# Help Me Get Into Classical Music! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 1, 2004, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-get-into-classical-music/231820 "2004-03-01T01:10:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-get-into-classical-music/231820/21 "2004-03-02T12:03:51Z")
Saint-Saens, for several reasons: Symphony #3 in C minor, “The Organ” - also used as incidental music in “Babe”. Listen to all of it, including the slow movement which is where the organ first appears, providing a softly-booming ground bass a few octaves below the strings. The Carnival of the Animals. “The Turtle” is a joke - it’s the Offenbach can-can played very slow. “The Elephant” is also a joke, it has ballet music (I forget which) played on the double-bass. “The Swan” is sheer painting by music and showcases the 'cello as a solo instrument. Bacchanale from “Samson and Delilah”. Wild, tempestuous, savage, barbaric climax to a dance that begins softly and sweetly; slave-dance music if ever I heard it, with a clever hint of the middle east. You should like this if you liked the Sabre Dance. Danse Macabre. Listen to the Devil tuning his fiddle deliberately off-key at the start, all the way through to a sudden cock-crow when the dance is at its height and he has to let the tormented spirits go back to their rest. Other stuff: Modest Mussorgsky: “Night on Bald Mountain”. Not unlike “Danse Macabre”, except that this time is the ringing of the church bell that signals an end to the unholy revelries. Mascagne: “Intermezzo” and “Easter Hymn” from _Cavalleria Rusticana_. Beethoven: Symphony #6, “The Pastoral”. Tells a story of a day in the country, from the arrival, a hot and peaceful noon, a rustic festival in the afternoon interrupted by a thunderstorm, and a song of rejoicing after the storm. Haydn: “Trumpet Concerto”. One of these days I may even be able to play it. Widor: “Toccato” from “Symphony #5”. If you liked the Bach Toccata and Fugue you should love this. Proof that the pedal-keyboard of a pipe organ is a solo instrument in its own right - this should test your woofers as thoroughly as it tests the organist’s musicianship. It’s worth shopping around for a good recording as an organ with _muy cojones_ makes all the difference to this piece 🙂 Mendelssohn: “Violin Concerto in E minor”. Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony. Who’d pay for a symphony with only half the movements completed? Quite a lot of people actually. Listen and enjoy. Brahms’s “Academic Festival Overture”. Music with a history: He forgot to say thank you when he was awarded an honorary degree, and he made amends by writing an opera-type overture around some popular student songs. Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique”. Another story. It’s an artist’s opium-dream, in which he meets a beautiful young lady, dances with her at a ball, woos her and murders her when she rejects him, is marched off to the guillotine (and has a vision of her the moment before the blade falls) and joins the souls in torment in a graveyard complete with “Dies Irae” and a cracked French church-bell. And much, much more… ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-get-into-classical-music/231820/22 "2004-03-02T14:34:49Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony. Who’d pay for a symphony with only half the movements completed? “How long did Sherbet plan on making this unfinished symphony anyway?” - H. Simpson [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-get-into-classical-music/231820.md?page=1)