I’m trying to learn a little bit about classical music (my current amount of knowledge in the field could dance on the head of a pin with space to spare), so I was wondering if any of my fellow Dopers would be so kind as to let me know some of the better-known composers and some of their better-known works. If you could point me in the direction of a useful website or a book I could read, I would greatly appreciate that as well.
Assuming you mean compositions rather than songs, and not fully reflecting my own taste, I’d say these are the most important composers to start with:
BACH
Overtures, Brandenburg concertos, cello suites, toccata&fuga’s
MOZART
Clarinet concerto, Piano concerto 20, Requiem, Symphony 40
BEETHOVEN
Symphonies 6 and 9, Violin concerto, Piano concerto 5
SCHUBERT
Winterreise, Unfinished symphony, Octet, Impromptus
MENDELSSOHN
Violin concerto, Italian symphony, Scottish symphony, Midsummernights dream
BRAHMS
Symphony 1, Hungarian dances, Clarinet quintet, Deutsches Requiem
TCHAIKOVSKY
Violin concerto, Sleeping beauty, Piano concerto 1, Symphony 6
DVORAK
New world symphony, Slavonic dances, String quartet 14, Cello concerto
DEBUSSY
La mer, Prelude d’un apres-midi d’un faun, Clair de lune, Nuages
Also check out evergreens like Moldau (Smetana), Adagio (Barber), Finlandia (Sibelius), Canon (Pachelbel), Adagio (Albinoni).
If you’re curious about opera, I’d recommend to start with Puccini (say Tosca).
CHOPIN (Nocturnes, Etudes) should definitely be in there as well, if you’re intrested in piano.
Some suggestions for classical pieces that are well-known:
- Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (Or Symphony #5)
- Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Or Symphony #9)
You can probably find them on the same CD and I will bet that you recognize both of them.
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Chopin’s Etudes are nice.
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Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto
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Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overature (very fierce and fiery!)
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Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite
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Handel’s Messiah (Choral Music) It grows on you.
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Bach’s Toccata and Fugue You’ll recognize this. Pay attention to how much is going on at one time during the fugue.
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Bach’s Inventions
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See the movie Amadeus. It’s about Mozart. The soundtrack is marvelous – two CD’s and a nice overview of his work.
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Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony – especially the second movement.
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Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto One of my absolute favorites. Very brooding and moody.
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Debussy’s Claire de Lune It means “moonlight love.” Debussy is often very nice for when you are with a woman.
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For opera, I would not buy one particular opera first. I would get a mixture of opera singers performing arias – songs. Try to find CD’s with arias by Puccini and Verdi. They are the most familiar. Also, arias from Bizet’s Carmen. Kathleen Battle is escellent. Kiri Te Kanawa. Pavarotti. I still love Maria Callas for Carmen.
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George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess (opera)
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George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
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George Gershwin: An American in Paris
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Dvorak: New World Symphony
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Aaron Copeland: Appalachian Spring
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Dave Brubeck’s Time Out (Okay, it’s jazz – but it is classic!)
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Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue (can’t mention jazz with Miles)
or Dizzy…but I’ll stop.
Reading is good, but listening is better. But maybe someone can recommend a book that teaches you how to listen.
The two most-recognized Classical pieces are “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (Mozart) and “Over the Waves” (A Mexican composer whose name escapes me; the song is used in any old Popeye or Warner Brothers cartoon with a nautical theme, and five distinctive notes of it are used at the tail end of the faux-swing “You and Me and the Bottle Make Three”).
“The Wedding March” and “The Graduation March” have to be up there as well. Also “The William Tell Overture.”
You might want to rent/buy/check out from the library one of those compilations from Naxos or Deutsche Gramofon for a crash course of the basics. The Naxos one has a great little paperback book that comes with it with bios of all the important classical composers, musical terms, etc. When I get home I can post the actual name of it.
Here it is: The A to Z of Classical Music. This might be a good starting place for what you’re looking for.The A to Z of Classical Music
It’s put out by Naxos, who has a mission to archive all important classical music–but don’t look for A-list musicians to be on their CDs.
Motzart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”
Pachebel’s “Canon in D”
Vilvaldi’s “Four Seasons”
Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier/Clavichord” was a favorite of mine to play on the piano.
Beethoven’s 5th and Beethoven’s 9th (particulary the “Ode to Joy”) also “Moonlight Sonota”
Handel’s “The Messiah” Also his very simple variation " The Harmonious Blacksmith". I loved to play that piece, so simple, so elegant.
Hayden’s “Suprise Symphony”
"In the Hall of the Mountain King " by Grieg
“The Swan” by Sean Sans
“Peter and the Wolf” by Sergei Prokofiev
Brahm’s Lullaby
Chopin’s “Chopsticks” Or “Minute Waltz”
Johann Strauss’ “Vienes Waltz” or “The Beatiful Blue Danube”
“Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
The Graduation March is “Pomp and Circumstance” by Sir Edward William Elgar
“Jupiter, Giver of Jollity” is well known, it’s a movement from Gustav Holst’s “Planets Suite”. I know Isao Tomita did a variation on it, that’s nice, though it’s also synthesized. Check it out here. Clips of it are still used by shows like “Dateline NBC” for background sound.
Also try looking into “Switched on Bach” by Wendy Carlos. You can sample her arrangements of Bach here. She made that album in the 70’s I believe.
Here are a couple of links to sites that list composers and their compostions. This one’s nice.
Also, if you want to “ease into” a taste for classical music,
this artist might help. She plays classical music with a modern flair.
Also, believe it or not, Bugs Bunny cartoons, or old Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck etc. cartoons. They often used classical music. I also like Henry Mancinni’s works in those cartoons.
Good Luck
The All Music Guide’s Classical site is an excellent resource, but tends to be comprehensive rather than newbie-friendly. But you can read up on specific pieces by composers, so if you find something you like you can get some background info.
That’s a great link moodtobestewed. I tried a few rather obscure favourites of mine (like Lilburn, EJ Moeran and Sallinen), but even they are included.
“Fur Elise” by Beethoven (I think…)
[Snooty British actor voice] “You may know this lovely tune as Stranger in Paradise. But did you know it is really the Polovtsian Dance number three by Borodin?” [/Snooty British actor voice]
Those really are some great lists of the most played of all classical music pieces.
Nobody mentioned just listening to public radio. That’s a great place to hear a lot o variety with no investment.
I highly recommend Disney’s Fantasia (or Fantasia 2000) as a rudimentary primer to a wide variety of classical music.
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All – I think it would help the OP to suggests instances where classical music and ordinary pop culture intersect. This way, the OP may learn that he/she recognizes more classical music than he/she realizes. Mention of the classical music in Looney Tunes cartoons is a perfect example.
I’ll offer my own:
– Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” is better known as the theme to the Lone Ranger television series.
ATTN: Caddyshack spoiler below
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– In the movie Caddyshack, the music during the exploding-golf-course scene is Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”
Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss is much better known as, “that music from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Franz von Suppé’s overtures “Light Cavalry” and “Poet and Peasant” are used in nearly every cartoon ever made, as are Rossini’s overtures “William Tell” and “Barber of Seville.”
Sqube, also try doing a search in CS for titles containing the word, “classical.” You’ll see this topic comes up about every two months.
What a strange coincidence, I was thinking only this morning how pitiful it is that most of my classical music knowledge comes from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. Several of the pieces that Zambali mentioned are in one Looney Tune or another.
A local radio station does an annual Classical Music Top 40 poll, so that’s probably a good place to start:
If you want to start somewhere with some good variation, both from the Masters and some interesting but obscure composers like Paul Dukas, go no further than the Fantasia soundtracks. Sure, they truncated Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and the Nutcracker Suite, but it’s still a worthwhile introduction to some of the classics.
How many people who have enjoyed Della Reese’s “Don’t You Know?” are aware that it’s from La Boheme by Puccini. When Giacomo wrote it, it was called “Musetta’s Waltz.”
Our local classical station does a similar poll, but lists (and plays) the top 98.
Lots of good stuff there!