Chopin: Etude in E, op 10, no. 3
Barber: Adagio for Strings
Rachmaninoff: Symphony #2: Adagio
Lehar: The Land of Smiles: “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz”
Puccini: Gianni Schicchi: “O mio babbino caro”
Schubert - Impromptu in G Flat (Op. 90, no. 3)
Bach - Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
Faure - Requiem (especially the Agnus Dei)
Rutter - Requiem (especially “The Lord is my Shepherd”)
Rutter - Suite Antique (especially the fifth movement)
Debussy - Beau Soir
Satie - Pièces Froides no. 2
Disclaimer - despite being a music major, I really haven’t heard that much classical music. I’m sure I will have by the time I graduate, though.
I’m baffled by the intense love for Pachelbel’s Canon in this thread. I personally think it’s dreadful. Meh.
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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. “Russian Easter” Overture.
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Gustav Holst. “Neptune, the Mystic”, from The Planets
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Ferdé Grofé. “Sunrise”, from Grand Canyon Suite
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Richard Wagner. “Magic Fire Music” (orchestral bridge) in Die Walküre
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Edvard Grieg. “Ase’s Death”, from Peer Gynt Suite
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Ludwig van Beethoven. “Pathetique” Sonata.
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Samuel Barber. Adagio for Strings.
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Ludwig van Beethoven. Movement II, Symphony #7
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Sergei Rachmaninoff. Prelude in C# minor
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Ralph Vaughn-Williams. Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
Mozart can do no wrong for me – well, more than that: Mozart can do no short-of-breathtaking for me.
After him:
Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnol”, especially the first, fourth, and fifth movements;
Boccherini’s “La Musica Notturna”, which I believe is an audio transcription of sunlight.
Holst’s “Brook Green Suite” is a personal favorite, but I wouldn’t call it the most beautiful.
"Greensleeves" (aka the music of the Christmas carol “What Child Is This?”)
Barber’s Adagio for Strings was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the thread title.
I had a tape of Rutter’s Requiem in my car for the longest time. I’d choose “Out of the Deep” as the most amazing part, but I really need to get a new recording.
As for the Canon, not my favorite piece, but someone did a Christmas song with a children’s choir and it makes me bawl.
The most astonishing musical piece I have ever heard, by a very long shot is the Queen of the Night’s Aria from “The Magic Flute.” It just blows my socks off.
Lots of great music mentioned in this thread.
But the most beautiful piece of music in the world is Dvorak’s “Serenade for Strings.” This is the second time in as many threads that I’m saying this. Strange.
And the most beautiful moment in music in in Saint-Saens’s “Samson et Dalila” “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” when Samson joins Dalila in her gorgeous aria. It gives me goosebumps every time.
‘Moonlight Sonata’
‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme’ - Simon and Garfunkel; both the studio version and the live in Central Park version are hauntingly beautiful, but I prefer the studio with the counterpoint song in the background.
Wow. My two biggest have already been posted, so count this a second:
J. S. Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor
Amazing Grace on bagpipes (or sacred heart, or sacred harp, if I can figure out what the name is).
Like galen ubal said, Scarborough Fair is just beautiful. It was a staple in my 8-track player back in the day*.
As far as classical goes, Fur Elise is a very simple piece but it almost never fails to get me right there.
And in the “I’ll bet two dollars nobody else here’s heard of it” category is a piece called Peaches by the Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Ensemble. A minimal jazz piece, slow with sparing use of the guitar, clarinet and barely a drum line; dominated by a high-pitched, almost wheezy Japanese female singer.
*The day being sometime between 2000-2001. My first car, a '81 Dodge Mirada, had an 8-track player.
Thank you, I couldn’t agree more.
I like it because it is simple and unassuming. For me, it captures the very essence of music: a universal aesthetic. It compliments anything. My wife used it for her processional. It can also be interpreted as funereal, joyous, remorseful, relieved, fulfilled, frustrated — it’s quite possibly the perfect musical piece.
YoYo Ma’s recent Obrigado Brasil is really gorgeous.
I see some, IMHO, powerful works standing in for beautiful and it is true than can be both, I just don’t think of them as beautiful so much as affecting or moving works. Berlioz Requiem – 4th of Beethoven’s 9th-- Toccatta and Fuge in D minor JS Bach – all of which are works I love, but don’t necessarily consider them “most” beautiful.
Solace – Joplin can almost always make me cry for it’s haunting beauty and lyricism.
Shubert’s 9th “Unfinished” in B minor – first movement, just lovely
Faure – Lux Aeterna, Wow! just WOW!
Shuibert - Der ErKonig – tears you apart with it’s beauty.
Many many others – Stravinsky - “Rite of Spring” especially the Bassoon in the high register – just stunning.
and on and on. . .
One of Manuel de Falla’s greatest works is “El Amor Brujo”, (I have seen it translated as The magic of Love or witch love), the most famous part of it is, of course, the ritual fire dance but the most beautifull piece of music ever composed belong to this composition and is called Pantomima.
How about Carl Orff’s “Musica Poetica” ?
A relatively simple piece of music but nonetheless beautiful.
(Why didn’t I think of this earlier? :smack: )
I’ll add I’m Coming, Virginia as performed by Frank Trumbauer and His Orchestra (with Bix Beiderbecke), recorded in 1927. West End Blues as performed by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (1928) is also a beautiful piece, although I would call the famous cadenza at the beginning more spectacular than beautiful.
Though I concur with other selections mentioned, including Ode to Joy, one I didn’t note for being yet mentioned but which I love is Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Having seen ones I like listed already, I’ll say Thomas Newman - Harvest Time, on the score for Little Women.
Damn, two people beat me to the Faure Requiem! This board!! :mad:
The choral ending to the ‘Offertoire’, the children’s ‘In Paradisum’, and the soprano’s ‘Pie Jesu’ are my fave parts. I love to sing it when I can find an amateur chorus doing it. Although as an alto, we get TWO NOTES in the whole ‘Sanctus.’ You can flirt with the equally idle basses at least.
Carlisle Floyd’s opera SUSANNAH has tons of great stuff but the two great arias,‘Ain’t It a a Pretty Night’ and ‘The Trees in the Mountain’, are breathtaking. Another opera I love is THE RAKE’S PROGRESS: gimme ‘Love, too frequently betrayed’, ‘I go, I go to him’, and especially ‘Gently, little boat’ and watch the waterworks start. DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES has the loveliest ‘Ave Maria’ sung by the nuns at the close of Act I that I’ve ever heard, and the requiem sung by Constance and Blanche over the body of the first Mother Superior; but the ‘Salve Regina’ sung by the nuns at the very end, as each voice drops out as the woman is guillotined by the revolutionaries in the Terror…! I think its beauty comes more from the heroism and poignancy than the music itself, but it’s just magnificent. CARMINA BURANA has the ‘In Trutina’ which I like better than ‘Dulcissime’, which is just showing the hell off. 
Other pretty ones are ‘Omnia Sol temperat’, a rare male entry, and ‘Chramer, gip de warwe mir’ which is actually more cute than beautiful.
Hmmmm…NON-twentieth century operas…uh…so, so many. I love lots of FAUST and all of Mozarts’, of course, and DIDO AND AENEAS too. I like ‘Ah, Belinda’ and ‘Here in these lonesome, lonesome glades’ and of course Dido’s final aria. Polly from THE BEGGAR’S OPERA is the romance-addled heroine of the piece and has the nicest, if not always best, music: ‘O ponder well, be not severe’, ‘The turtle thus, with plaintive crying’, ‘O what pain it is to part’, and ‘I, like the fox, shall grieve’.
Classical music, too many to even start with now, and the same with musical theater. Although for sheer beauty, poignancy, and feeling, I can offer ‘Some Other Time’ from ON THE TOWN. It’s not in the movie but it was in the original, set in 1944, with those poor boys realizing their 24 hours were almost over and they were going back to sea soon, perhaps never ever to return… 