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Favorite Classical Music Pieces?


Leif
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I am curious to see what famous pieces of classical music you guys like. 

For example, one of my favorite arias is "Voi Che Sapete" by W.A. Mozart. 

Spoiler

 

Even though The Marriage of Figaro is a rather bizarre opera, it does have wonderful music like this. Mozart's works are, in my opinion, as close to perfection as one can get. 

 

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Vivaldi's Four Seasons...

In particular is the Summer Third Movement and the First Movement of Vivaldi's Winter.

Also, I'm quite fond of Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune from the Suite Bergamasque.

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3 minutes ago, Frosty said:

Vivaldi's Four Seasons...

In particular is the Summer Third Movement and the First Movement of Vivaldi's Winter.

Also, I'm quite fond of Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune from the Suite Bergamasque.

The first movement of Vivaldi's Winter is fabulous. I can't believe that piece slipped my mind. It reminds me a little of the Third Movement of Moonlight Sonata in terms of intensity.

I am trying to learn the first movement of Moonlight Sonata on the piano. I don't think I'll be able to play the second or third movements for quite a while. xD

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Whatever you call the opening to the ballet Spartacus. Those drums are so intoxicating! Spartacus as a whole is good, but the opening from the music to the dancing and the stage presentation itself hooked me from the get go. (Seeing manly Roman soldier doing leaps in leotards was also funny.)

Also, as cliched as it is, Chopin's Revolution is magnificent, so dire, so perilous- such is revolution! His Raindrops is also beautiful, if even more melancholic. (Thank you Eternal Sonata.)

I really need to listen to more Classical music, I plan to see a livestream of Swan Lake produced by Bolshoi later this month. Thank you video games for getting me to like this stuff!

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I love Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune and Reverie. Both pieces are so dream-like and tranquil. They never fail to clear my mind after a stressful day.

I also enjoy Tchaikovsky, mostly because of the childhood nostalgia associated with watching The Nutcracker and Disney's Fantasia. His Symphony no.1 "Winter Daydreams" is gorgeous.

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Personally I have to go with Dvorak's 9th "The New World Symphony" AKA the song that definitely inspired the Lord of the Rings OST.  I'm also fond of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (the song that plays during Donald and Daffy's piano duel in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?") and The Planets Suite.

Everyone should get a chance to listen to "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "The 1812 Overture" on a pair of big speakers.  So.  Much.  BOOM.

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Two really intense/longer choral pieces that are super fun to listen to are the Verdi Requiem and the Brahms requiem. I highly recommend listening to both! I'm with you on The Marriage of Figaro though. I really like it, but it's also bizarre. 

I like anything by Chopin as well. He's my favorite composer to play because his music is complex but accessible. I really like Franz Liszt and Sergei Rachmaninoff as well, but most of their piano pieces tend to be too difficult for me. (If you can't tell I really like the Romantics a lot. :3 )

But I think some of my all time favorite music to listen to are the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The H.M.S Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance NEVER get old.

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2 hours ago, The Geek said:

Personally I have to go with Dvorak's 9th "The New World Symphony" AKA the song that definitely inspired the Lord of the Rings OST.  I'm also fond of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (the song that plays during Donald and Daffy's piano duel in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?") and The Planets Suite.

Everyone should get a chance to listen to "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "The 1812 Overture" on a pair of big speakers.  So.  Much.  BOOM.

1812 Overture is moot without real live cannons.

There's so much music from the common practice period that I'd be here all day listing classics. Wagner's operas are something else, nearly unrivaled in their complex sprawls of tonality, Der Ring des Nibelungen especially (though Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal are certainly no slouches). Beethoven's works are masterful in their construction (with his works really becoming their own by the time of his Eroica), and you can certainly never go wrong with just about anything attributed to Bach. If I had to single in on a specific Bach work, his Goldberg Variations would be in my mind one of many highlights. Schubert's Der Erlkönig is another fantastic work to check out if diving into his music. Further back, Monteverdi and Pezel are worth checking out, as is Lully if you can find performances with period instruments. I recently performed some of Pezel's tower music and attended a performance of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, all of which was wonderful.

For 20th century works, Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 is a haunting piece that is only aided by its context. Prokofiev's Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution is a less popular work due to the connotation of being a celebration of the USSR, but it's worth a listen if you can find a recording where the percussionists properly imitate machine-gun fire with the snares. Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie calls back to the Tristan myth that Wagner took interest in, approaching it from a radically different angle yet always returning to that core love theme. I could probably talk about Mahler for hours, but my personal favorite is his Symphony No. 6 in A minor. For something perhaps more raucous, early Stravinsky or Strauss will do (Rite of Spring or Electra, for example), but when I want to listen even more contemporary than that I will turn to Stockhausen or Schnittke, particularly Gesang der Jünglinge or Concerto Grosso No. 1.

There's so much more to list that the fifteen-or-so pieces listed here are only a paltry sum of what classical music has to offer. I haven't even mentioned Bartok, Britten, Vaughen Williams, Ravel, Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Antheil, Copland, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Mozart, Brahms, Haydn, Ives, etc. None of this even dips into the complex harmonic schemes, symbolic content, and articulate nuances of the structure, orchestration and context of these works. To study and perform classical music is enough work for multiple lifetimes.

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Baroque: BWV 565, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, also known as the Vampire National Anthem

Vivaldi's Four Season Autumn first and second movements

Classical: Franz Schubert's Der Erlkonig

Romantic: Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, particularly O Fortuna

Modern: Gustav Holst's The Planets, namely Mars, the Bringer of War

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I love listening to classical music on the radio just for relaxing. However I know lots of classical melodies but unfortunately neither the composer nor the title for the most part.

 

Spoiler

 

a compostition I had to deal with in my music classes while my school time

Edited by Magillanica Lou Mayvin
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I love choral music, so that's what you're getting in this post. ;) I'm not that good at describing why I like particular pieces of music, so please bear with me.

  • Miserere mei by Gregorio Allegri - I love the gregorianic parts sung by the male voices and of course the sopranos floating over the rest of the choir.
  • Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber - he lived in the 20th century, but he still fits in here. This piece is originally written for strings, but Barber himself transcribed it for choir. It's a real bitch to sing, especially if you're a first basso who has to switch to second basso for this piece. That stuff is low-pitched...
  • I agree with @Rafiel's Aria that Brahms' Requiem is insanely beautiful. To add more death to the topic, Fauré wrote an amazing Requiem as well. I'll take the Agnus Dei as an example for it, but really the whole thing is worth listening to.
  • Libera me by Lajos Bárdos - have more death. ;) Less harmonic than the previous parts. [video might technically be NSFW, but it's all cultural nudity]
  • Esti dal by Zoltán Kodály, performned by the King's Singers - have more Hungarians. Harmonic again, to a point where the melody is almost a distraction.
  • The long day closes    by Arthur Sullivan, also sung by the King's Singers. English composers are often a bit (or a lot) too pompous for my taste, but I really adore this one.
  • Jauchzet dem Herrn by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (the 100th psalm). Pretty fun one to perform, as well, as long as the choir doesn't start lagging.
  • Abendlied by Josef Rheinberger - yet another piece with beautiful harmonics. I guess I have a type. ;)
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