OK so I’m listening to Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and I’m thinking, This is just about the most accessible, unchallenging, listener-friendly classical music ever written; it’s like Classical Top 40. Then I realize that it’s not, actually, one of those pieces considered as the *actual *Classical Top 40. Then I’m thinking, well what *are *those pieces? Here’s the best I could do. What did I miss?
The first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik”
Strauss’s “Tales from the Vienna Wood”
Brahm’s Lullaby
Ravel’s Bolero
Pachelbel’s Canon
Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
The other Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra”
Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valküre”
Khachaturian’s Saber Dance
Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture
The fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth
Runners up:
Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze” and “Air on a G String”
Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”
Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci”
That duet from The Pearl Fishers
Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”
This is all top-of-the-heady; please nominate others.
I would put the first movement of Mendelssohn’s “Italian Symphony” over the Midsummer Night Dream stuff even – it’s even more accessible, better known, and instantly likeable.
Also:
Beethoven’s “Für Elise”
Mozart Piano Sonata in C (K???)
First movement of Mozart’s 40th Symphony
The William Tell Overture
In addition to the ones already mentioned there are:
The Sorceror’s Apprentice - Dukas (all thanks to Fantasia)
Claire de Lune - Debussy
The Swan - Saint-Saens
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy - Tchaikovsky
Firebird Suite - Stravinsky
Rhapsody in Blue - Gershwin
First Gymnopedie - Satie
Rondo alla Turca in A Minor - Mozart
Emporor Waltz - Strauss
And then there’s the less well known but impossible to leave out Battle on the Ice by Prokofiev.
Depends which station you ask the listeners of! Classic FM, a very bland British ‘classical music’ station (heavy inverted commas), has done numerous surveys. Bruch’s violin concerto (no. 1 if anybody has heard the others) is a common winner, threatened by the Elgar cello concerto.
There’s Classical and there’s classical, just like there’s Catholic and there’s catholic. I’m pretty sure you knew exactly what I meant–what everyone means–when they use the term “classical music.”
See, by “top 40,” I mean the pieces that any Joe in the elevator would be able to hum along with, even if they didn’t know what it was called.
The Mendelssohn you mention, while overfamiliar to any classical listener, doesn’t quite meet that criterion, IMO. Good candidate for runner up though. And the Mozart, if you mean K279, then I don’t think so. The 40th is more widely familar, but again, I don’t see an average Joe humming along.
Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”
Grofe’s “On the Trail,” from the “Grand Canyon Suite”
Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March #4”
Tchaikowsky’s 1st Piano Concerto
Selected portions from the Messiah, including certainly the “Hallelujah Chorus”
Wagner, “Ride of the Valkyries”
Is Moussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” well enough known?
Wagner: Lohengrin: Bridal Chorus
Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in c# minor
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2: 3rd movement
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1: opening of first movement
Chopin: Sonata #2: Funeral March
