What classical pieces define your classical music tastes?

[PeterG]

Fill your boots, no limits on anything.

Here's just my first dozen.
1. Vaughan Williams - 6th Symphony
2. Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
3. Hamilton Harty - An Irish Symphony
4. Britten - Simple Symphony
5. Ravel - Introduction and Allegro
6. Beethoven - 5th Symphony
7. Tchaikovsky - 6th Symphony
8. Brahms - 1st Symphony
9. Delius - too many to pick from, but something
10. Dag Wiren - Serenade for Strings
11. Hugo Alfven - Midsummer Vigil
12. Addinsell - Warsaw Concerto

[rcarlberg]

Nice list. I grew up enamoured of the pastoral stuff, like Debussy, Delius, Ravel, Bax, Vaughn Williams, Ippolitov, Ketelby and so forth. My parents were big Copland fans and "Appalachian Spring" was an early favorite of mine.

When I discovered the piano reduction of it I fell in love with it all over again.

Same with Holst's "Planets" for piano.

Gershwin was another early infatuation, particularly his Latin American and Cuban music. That led into a whole exploration of composers from those regions, too many to name, mostly wonderful.

Later I got into Panufnik and Lutoslawski in a big way.

There is literally more truly excellent music than one lifetime can witness.

You didn't ask, but I'll add anyway, the only music that bores me is the classical formalism of Mozart. His stuff could be composed by computer -- and has been.

[Azol]

Okay, I'll play:

(in no particular order)
1) Bruckner - 9th Symphony
2) Mahler - 8th Symphony
3) Part - Magnificat
4) Rossini - Semiramide
5) Verdi - Don Carlo
6) Mussorgsky - Boris Godunov
7) Rautavaara - 7th Symphony
8) Meyerbeer - Les Huguenots
9) Puccini - Tosca
10) Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

So, mostly symphonic music in romantic vein plus opera.

[rcarlberg]

The wind quintets of Anton Reicha.

[hippypants]

rc: I enjoy Mozart, though YMMV. Depends on who's performing what.

I enjoy Bach well enough too.

I'd add Arvo Part & Debussy to the mix as well.

[progmatist]

1. Saint Saens: Organ Symphony
2. Groven: Symphony No. 1 "Towards The Mountains"
3. Franck: The Accursed Huntsman (Le Chasseur Maudit)
4. Respighi: Pines Of Rome
5. Brahms: Serenade No. 1
6. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad"
7. Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 "Little Russian"
8. Handel: Water Music Suite
9. Dvorak: "Dumky" Piano Trio
10. Saint Saens: Septet in E flat
11. Jon Lord: Sarabande
12: Bartok: Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta

[GuitarGeek]

Ligeti: Requiem
Penderecki: Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima, Partita, and Symphony No. 1
Stockhausen: Mikrophonie I and II, Sirius, Sternklang, Mantra, Hymnen, and Kurzwellen
Bartok: Piano Concertos and string quartet
Mahler: Symphonies 1, 4, 5, 6, and 9 (well, I like all of them, but those are my favorites)
Prokofiev: Symphonies 1 and 4 (likewise, I like of them, but those are my favorites)
Bach: Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suites, and the organ pieces
Beethoven: the piano concertos and the symphonies (particularly 3 and 9)
Brahms: the piano concertos and symphonies
Stravinksy: The Rite Of Spring and The Firebird
Ravel: Bolero and Daphnis et Chloé
Grieg: the Peer Gynt suites
Holst: The Planets
Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition (preferring the Ravel orchestration over the original solo piano arrangement)

[walt]

Guillaume Du Fay-Motets-Chansons-Hymns
Erik Satie-Messe des Pauvres
Heitor Villa-Lobos-Sexteto Mistico
Charles Tomlinson Griffes-Piano Sonata
Conlon Nancarrow-Studies For Player Piano
J.S.Bach-Musical Offering
Monteverdi-Vespro Della Beata Vergine
Olivier Messiaen-Early organ cycles-L'Ascension,La Nativite du Seigneur,Les Corps Glorieux
Stockhausen-Spiral I and II,Pole,Japan, Wach
William Byrd-Consort Music
Alvin Curran-Songs And Views from The Magnetic Garden

[PeterG]

You didn't ask, but I'll add anyway, the only music that bores me is the classical formalism of Mozart. His stuff could be composed by computer -- and has been.

I agree. And same here, most baroque stuff and early classical bores me stupid, Mozart, Händl, Bach, Pachelbel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Scarlatti etc.
Joseph Haydn is the only one I can stomach, something a bit odd or different about his stuff.

[progmatist]

I like the classical and baroque styles if they receive a modern treatment from composers like Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Respighi, Foulds, Leigh, and Warlock.

There is a circumstance in which I like baroque music: any piece with brass. I just love the majesty of baroque brass.

[WytchCrypt]

Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition, Night on Bald Mountain
Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire, Amos and Aron
Bach - Nearly everything, especially The Well Tempered Clavier, Toccata & Fugue in Dm, French Suites for Harpsichord, and any Fugue
Mozart - Don Giovanni
Erik Satie - Gymnopedies, Gnossiemes
Holst - The Planets
Haydn - Most things

[simon moon]

A much more realistic task compared to the "What five albums define your musical taste and why?" thread.

Here goes -

Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps
Mussorgsky/Ravel - Pictures at an Exhibition
Samuel Barber - Piano Concert0 op 38
Elliot Carter - 1st and 2nd String Quartets
Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Bartok - Concerto for Orchestra
Ernst Krenek - Statisch Und Exstatisch
Penderecki - Violin Concerto No. 2 'Metamorphosen'
Einojuhani Rautavaara - Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light
Magnus Lindberg - Sculpture
Anton Webern - Variations for orchestra (1940)
Joseph Scwantner - ...And the Mountains Rising Nowhere
Joan Tower - Silver Ladders

There's some holes in the list, but it is fine for now.

Could have more chamber pieces, as well as more atonal.

[mogrooves]

Carlo Gesualdo - Madrigals, Book VI
Leo Ornstein - Danse Sauvage
Ives - Central Park In the Dark
Satie - Desiccated Embryos
Schoenberg - Chamber Symphony #1
Webern - Five Pieces For Orchestra
Cage - Fontana Mix
Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel
LaMonte Young - For Brass
Riley/Glass/Reich - the usual stuff
John Luther Adams - In the White Silence
Louis Andriessen - De Tijd
"Bang On A Can": Gordon/Wolfe/Lang, etc.....

[Adrian]

Beethoven's 9th and 5th
Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Orff - Carmina Burana
Ravel - Bolero
Bartok - all the string quartets ... I could never pick a favorite
Stravinsky - Firebird, Rite of Spring
Holst - The Planets
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Gorecki - 3rd Symphony
Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathusrta
Britten: War Requiem

Kind of a predictable list, I suppose, but there you have it.

[Reid]

Berg-Three Orchestral Pieces
Honegger-Symphony No. 4
William Schuman-Symphony No. 7
Penderecki-Polymorphia
Ligeti-Hamburg Concerto; Double Concerto; Violin Concerto; Sonata for solo cello
Lutoslawski-Symphony No. 4
Ravel-Le Tombeau de Couperin
Prokofiev-Piano Concerto No. 2
Magnus Lindberg-Clarinet Concerto
Debussy-Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun; piano music
Varese-Deserts
Bartok-The 3 Piano Concertos, Concerto for two pianos & percussion
Hans Werner Henze-Symphony No. 10
Bernstein-Symphony No. 2
Nielsen-Symphony No. 3
Schoenberg-Book Of Hanging Gardens; Moses und Aron
Hindemith-Mathis der Maler; Sonata for harp
Mahler-Adagio (10th symphony)
Schnittke-Symphony No. 1 & 8; String Quartet No. 3; Concerto Grosso No. 1

[FrippWire]

I'm big on Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg, Varese, Webern, Ruggles, Ives, Part, Schoenberg, Carter, Cage, Ligeti, Boulez, Penderecki, Reich and Glass to name a few.

[PeterG]

A much more realistic task compared to the "What five albums define your musical taste and why?" thread.

EXACTLY the reason I created the thread, to give people a breather and room to expand. That 5 album thread was doing my head in!

[PeterG]

Riley/Glass/Reich - the usual stuff
"Bang On A Can": Gordon/Wolfe/Lang, etc.....

LOL! Excellent

[Trane]

Sometimes, I listen to some Haydn, Dvorak (New World Symphony is probably my fave classical classical ) Beethoven, Schubert, Vivaldi , Debussy, Orff (well mostly Carmina), Salieri (Wolfgang's foe in Amadeus), Twisted Sister, Riossini's opera overture (but not the operas themselves) and maybe a few more

In the Russian dept: Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and especially Rachmaninov


I'll be back for modern classical if I feel like it...

[Dodie]

most baroque stuff and early classical bores me stupid, Mozart, Händl, Bach, Pachelbel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Scarlatti etc.
Joseph Haydn is the only one I can stomach, something a bit odd or different about his stuff.

OK, you clearly deplore the music that I cherish most (more than prog, in fact). Taste and opinions will vary, of course. But to my early-music-eyes this just appears wrong-headed and curable should you hear the best performances of the best stuff. Also, I suspect that you're not a classically-trained singer, which makes a massive difference on how you view a lot of the best baroque music. Moreover, I think most musicologists who specialise in eighteenth-century music (including myself, as it happens) would convincingly argue that Mozart actually has more oddness, contrapuntal complexity, harmonic unpredictability and emotional depths than Haydn. I love them both, as it happens, but my perspective is that Haydn tends to be convivial, affectionate and cleverly playful, whereas Mozart tends to be more subtle, with clear signposts of melancholy in his woodwind writing, and much more astute dramatic characterization (even in his instrumental and orchestral music).

As for Mozart being formulaic and like a computer, that's just silly bollocks. I'd like to see a computer compose Idomeneo, Cosi fan tutte, the C Minor Mass, the slow movement from Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, the string quartets written in tribute to Haydn, the Flute and Harp Concerto, the finale of the Jupiter symphony (No. 41), etc.
:-)

It's intriguing to see how few posters so far mention any music before Beethoven. So just to provide some pedantic contrariness:

Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi trinitas
Carver: O bone Jesu
Lassus: masses, Lagrime di San Pietro
Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah; Spem in alium
Byrd: motets; masses; consort music
Tomas Luis de Victoria: Requiem; motets
Dowland: Lachrimae; numerous melancholic lute songs
Giovanni Gabrieli: polychoral motets; canzonas
Monteverdi: madrigals (especially books 4-6); L'Orfeo; Vespro della Beata Virgine; Selva morale e spirituale
Carissimi: Jepthe
Schutz: Psalms of David; Symphoniae Sacrae; Die sieben worte; O bone Jesu
Purcell: anthems; court odes; Fantazias for viols; The Fairy Queen; King Arthur
Charpentier: Le Reniement de St Pierre
Vivaldi: Latin psalms; string concertos
Telemann: Paris Quartets; Musique de Table (he may not be as immediately impressive as his close contemporaries Bach and Handel - but they all liked his music and also cultivated correspondences with him, and which tells us something useful, I think)
Rameau: especially orchestral suites/ballets from his operas, e.g. Les Boreades, Zoroastre, Les Indes galantes.
Bach: cantatas (particularly early Weimar-period ones); passions; masses; motets; double violin concerto; Brandenburg concertos, etc.
Handel: Latin church music; Roman cantatas; operas, English odes, concerti grossi, dramatic oratorios, etc.
Domenico Scarlatti: Stabat mater (I also really like his father Alessandro's music, which is very under-rated)
Pergolesi: Stabat mater
Gluck: so-called "reform" operas, eg. Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste, Armide
John Christian Bach: chamber music; concertos; operas
Haydn: The Creation; London symphonies; six late masses; trumpet concerto; string quartets, etc.
Mozart: most of the operas written after c.1774; symphonies and concertos written after c.1778; church music

I suppose you meant to say Handel rather than "Händl" (which isn't the correct German spelling of his name, and only nationalistically-inclined Germans insist on using "Händel". He was a naturalized British citizen, and signed his own name Handel, just as he signed it as the Italian "Hendel" when in Rome, etc. Nobody calls Lully "Giovanni Battista Lulli", although I suppose plenty of people use "Orlando di Lasso" rather than Roland de Lassus...).

I suppose the common denominator of a lot of the music I've listed above is that it involves voices, sometimes soloists with instruments, and sometimes just smallish choirs. This may have something to do with the fact I'm a singer, and will also have something to do with my academic interests. But I genuinely love and intellectually cherish a lot of the music written before Beethoven started having problems with his hearing.

Mind you, I also love Schumann, Mahler, Ravel, Vaughan Williams, Holst, some Britten, ...

[PeterG]

Taste and opinions will vary.

Exactly, try not to forget that.

[bob_32_116]

I started with classical, and only later got into pop/rock. That possibly helps to explain why I liked progressive rock when it arrived.
Also, I learned piano, so that probably influenced the kind of classical I liked most.

Debussy was always my favourite. Of the old masters, I think I enjoy J.S.Bach more for having played the pieces on piano than I otherwise would - it is very satisfying to play because all the fingers get workout. Not that I don't enjoy listening to Bach. Chopin was my other love. I was never that fond of Mozart for some reason - my father was the same, he loved a lot of classical, but he thought Mozart was "a little bit too smart".

[rcarlberg]

There is a circumstance in which I like baroque music: any piece with brass. I just love the majesty of baroque brass.

Yeah but most, if not all, modern recordings of Renaissance brass music are recorded using contemporary chromatic brass instruments.

Period brass instruments were what's called "natural horns", without keys. The players had to change pitch strictly by control of the overtones produced by their lips and breath.

MUCH MUCH harder to play. That's why almost nobody does it.

[presdoug]

The 9 numbered and two un-numbered symphonies of Anton Bruckner. I have every Historical recording of his symphonies from 1924 to 1948, and they are my musical life blood.

Also the Tone Poems of Richard Strauss. Again, historical recordings- by the composer, Willem Mengelberg, Clemens Kraus, etc.

Hector Berlioz-his symphonies and overtures, again, historical recordings with Sir Thomas Beecham, Pierre Monteux, etc.

[progmatist]

MUCH MUCH harder to play. That's why almost nobody does it.

Which is why I got such a kick out of this....