I was expressing sadness on another thread a few days ago as I thought of my wife while listening to tracks from the Celtic Twilight recordings -- sad, slow 3/4 time, some but not all with flute. And any slow classical music with oboe can get to me.
If I listened to the two pieces you presented to us without images or other context, they wouldn't seem so melancholy, so my first thought is that the affect that accompanies music in my brain is sometimes depending on external knowledge, sometimes built up from the music alone, depending on how I've interpreted similar sounds over a lifetime.
Other New Agey music, the kind I'm likely to hear on NPR's Hearts of Space, can sometimes be melancholy, but I'd be hard-pressed to cite an example.
