I really like classical music. I listen to it pretty often, when I do homework, sleep and sometimes in the car. But I never pay attention to who the composer is. I tend to like classical music that is a bit somber, sad, and slow... so to speak. So, can any of y'all recommend some pieces or composers that fit this category?
1. Ludwig Van Beethoven - 1770-1827 2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - 1756-1791 3. Johann Sebastian Bach - 1685-1750 4. Richard Wagner - 1813-1883 5. Joseph Haydn - 1732-1809 6. Johannes Brahms - 1833-1897 7. Franz Schubert - 1797-1828 8. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - 1840-1893 9. George Frideric Handel - 1685-1759 10. Igor Stravinsky - 1882-1971 11. Robert Schumann - 1810-1856 12. Frederic Chopin - 1810-1849 13. Felix Mendelssohn - 1809-1847 14. Claude Debussy - 1862-1918 15. Franz Liszt - 1811-1886 16. Antonin Dvorak - 1841-1904 17. Giuseppe Verdi - 1813-1901 18. Gustav Mahler - 1860-1911 19. Hector Berlioz - 1803-1869 20. Antonio Vivaldi - 1678-1741 21. Richard Strauss - 1864-1949 22. Serge Prokofiev - 1891-1953 23. Dmitri Shostakovich - 1906-1975 24. Béla Bartók - 1881-1945 25. Anton Bruckner - 1824-1896 26. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - 1525-1594 27. Claudio Monteverdi - 1567-1643 28. Jean Sibelius - 1865-1957 29. Maurice Ravel - 1875-1937 30. Ralph Vaughan Williams - 1872-1958 31. Modest Mussorgsky - 1839-1881 32. Giacomo Puccini - 1858-1924 33. Henry Purcell - 1659-1695 34. Gioacchino Rossini - 1792-1868 35. Edward Elgar - 1857-1934 36. Sergei Rachmaninoff - 1873-1943 37. Camille Saint-Saëns - 1835-1921 38. Josquin Des Prez - c.1440-1521 39. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - 1844-1908 40. Carl Maria von Weber - 1786-1826 41. Jean-Philippe Rameau - 1683-1764 42. Jean-Baptiste Lully - 1632-1687 43. Gabriel Fauré - 1845-1924 44. Edvard Grieg - 1843-1907 45. Christoph Willibald Gluck - 1714-1787 46. Arnold Schoenberg - 1874-1951 47. Charles Ives - 1874-1954 48. Paul Hindemith - 1895-1963 49. Olivier Messiaen - 1908-1992 50. Aaron Copland - 1900-1990 51. Francois Couperin - 1668-1733 52. William Byrd - 1539-1623 53. Erik Satie - 1866-1925 54. Benjamin Britten - 1913-1976 55. Bedrick Smetana - 1824-1884 56. César Franck - 1822-1890 57. Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin - 1872-1915 58. Georges Bizet - 1838-1875 59. Domenico Scarlatti - 1685-1757 60. Georg Philipp Telemann - 1681-1767 61. Anton Webern - 1883-1945 62. Roland de Lassus - 1532-1594 63. George Gershwin - 1898-1937 64. Gaetano Donizetti - 1797-1848 65. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - 1714-1788 66. Archangelo Corelli - 1653-1713 67. Thomas Tallis - 1505-1585 68. Jules Massenet - 1842-1912 69. Johann Strauss II - 1825-1899 70. Leos Janácek - 1854-1928 71. Guillaume de Machaut - 1300-1377 72. Alban Berg - 1885-1935 73. Alexander Borodin - 1833-1887 74. Vincenzo Bellini - 1801-1835 75. Charles Gounod - 1818-1893 76. Francis Poulenc - 1899-1963 77. Giovanni Gabrieli - 1554-1612 78. Pérotin - 1160-1225 79. Heinrich Schütz - 1585-1672 80. John Cage - 1912-1992 81. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi - 1710-1736 82. John Dowland - 1563-1626 83. Gustav Holst - 1874-1934 84. Dietrich Buxtehude - 1637-1707 85. Ottorino Respighi - 1879-1936 86. Guillaume Dufay - 1400-1474 87. Hugo Wolf - 1860-1903 88. Carl Nielsen - 1865-1931 89. William Walton - 1902-1983 90. Darius Milhaud - 1892-1974 91. Orlando Gibbons - 1583-1625 92. Giacomo Meyerbeer - 1791-1864 93. Samuel Barber - 1910-1981 94. Tomás Luis de Victoria - 1549-1611 95. Léonin - 1135-1201 96. Manuel de Falla - 1876-1946 97. Hildegard von Bingen - 1098-1179 98. Mikhail Glinka - 1804-1857 99. Alexander Glazunov - 1865-1936 100. Don Carlo Gesualdo - 1566-1613
Then you will probably love one of my own favorite pieces: Metamorphosen ("metmorphoses") by Richard Strauss, who is regarded by some critics and scholars as the greatest composer of the first half of the 20th century. It is a very unusual composition, written for thirteen solo stringed instruments: there are no "sections," each musician has his own score to play. Strauss (unrelated to Johann Strauss, the composer of Viennese waltzes) was a German who lived through the Nazi era. He was no supporter of Hitler, but by accepting commissions to write music for government events he succeeded in keeping his Jewish daughter-in-law and her children out of the concentration camps. In 1945, when it was clear that Germany would lose the war, Strauss wrote MetamorphosenT, in effect a eulogy to the Germany he had loved, which he now considered dead. When the war was over, he wrote in his diary, "The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom." Metamorphosen, named after a poem by Goethe, has been called one of the masterpieces of string music. It is everything you like: somber, sad, and slow. It is also very quiet, ranging from merely soft to nearly inaudible, so it might not be the best music to listen to in traffic. It starts off with no fanfare, just a faint sound from one of the instruments which builds in a (very mild) crescendo to an ensemble effort. A better scholar than I could tell you how the various parts harken to certain eras in German history or motifs in German culture, but I never needed that explanation and perhaps you won't either. It ends the way it started, simply fading away... like Germany itself, with so many of its concert halls and museums destroyed in the war. We had the incredible luck to attend a live performance of this piece in Los Angeles, and it was one of the top ten concerts of my life. (I'm ranking it with CSNY's first tour, and Metallica and Guns'n'Roses co-headlining the Rose Bowl, both of which were much louder affairs.) At the end, when the last note attenuated into silence, the audience just sat there, mute and immobile, transfixed by the experience. It was at least a whole minute before anyone thought to start applauding, and then the applause was deafening. Even if you can't play this in your car, please play it somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if you love it too. It is one of my four favorite "classical" pieces. I recently heard Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherezade" played live, by a Russian orchestra at that. And long ago I heard the L.A. Chamber Orchestra play Ralph Vaughan Williams's "The Lark Ascending." Ironically, the one I haven't heard yet is Ravel's "Bolero," surely the most popular of the four. I normally recommend these four works to everyone, and you might like the other three too, but they are all quite cheerful and lively. In the USA, Strauss is most famous for his early (1896) composition "Thus Spoke Zarathushtra" (Also Sprach Zarathustra), the theme for the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."
@Fraggle. Thank you so much! I would listen to this right away but there's a little girl in the room watching some silly kids show at a ridiculous volume... I can't wait to hear it though. Sounds right up my alley! I'll let you know what I think.
I hope it was "Spongebob Squarepants," one of the best things on TV. You should watch it with her, it's healthy to get a dose of something uplifting once in a while. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Ha! Thats funny! It actually was Spongebob Squarepants. I watch it with her a lot, and I'm to the point where I can't stand the cursed show.
The Blue Danube makes me want to be in an aerial dogfight in WWI. Or watch Fokker Triplanes fly in formation. It just sounds so...Prussian and pompous. The Composer Basil Poledouris (nearly all of it) makes me want to get medieval (or prehistorical) on someone's ass. Greensleeves makes me want to put on tights and pretend I'm a Bard in the 13th century. Saint SaensDanse Macabre is in so many movies it's ridiculous.
Once every two weeks is enough Spongebob for any adult. But once every two weeks is really good. Johann Strauss would turn over in his grave. He was Austrian, not Prussian or German. He was seeing the Danube in Vienna. It also passes through three other capitals: Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. Ah yes, the love ballad to the--er um--"sportive ladies" who followed the troops through the fields of Europe on their way to the Crusades. (How else would a lady get "green sleeves"?)
Heh, maybe so, but T.S JS...once you put it out there we can do whatever we want with it, in our own minds.
