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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1953 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 30, 2025

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What're your favorite pieces of "classical" music? A few recent discoveries:

The classical era was very short, typically starting with the death of Bach (1750) and ending with Beethoven's 3rd (1803). Lipinski would be a romantic composer, almost certainly, while Ornstein was more avant-garde. Listen to the piece you linked, there's little classical about it. This isn't just pedantry: if I asked you to play classical music, I'd accept romantic, even impressionistic, but this Allegro Barbaro, or the more famous one would barely count. I'd be upset if you played Schoenberg or Berg, because they aren't classical at all. God forbid you play Penderecki, I'd revoke your aux cable privileges.

Similarly, I'd be surprised if you played Zefiro Torna, because Monteverdi was too early to be Classical, or even Baroque.

Classical, or rather neoclassical, would be Stravinsky's Sonata for Two Pianos (I like the 2nd movement best), but not his Rite of Spring (linked elsewhere).

I am quite partial to Beethoven 5, but my favorite part isn't in the fantastic first movement, it's the transition from movement 3 to 4, and the recap of the same within m.4. There's nothing quite like landing on that C Major arpeggio in the full, glorious triumph or the brass section.

I'll suggest two pieces I haven't yet seen, from one composer you've heard of in the neoclassical style, and one you probably haven't that's either neoromantic or minimalist, depending on your tastes.

Stravinsky - Pulcinella Suite

Vladimir Martynov - Come In!

Seriously, check out Martynov's work. I can't recommend it enough.

One more minimalmist piece from the 21st century, Ludovico Einaudi - Fly. Another from Eric Whitacre, Cloudburst.

Most of this, but not all, is from my 20th century music history notes. I can transcribe the listening list later if there's interest.

Like it or not, the term "classical" has become the term used to describe all music that emanates from the European art tradition, from Gregorian Chant to John Cage and beyond. Several other terms to describe this overarching meta-genre have been proposed, but none have really stuck. Art Music and Legitimate Music come with the implication that other kinds of music are somehow of lesser value, and can be confusing to the general public. Professor Feinberg from the Great Courses Series uses the term European Concert Music, which is probably the best term from a purely semantic point of view (it comes from Europe, was intended to be performed publicly rather than privately [as with folk music], and doesn't contain any implied superiority), but it's a mouthful and hasn't been widely adopted. Furthermore, the term "classical" has also been widely used to describe music that comes out of similar traditions from other parts of the world, e.g. Indian Classical Music or Chinese Classical Music.

not classical

Indeed, it is "classical". Those are load bearing quotation marks!

listening list

Gladly!

I think you’re confusing the Classical Period of classical music with classical music as an overarching genre. The latter encompasses everything from Gregorian chant to John Williams.

Bach - pretty much everything, but the catalog #1052 keyboard concerto stands above the rest. Glenn Gould is a wonderful choice here.

Mozart - Sonata #8, symphonies #25 and 40. Probably anything else he composed in minor key is brilliant too.

Beethoven’s violin and third piano concertos. Appassionata. Symphonies 5 and 7.

Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.

Chopin’s first piano concerto.

Grieg’s piano concerto.

Dvorak’s cello concerto.

Sibelius’s violin concerto. You want Oistrakh’s recording.

Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto.

Shostakovich’s 5th symphony.

Sviridov’s Snowstorm suite.

Chopin, Prelude 4, Op. 28 in E Minor

Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2 in E Minor

St. Saens, Aquarium from Carnvial of the Animals

DeBussy, Arabesque 1: Andantino con moto

and Clair de Lune ..sometimes depends on whose version.

Fauré In Paradisum

And Ravel, Le jardin féérique from Ma mère L'oye Yes it is a fey title.

I'd put Wagner in there as well. particularly Tristan und Isolde.

For Wagner, I'll suggest Siegfried Idyll in addition to the very good Tristan.

At the moment, I like:

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

Tchaikovsky's ballets

Anything by Chopin

Holst's The Planets, as others have mentioned

Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin

And for variety's sake here are some pieces that are "classical" to non-Western instruments:

Tsugaru Jongara Bushi for the shamisen

Liu Tianhua's erhu compositions

General's Command for the yangqin

Gotta toss in Shostakovich's 11th and basically all of Chopin's nocturnes (but yet also his prelude in E minor).

I always liked Bolero.

And this is the perfect time of year to remind ourselves that spring isn't free. Spring requires blood.

You get dinged for not being hip if you say Beethoven's No. 9 Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, etc. but those are all truly great.

Shoutout to @Hoffmeister25 for mention of Dvorak's No. 9 Symphony and all of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, and @FtttG for Holst's Planets Suite.

Some personal favorites:

And if we can sneak in choral works, an excerpt from the last piece, above: the Gesualdo Six's arrangement of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded.

if we can sneak in choral works

...but then, we could go pre-"classical" and just head straight to the source: When David Heard. Even recorded by the same group.

Touché.

Beethoven 5, 6, and 9 are the best obviously. Everybody knows them because they really are that good.

This is Beethoven 3 erasure.

“I’ve been working on a symphony to celebrate Napoleon doing away with monarchy and the influence of Rome!”

“Have you heard? He’s proclaimed himself emperor and cut a deal with the Pope.”

“As I was saying, I’ve been working on a symphony about heroism, just in general.”

A perfectly fine symphony that will adorn the Hall-of-Very-Good for eternity to come.

It's his second best symphony, and it quite literally inaugurated the romantic era.

There are not many composers who have ever written a piece better than Beethoven 3.

Symphony 1 is in the hall of very good. #3 is epoch-defining.

3 is not even better than 7, which only has one really good movement.

There are not many composers who have ever written a piece better than Beethoven 3.

Not many worth talking about. Any composer worth remembering 100 years later has at least one piece better than Beethoven 3.

it quite literally inaugurated the romantic era

Okay, I’ll bite. I don’t like the C# in measure 7. It’s not set-up, and it doesn’t go anywhere. I know people always talk about how it “changed classical music forever”, but really that just means that everyone else used it as a jumping-off point for ideas that work much better.

I mean, it goes to D, but it's also a diminished chord that doesn't resolve hardly at all, and that's the point of it. You don't have to resolve everything, you don't have to be like Mozart forever. Someone had to be first, and it happened to be Beethoven, who was probably the greatest ever, and cast a shadow as long as anyone.

I also quite like the third movement.

I will always have a particular weakness for Claude Debussy's Arabesques.

Seconded - I used to play piano, and Arabesque no. 1 was one of my favourite pieces to perform. It's almost unbelievably beautiful.

I can barely listen to recordings of it though, because so many interpretations of the piece play it way too fast.

I like piano music. If a professional is playing it, then Scriabin, such as Fantasie Opus 28. If I'm playing it for myself, then it needs to be within my technical ability, for example Clementi, Opus 36 no 3 which has an impressively high ratio of happiness&fun to technical difficulty.

When I was taking piano lessons, my teacher showed me a video of a Japanese 4 year old playing that Clementi Sonatina and dared me to do better. At the time I was infuriated to be shown up by a toddler, but it's probably the reason I still remember and enjoy the piece.

Beethoven - König Stephan

Ibert - Ouverture de fête

Ifukube - Japanese Rhapsody

Moroi - Sinfonietta in B flat

Nobutoki - Kaidou Tousei

Bedřich Smetana - The Moldau

Edvard Grieg - In The Hall Of The Mountain King

Sergei Prokofiev - Symphony No. 1 “Classical”

Maurice Ravel - Mother Goose Suite

Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 “From The New World”

Ottorino Respighi - Pines Of Rome

  • Gabriel Fauré - Pavane in F#m
  • Gustav Holst - The Planets (especially "Jupiter". My brother once told me that the "vaporwave" genre is intended to induce the sensation of nostalgia for a time one never personally experienced. By the same token, "Jupiter" makes me feel patriotic for a planet I'll never set foot on.)
  • Edward Elgar - "Nimrod" from the Enigma Variations

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