Semi-related rant to the OP, but what really steams my beans is the way all orchestral music is grouped under the heading “classical.” No. Beethoven is Romantic, not Classical. Mozart is Classical. J.S. Bach is Baroque (I think I’ve got the right Bach there.) 20th-Century composers don’t have a name yet, unless Modern/Postmodern also applies to music. Yet all orchestral pieces are called “classical music.” They’re. All. Different. Periods.
I can honestly say that once you’ve heard the 1712 Overture, you’ll never hear the 1812 Overture the same way again.
<pop goes the weasel…>
Great, if you can, pick up the Missa Hilarious if it’s on either of those. Truly inspired lunacy.
Esprix
My understanding - and perhaps TGU can correct me - is that the Gymnopedies were so called because they were designed to evoke images of children dancing. Which can be relaxing, but once I heard that I also saw the sweet awkwardness, the impulsiveness. Much more interesting.
I’m not terribly expert on Satie but I did fall in love with many of his works. And humor: listen to the “Croquis et agaceries d’un gros bonhomme en bois” (Sketches and exasperations of a big wooden fellow), or “Les valses distinguées du précieux dégoûté” (Distinguished waltzes of a disgusted dandy).
I always liked the “Trois Morceaux en forme de Poire (Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear),” which he allegedly wrote after hearing criticism that his work lacked form. A composer-friend claims that Satie literally drew a pear on a large piece of foolscap, inserted a staff, and composed the piece…
Well, I know I’m intoxicating, but I never knew it was a board thing.
Oh, by the way, Francesca, Mozart’s Musical Joke was the first CD I ever owned, given to me as a gift by my then-boyfriend. Intended or not, there are some great riffs in there against Handel that always make me laugh. And being a French horn player, I had no idea we could trill that high! 
Esprix
Just for the record, I have no knowledge whatsoever of classical music and its sources, other than “purty music someone gave me”, but I have owned "The Wurst of PDQ Bach since the 70’s, and it has never failed to crack my uneducated shit up. My favorite would be Concerto for Horn and Hardart and The Seasonings”. Anyone can appreciate this man’s genius!
You have got to be be shitting! That peice of music makes me want to tear my heart out of my chest from the pain of it breaking. Liquid angst creeping across a mist-covered valley, the death of a beloved, a mud-spattered rose opening on a battlefield.
Wow.
Diffrn’t strokes I guess 
And count me with Esprix - there’s no way I can listen to classical without descontructing it, breaking apart lines, listening with 110% of my attention.
Some of the most impressive, disturbing pieces I’ve heard are the Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin, by Ysaye. Call them what you want, but if they’re relaxing then you’ve got no nerves.
Likewise, Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima”.
Misery Loves Co:
Let me introduce you to my new friend:
WOOSH!!!
Francesca may be fooling around here, so this might be a whoosh, but I believe Beethoven’s sixth symphony has a joke in it.
It’s the “Pastoral” symphony.
I think there’s one part where the horn player always comes in late. It’s sort of a joke on the idea that some put-together band of bumpkins would have a horn player that’s a chump, kind of like the Nick Bottom character from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
That is my best recollection, I may be wrong.
Well, don’t forget that Satie is the person who coined the term “furniture music”. He was the guy running around telling people “talk, talk! don’t listen to the music!” when “Furniture Music” was premiered.
Is there no end to my ignorance? First PDQ Bach, now “furniture music”.
Tsk!
My The Oxford Companion to Music hadn’t heard of it either (nor the much more french musique d’ameublement) so I don’t feel too stupid. The great big intermaweb searching engine Google threw up 495 hits for “furniture music” Satie, bless its little cotton diodes.
I quote Satie: “I see it as melodious, as masking the clatter of knives and forks without drowning it completely, without imposing itself. It would fill up the awkward silences which occasionally descend on guests. It would save them the usual banalities. Moreover it would neutralise the street noises that indiscreetly force themselves into the picture.”
Not, however, “relaxing”.
That some may find the Gymnopedies relaxing I do not doubt, but in the spirit of pendantic ranting I found myself insisting that they are not in themselves relaxing, nor were they intended to be so. It is not a point of view that are am unheathily attached to and I will happily agree to shut up on the subject.
TGU
As an aside, I’m singing Brahm’s Requiem tonight (in the choir, not by myself, obviously). After the rehearsals last night and this morning, I will readily punch anyone who seriously suggests this work is “relaxing”. My nerves are shot, my throat hurts, and I haven’t even done the concert yet.
[gratuitous plug] And if anyone wants to hear it, Radio 3 will be broadcasting it on Monday at 7:30 pm London time (Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony is the first half of the concert) – web streaming available! [/gratuitous plug]
In terms of unintentional classical soporificity, something should be said about conductors who insist on a tempo way slower than either the composer intended or anyone else has attempted.
This means you, Rafael Kubelik. Beethoven’s 7th Symphony is NOT a dirge, especially the third and fourth movements.
There oughta be a standard CD warning label - “Deadly Slow Version — No-Doz pack enclosed”.
Actually, that ties in well with my previous post – Walter Weller seems determined to break the 1.5 hour barrier with the Brahms. Yowza.
Plllbbbbbtttttt!!
At this point, I put nothing past anyone when it comes to classical music! If someone thinks “Spring” is relaxing background music, then to imagine someone could be so emotionally dead as to find the Adagio merely “relaxing” is not unbelievable…
Of course, it is you who said it, so I shoulda known better . . .
Modern flute players seem to want a sound that is as metallic and scraping as possible. Maybe they’re trying to prove that their flute is made from pure niobium, or they’re just jealous of violinists.
A satellite radio station has a music channel called “Relax”. Most of the time it makes me wanna pick up the speaker and throw it against the wall. Whiny flutes turn nice little tunes into tooth-gritting endurance exercises, somewhat akin to putting your hand into a dark hole where a scorpion is defending a rattle snake, and leaving your hand there for two days until you pass out from the pain and thirst. It builds character I suppose.
Then there’s James Galway, who’s luscious, sugary flute turns wonderful traditional melodies into an orgy of candy floss. I get nauseated just thinking about it.
I’ve wanted to do a radio show for years titled “Not this record!” wherein I play only music that will irritate the listener, ladled thickly with gentle sarcasm. Paul McCartney, military bands, and Important Organ Music would be guaranteed airplay.
Ooo! Ooo! Guess what? thomasm was kind enough to call to let me know that Peter Shiekele is in town tonight, and we’re going to see him!
Esprix
When i was little we had an audiotape of the Wizard of Oz which had Sheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov) playing in the background.
I don’t find this peice of music relaxing, primarily because I picture flying monkeys for large parts of it.
Not, I imagine, the original intent of the composer.
(Francesca, I got your musical joke reference, because I had to learn the piece on the piano…isn’t it the BBC’s Horse of the Year show theme?)
What do I see in this thread? Many ** ugly classical music fans**, they are just like every other Ugly kind (i.e. Ugly americans). In short they are fanatics that think they belong to an elit.
They are the only one that can understand the beautifull complexity of academic music. If someone finds For Elise realxing they denounce him as an heretic. Fuck all of you. The most relaxing piece of music ever written ** IMHO ** is Holst´s Jupiter “The Bringer of Jolly”. Guinastasia finds Barber´s Adagio relaxing, not I that it’s one of the most heart breaking compositions I ever heard.
My point is that the “listening experience” is a very personal one. Not even the composer can say if a piece is “relaxing”, “sad”, or “joyfull” the sentiment of the composition is in the ear of the listener.
That is why I always thought that the best thing it could happen to classical music (I am aware that that name properly belongs to one period, namely the one of the first Viena school, thanks the idiot that reminded me) is to exterminate ** ugly classical music fans ** like the vermin they are. Because thanks to them and their absurd air of grandeur classical music is dying. The first and most important objective of any art is to be appreciated, if no one is listening classical music then it is dead. For that three cheers to classical FM, to people that use classical themes and play Mozart with an electric guitar and drums and to people that simply enjoy music without bothering to show how smart they are.