-hat and the organic acoustic is still magical.

18. Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms

One of the embarrassing ones, I guess, but that’s almost wholly for reasons outside of the music: the dad-rock connotations, the guitar fetishism etc.

I had the song on one of those naval-gazing C90s we’d make when people my age were thirteen-years-old, but nowadays the music is tied to one of my most favourite moments in television: Martin Sheen’s West Wing soliloquy/ rant to God in in which he slips from English into Latin and back again, full of fury, anguish and regret, putting eloquence to feelings common to anyone who has lived and loved and lost.

The song doesn’t kick in until the end of the episode (Season 2′s finale, and the bit that’s shown above) but the association has already been made in my head.

17. The National – Start a War

I don’t know what the hell that video is but it has Regina George from Mean Girls so I guess that’s OK. Rolling toms, kick drum and absolutely no hope of a musical release. Perfect.

16. B Fleischmann – Static Grate

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Because if I was recording a story for This American Life I would request this be the final act’s soundtrack. Everybody’s thought about that thing, right? Oh gosh, this is definitely opening a window to my mind that maybe should have stayed shut.

Despite the big, dumb drum loop, it teeters between sadness and hope masterfully, something I seem to be getting better at just by virtue of having been alive for a bit.

15. Julie Andrews – Feed the Birds

It’s ridiculous, but this still moves me. It’s memories of being a kid and visiting central London on a weekend and seeing that grey of St Paul’s stone. And it’s memories, of course, of Sunday afternoon Disney films.

But more than that, when the choir joins, oohing and aahing in the second verse, and Andrews sings about the saints and apostles looking down as this tramp-like merchant sells her wares, I find the contrast between tradition and grandeur with a more simple way to live, affecting.

By the way, Julie Andrews is 30-years-old in this clip. I find that interesting but I’m not sure why.

14. Faultine – Where is My Boy

You have to be mean about Coldplay. Them’s the rules since Parachutes, right?

But this guest appearance by Chris Martin on producer Faultline’s much-overlooked record will get past your elitist hipster defences. Despite a trying-slightly-too-hard vocal take, it’s a dark and brilliant record.

13. Skip James – Devil Got My Woman

(From 1:04 in video)

You can buy numerous versions of this recording on iTunes and the quality on all of them is, um, crackly at best. Still, it’s the saddest guitar tuning ever invented (open E minor, rarely used in the Blues as it’s not good for slide-playing, so the internet tells me), and I just wish the devil would give her back .

12. Ms. John Soda – Plenty Of

(I have no idea what this slideshow is. Just click play and do something in another window for a few minutes or something)

Another understated dramatic record from German label Morr Music. I love when the cello sustains the guitar note at 00:43, a trick that’s then reused later in the song.

There’s not much to it but what’s there is unexpected and perfect.

11. Ghostland – Interview with the Angel

I don’t know anything about this piece of music. Good friend James Underwood put it on my computer because he said I’d like it. So in contrast to most of the other stuff on this list, I have no context, no faces and no history to colour or filter the music through. It’s just really pretty and I listen to it a lot.

Ok, as Mike Skinner would say, dry your eyes, mate: part 2 tomorrow.