Musical hauntings

I woke up with Clair de la Lune stuck in my head the other day. For those of you who don't know this piece, here's a link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nvLSWyVqsI

This is just one of the many pieces of (sometimes utterly random) music that I call my sad music. Along with some Beatles. And other golden oldies that my Dad sometimes listens to.

There is something about certain sounds, or themes, in these pieces that makes me incredibly sad. It's really stupid, but they just do. Not a want-to-cry kind of sad, but an empty, hollow kind of hopeless sad, and suddenly I really know that one day everything will be gone and all the people I love will be dead. I can't explain it, but it's happened all my life. Music boxes are bad. I had several as a child, and I told my mother that if she let my sister continue playing them I'd run away. She probably just thought I was being mean, but I wasn't. I just didn't want to hear the music. Certain adverts on the radio had this kind of music when I was small, and if I happened to hear it, no matter how happy I had been before, it had a devastating effect on my mood until I could "wash it out" with other music, and hope that it wouldn't come back to haunt me in my dreams.

It's not when the piece is in a certain key- I like tons of music in both major and minor keys. The only distinguishing feature of my sad music is that the pieces are often almost lullabye-like, or have an air of "innocence" about them. I hear strains of music in my sleep, often not even a piece I know, and I wake up with a shock. I wonder if anybody else feels this way about some music, or if it's just a quirk of my brain...