Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons - Winter shows up in jewelry and luxury car commercials.
Bugs Bunny stole everything ever.
Funny radio broadcast transcript here
There’s also a set of two CDs listed on amazon - Bugs Bunny on Broadway, and Bugs Bunny at the Symphony.
Bet you’d recognize most, if not all, of those, and I’d also bet that quite a few of them will trigger specific memories of individual cartoons.
You’ve probably heard the Prelude part of Charpentier’s Te Deum, but the whole thing is worth a listen.
Ah yes, cartoons! If you’re familiar with Tom & Jerry’s “Cat Concerto,” you’ll recognize Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Liszt. I just learned from reading Wiki to get the exact title that the same piece was used in “Rhapsody Rabbit.”
William Tell Overture. If you haven’t listened to the entire thing, you’ll be surprised at how familiar it is – and I don’t just mean the finale.
Yes, the opening of the Overture should be quite familiar, Sigene.
And, in a similar vein, Grieg’s Morning Mood from Peer Gynt.
That’s actually well into the Overture, not the beginning…
Try this recording.
Nitpick - That isn’t actually the opening. It’s the third of four parts, Ranz Des Vaches
Claire du lune, Debussy
A little night music, WAM
Water Music, Handel
Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Rachmananoff
I’ll stick with opera melodies that many people know.
Verdi’s La Donna e Mobile from Rigoletto.
Verdi’s Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore.
Verdi’s Libiamo ne’ lieti calici from La Traviata.
Puccini’s O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi.
Puccini’s Un bel di vedremo from Madama Butterfly.
Leoncavallo’s Vesti la giubba from Pagliacci.
For The Olympics, I’m of the age that I first think of Bugler’s Dream, by Leo Arnaud. (Written in 1958, so we’re definitely extending the OP’s timeframe.) ABC used that as their theme until NBC outbid them for the 1988 Summer Olympics (and all since, I think). NBC commissioned a new theme by John Williams. Bugler’s Dream was so strongly associate with the Olympics that NBC has even used it as a hybrid with the Williams theme.
I think one of the networks (CBS?) used to use a snippet of Fanfare for the Common Man as the intro to its golf telecasts, probably back in the '70s. That’s from the dusty, back corner of my memory, though. There was definitely something very brassy like that. Can anybody confirm or deny?
If you’ve ever seen “Jaws,” you’ll recognize the beginning of the 4th movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony.
I kinda dig these…
Mason Williams - Classical Gas
Paul Mauriat - Love Is Blue (L’Amour Est Bleu)
Along the lines of William Tell, another piece of “horse-riding music” familiar to viewers of Bugs Bunny cartoons and the like is the 2nd theme of von Suppe’s overture to Light Cavalry.
Yeah, in the middle of it is also a section which gets used a lot for ships at sea during a huge storm (in the above link it starts around 3:30)…
If you’ve seen the movie Chocolat, then Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No.1 should sound very familiar. (I think the version used in the film is an arrangement by Rachel Portman, so it’s close, but not an exact match.)