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| 4 | %% NOTE TO EDITORS: The entries on this page are organised alphabetically by composer. Please put any new entries in the appropriate place in the list. It makes them easier to find, and it reduces the chance of duplicate entries being added. |
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| 8 | %% SECOND NOTE TO EDITORS: Orchestral works composed for the soundtracks of films, television series, and video games go on the pages for those media, not here. This also applies to works originally composed for concert performance and later arranged for films, television series, or video games. |
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| 12 | There's a reason these pieces are called "classics". |
| 13 | ---- |
| 14 | !!Composers with their own pages: |
| 15 | [[index]] |
| 16 | * AwesomeMusic/JohannSebastianBach |
| 17 | * AwesomeMusic/BelaBartok |
| 18 | * AwesomeMusic/LudwigVanBeethoven |
| 19 | * AwesomeMusic/JohannesBrahms |
| 20 | * AwesomeMusic/AntonBruckner |
| 21 | * AwesomeMusic/FryderykChopin |
| 22 | * AwesomeMusic/ClaudeDebussy |
| 23 | * AwesomeMusic/AntoninDvorak |
| 24 | * AwesomeMusic/EdwardElgar |
| 25 | * AwesomeMusic/GeorgeFredericHandel |
| 26 | * AwesomeMusic/JosephHaydn |
| 27 | * AwesomeMusic/FranzLiszt |
| 28 | * AwesomeMusic/GustavMahler |
| 29 | * AwesomeMusic/FelixMendelssohn |
| 30 | * AwesomeMusic/WolfgangAmadeusMozart |
| 31 | * AwesomeMusic/SergeiProkofiev |
| 32 | * AwesomeMusic/GiacomoPuccini |
| 33 | * AwesomeMusic/SergeiRachmaninoff |
| 34 | * AwesomeMusic/MauriceRavel |
| 35 | * AwesomeMusic/GioachinoRossini |
| 36 | * AwesomeMusic/FranzSchubert |
| 37 | * AwesomeMusic/RobertSchumann |
| 38 | * AwesomeMusic/DmitriShostakovich |
| 39 | * AwesomeMusic/PyotrIlyichTchaikovsky |
| 40 | * AwesomeMusic/GiuseppeVerdi |
| 41 | * AwesomeMusic/LouisVierne |
| 42 | * AwesomeMusic/AntonioVivaldi |
| 43 | [[/index]] |
| 44 | ---- |
| 45 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder:Composers A-F]] |
| 48 | * Isaac Albéniz is one of Spain's most beloved classical composers, and his approach to technique and harmony deeply influenced his contemporaries and friends Debussy and Ravel. His masterpiece is ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R13GcRQSPxU Iberia]]'', a suite of twelve pieces (in four books of three) for solo piano that represents the culmination of his lifelong fascination with Spanish, and more precisely Andalusian, folk music. Though he did not compose directly for the guitar, he had a keen sense of the instrument's role in Spanish music, and many of his works, including several movements from ''Iberia'', have been arranged for guitar. |
| 49 | * Tomaso Albinoni has the misfortune of being most famous for "Albinoni's Adagio in G minor", a piece he didn't actually compose; it was the work of 20th century composer Remo Giazotto.[[note]] Giazotto claimed to have based his composition on a fragment by Albinoni, but whether he was telling the truth remains unconfirmed.[[/note]] However, the music Albinoni ''did'' compose is well worth a listen, as it includes many fine examples of the extroverted Italian Baroque tradition; he was a particularly gifted melodist, and counted Music/JohannSebastianBach among his fans. He was among the first composers to popularise the oboe as a solo instrument, and one of his most popular works is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjgndGuy77o Concerto à cinque in D minor]] for oboe and strings, with three movements - a heartfelt Adagio flanked by two strident Allegros - full of lyrical, songlike writing for the soloist. |
| 50 | * Charles-Valentin Alkan, a French contemporary of Chopin and Liszt, is renowned for composing some of the most technically taxing pieces ever written for piano. Awesomeness in his works is almost inevitable. (For that matter, it's an awesome moment for any pianist who can get through the average Alkan composition.) |
| 51 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxX60TmUXMs Grande sonate "Les quatre ages"]] is a four-movement sonata in which each movement is half as fast as the last to depict the advancing years of the work's "protagonist". Although the opening scherzo, "20 Years", sets the bar of awesome high enough as it charges along at breakneck speed with liberal use of hemiolas until a heroic shift to the major mode for the final measures, the gigantic second movement, "30 Years: Quasi-Faust", clears that bar and then some to become the work's high point (the high point within the high point is a fugal section three-quarters of the way through which eventually overlays ''six'' countersubjects onto the subject). Even the serene third movement, "40 Years: A Happy Family", and the gloomy finale, "50 Years: Prometheus Bound", which is marked "Extremely Slow" and builds to a deliberate anti-climax in its final measure, are awesome in their way. |
| 52 | ** Though overshadowed by the later minor key études, the Twelve Études in the Major Keys (which place more emphasis on developing technique than their minor key counterparts) still have plenty of awesome moments for performer and listener. |
| 53 | *** The sunny [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaVGwI_3F3w No.1 in A major]] gets things off to a bright start, all big rolled chords, rising scalar figures, and clever counterpoint. |
| 54 | *** The playful [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JnHeedYw3o No.4 in C major]] casts rapid oscillations in the right hand against a staccato melody in the left hand; the build-up to the E-flat major statement of the second theme just after the halfway point is a highlight. |
| 55 | *** The most popular of the major key études is the boisterous, quadruple octave-led [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA0XVVNJoFM No.5 in F major, "Allegro barbaro".]] Particularly awesome moments include the second episode, where the right hand must stay in the background while leaping back and forth across octaves, and the third episode based around rising and falling scalar figures leading to a final statement of the main theme in the left hand under a frenzied whirlwind in the right hand. |
| 56 | *** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGmeOYaExno No.7 in E-flat major, "L'incendie au village voisin"]][[note]] "Fire at the neighbouring village".[[/note]] is the most explicit piece of programme music in the set, moving from a pastoral introduction to a first chaotic, then heroic depiction of the fire and the efforts to extinguish it, and finally a triumphant hymn of thanksgiving. |
| 57 | *** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bsL_pAUEwk No.9 in C-sharp major, "Contrapunctus",]] is, as the title suggests, an exercise in counterpoint; after a central canon revolving around double thirds, the subtlety with which the main theme of the outer sections returns in the background is especially effective. |
| 58 | *** And the concluding [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4sZMcWtpK4 No.12 in E major, "Technique des octaves",]] is a real ''tour de force'' for the soloist in the highly unusual time signature of [[UncommonTime 10/16]]; the sinister A minor centre section with its interlaced chords across both hands is just as awesome as the double octaves in the outer sections. |
| 59 | ** The Twelve Études in the Minor Keys are all awesome in their way, but some of the pieces stand out as particularly so. |
| 60 | *** No.1 in A minor, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nn8bMDnDDg "Comme le vent"]], is a four-minute (if played at Alkan's prescribed tempo of 160 bars per minute) almost literal whirlwind of brilliance. |
| 61 | *** Nos.4-7 collectively form the Symphony for solo piano, which comprises [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Z5P1gAjyE a sinister sonata allegro in C minor,]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z3DRIargH0 a sombre funeral march in F minor,]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvxU-ur06V8 an angry minuet in B-flat minor,]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6qh96b2D6A an unstoppably furious finale in E-flat minor]] that has often been described as "a ride through (or into) Hell". While attempts have been made to orchestrate these pieces, they paradoxically lose something in translation; part of the genius of Alkan's piano works is his ability to get orchestral textures out of the instrument. |
| 62 | *** Nos.8-10 form the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQz5tWzVQiA Concerto for solo piano]] (another piece that actually loses something when attempts are made to transcribe it for piano and orchestra). The epic-length opening movement (nearly half an hour in most performances and recordings) in G-sharp minor requires a soloist of titanic endurance and skill to get through, and that's just for starters; there's still the haunting slow movement in C-sharp minor and relentless polonaise-like finale in F-sharp minor waiting for performer and listener alike, but the triumphant major key coda at the very end makes it all worth it. Truly outstanding just to hear, even more so to see performed live. |
| 63 | *** No.12 in E minor, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6OQpkOUijE "Le festin d'Ésope"]] ("Aesop's Feast"), is the most popular of the twelve, a massive theme and variations in which many of the variations are intended to evoke images of the sort of animals used in Aesop's fables. An extraordinary piece if the pianist is up to the challenge. |
| 64 | *** And while not as popular as the others, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31cFnuyr5N0 No.2 in D minor ("En rhythme molossique")]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEotCEwED8A No.3 in G minor ("Scherzo diabolico")]], and the massive [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e59QGU6HYwY No.11 in B minor ("Overture")]] all have plenty of awesome moments just the same, such as the coda of No.2 that seems to be trying to muster up the energy to go out in a blaze of major key glory only for the flames (and the major mode) to die out at the last second, the frenzied runs up and down the keyboard in the outer sections of No.3, and the ever shifting emotional landscape of No.11. |
| 65 | ** Alkan wrote five sets of six pieces entitled ''Recueil de chants'';[[note]] They were intended as a tribute to the Songs without Words of his contemporary Music/FelixMendelssohn, and all five have the same structure of Mendelssohn's first set of Songs without Words (published as Op.19b): pieces in E major, A minor, two in A major, F-sharp minor, and a concluding Barcarolle in G minor.[[/note]] the most famous is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXHBc5TZSV8 concluding barcarolle]] from the third set, Op.65, but all of them are well worth a listen. |
| 66 | * Gregorio Allegri's ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Y_ztEW1NE Miserere]]''. When Pope Urban VIII heard it, he immediately declared that it could only be performed in the Art/SistineChapel, and no sheet music ever sold, on pain of excommunication, so that people would pay to hear it. They did. That's right, this song was a ''tourist attraction''.[[note]] At least, that is, until about 150 years later when a teenaged miscreant named Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart listened to it once and then transcribed it, almost perfectly, from memory (he went to hear it a second time two days later and made some minor corrections to his transcription afterward), and sold it to a passing Englishman, Charles Burney - who, being Anglican, couldn't care less about the Pope excommunicating him, since from the Catholic point of view he was already excommunicated anyway. (Does that make bootlegging concert recordings OlderThanSteam?) In any case, when Pope Clement XIV got wind of what Mozart had done, [[OhCrap he summoned him to Rome]]... and proceeded to shower him with praise for this act of sheer musical genius, inducting him into the Chivalric Order of the Golden Spur as a reward.[[/note]] |
| 67 | * "Wayfarin' Stranger", an Appalachian folk hymn. When the piano kicks into high gear... just, WOW. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5TQgyDzhNM Great choir, too.]] |
| 68 | * It only just about counts as Classical, Emilie Autumn's instrumental song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2UE0gfEaHI Dominant]] is beyond epic. If the world were ending, this would be the perfect soundtrack. Additionally "Laced" is a great album with Revelry, Tambourin and La Folia particularly beautiful. |
| 69 | * Russian composer Mily Balakirev was the "leader" of a quintet of composers known as the "Big Five" or "Mighty Handful", whose work celebrated musical traditions, especially folk dances, from all over Russia. Although he is one of the least well-known members of the group today,[[note]] The fame of Alexander Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov has proven more enduring; César Cui is more remembered as a music critic who was especially hostile to such composers as Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.[[/note]] his works are still worth a listen, none more so than [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zizAJjwyCWs "Islamey",]] an "Oriental Fantasy" inspired by the traditional folk music of the Caucasus region. The exotic nature of its melodic and rhythmic language, derived from the Lezginka (a traditional dance of the Lezgin people in Kabardino-Balkaria) in the outer sections and a Tatar love song in the D major interlude, is matched only by the piece's brutal technical difficulty, which Balakirev admitted was beyond even his capabilities![[note]] The virtuosi of his day, such as Franz Liszt and Nikolai Rubinstein, were equal to the task, though; it has since become a staple of the repertoire of pianists known for incredible technical prowess.[[/note]] Music/MauriceRavel was known to be a fan of the piece; he once told a friend that his goal in writing his own ferociously difficult suite ''Gaspard de la Nuit'' (see corresponding entry) was to compose something more technically demanding than "Islamey". |
| 70 | * Samuel Barber's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRMz8fKkG2g Adagio for Strings]]" may not fit the colloquial definition of "awesome", but it is one of the most emotionally powerful works ever written, whether in its original version as the slow movement of his String Quartet in B minor, its string orchestra arrangement, or especially the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkObnNQCMtM "Agnus Dei" choral arrangement]]. When "awesome" is taken to mean "inspiring awe", it fits the Adagio for Strings perfectly. |
| 71 | * The music of the Second Viennese School may be very much an acquired taste (and one many listeners openly resist acquiring), as it takes a sledgehammer to traditional [[{{Scales}} tonality]] and concepts of melody and harmony, but Alban Berg's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqSSHwFEn_8 Violin Concerto]] still stands as one of the most beloved 20th century examples of the form, straddling traditional diatonicism and the twelve-tone technique pioneered by Berg's mentor, Arnold Schoenberg. Inscribed "To the memory of an angel",[[note]] The "angel" in question was Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Schindler (whose first husband was Music/GustavMahler) and Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, whose death from polio at the age of 18 sparked Berg into stopping work on his opera ''Lulu'' to compose the concerto. Sadly, Berg only outlived Manon by eight months; he did not live to see the concerto performed - or to finish ''Lulu''.[[/note]] its first movement opens with a slow sonata allegro and leads into a light-hearted scherzo with two trios. The second movement opens with a pseudo-cadenza of stunning virtuosity that calls on the soloist to perform such feats as left-handed pizzicato and two- or even three-voice counterpoint, but things calm down for the work's emotional heart: a chorale on the hymn "Es ist genug",[[note]] The first four notes of the opening phrase of "Es ist genug" are, not coincidentally, the top four notes of the "tone row" Berg uses as the basis for the concerto's melodic writing.[[/note]] with the clarinets at one point playing the harmonies used by [[Music/JohannSebastianBach Bach]] in his setting of the hymn in the {{cantata}} ''O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort'' (BWV 60). The hymn tune is passed to various sections of the orchestra, with the first violins eventually playing in unison with the soloist until they fall silent one by one to lead into a reverent coda, the music ultimately settling into the rising and falling perfect fifths with which it began. |
| 72 | * Awesome selection from 20th century classical music is Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, particularly the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQKJ0ACJuCY 3rd movement]], which consists of a movement from a Mahler symphony with all manner of musical quotations layered, as well as more literal quotations from the works of Claude Levi-Strauss and others. A particularly mind-blowing moment is near the end, when half the vocalists shout "Stop!," while the other half shout "Keep going!" |
| 73 | * Although the name "the three Bs" is generally taken to mean Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, when the phrase was originally coined in the mid-19th century (when Brahms was still a teenager) by the German composer and music critic Peter Cornelius, the "third B" was the French composer Music/HectorBerlioz, one of the leading early Romantic composers and a master of awesome music. |
| 74 | ** Like many other composers on this page, he wrote a particularly awesome version of the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mek_f_5vno "Dies irae"]] for his Requiem Mass. |
| 75 | ** By far Berlioz' most famous piece is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCotV86izh0 Symphonie Fantastique]], one of the defining pieces of the Romantic era. It is one of the first major pieces of orchestral programme music to make significant use of a {{Leitmotif}} (or ''idée fixe'' to use the French term) in all five movements, and each movement is filled with other awesome moments, especially the last two, the weighty "March to the Scaffold" and the savage "Witches' Sabbath" (which uses the "Dies irae" theme prominently). |
| 76 | * Even its fans would acknowledge that 20th century classical music is an acquired taste, but that doesn't mean the work of pianist, conductor, teacher, and - most importantly for this page - composer Music/LeonardBernstein isn't awesome incarnate. |
| 77 | ** The spellbinding [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srb2EyvTSGw Symphonic Dances]] from ''Theatre/WestSideStory'' are an arrangement for concert performance of nine passages from Lenny's score for said 1957 musical. The range of emotions packed into its twenty minutes includes the simmering tension of the Prologue, the optimism of "Somewhere", the playful Scherzo that builds into the sheer exhilaration of the Mambo (and yes, the orchestra really are instructed to shout "MAMBO!"), the passion of the Cha-Cha and Tony and Maria's meeting scene, the juxtaposition of the relaxed "Cool" fugue and frenzied Rumble... all building to a sombre yet hopeful finale that recalls "Somewhere" and ends by contrasting a C-flat major chord in the upper instruments against a unison F in the lower instruments, as though the peace the gangs have made is fragile and temporary. |
| 78 | ** In 1965, Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, commissioned a choral work from Bernstein for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals Festival. The result was a piece made from purest awesome: the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1axCTkIfP9Q Chichester Psalms]]'', a setting of six excerpts from the Literature/BookOfPsalms in the original Hebrew.[[note]] Translated here based on the King James Version.[[/note]] After a short introduction from Psalm 108, Verse 2 ("Awake, psaltery and harp") that builds in energy, we dive into the giddy, joyful first movement, a setting of Psalm 100 ("Make a joyful noise unto the L[-ORD-]") in 7/4 time that sounds like 4/4 time with the last half beat clipped, as though the music is so eager to get going that it keeps skipping ahead. The second movement juxtaposes a serene, solo alto-led rendition of Psalm 23 ("The L[-ORD-] is my shepherd") with a rumbling, bass voice-dominated "interruption" on Psalm 2 ("Why do the heathen rage"); while the former seems to win out, the "interruption" keeps peeking through the final measures as a sign of internal conflict. The third movement goes from a bustling introduction to a gentle setting of Psalm 131 ("L[-ORD-], my heart is not haughty"), its 10/4 metre evoking images of swaying palms. A coda on Psalm 133, Verse 1 ("Behold how good and how pleasant it is") brings back the main themes from the introduction to tie everything together in time for a reverent "Amen". |
| 79 | * Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber was widely regarded as the greatest violin virtuoso of the middle Baroque era, experimenting with techniques that are now routine but were at the time revolutionary, such as moving the fingers as high as the sixth or seventh position, playing two-voice counterpoint using multiple stops, and ''scordatura'', the practice of tuning the strings to pitches other than the standard G-D-A-E. The music he wrote to perform himself is packed with awesome, but he was far from a one-trick composer who only composed for violin. |
| 80 | ** The most celebrated of Biber's violin compositions are the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XckvLWrXc3w Rosary Sonatas,]] a collection of fifteen sonatas for violin and basso continuo, one for each of the Christian Mysteries, and a passacaglia for solo violin to round things off. The sonatas are meditative rather than programmatic, but not without exception, and they represent the apex of Biber's use of ''scordatura'', with no two sonatas tuning the strings the same way.[[note]] The first sonata and the passacaglia are the only pieces in the set to use standard tuning.[[/note]] The alternate tunings are used more for the effect looser and tighter strings have on the violin's timbre than for the additional harmonic possibilities (which Biber merely saw as a nice bonus), and they add an extra dimension of challenge to simply reading the score,[[note]] ''Scordatura'' is typically notated as if the strings were conventionally tuned, so that the notes on the printed page are not what the performer and listener will hear.[[/note]] never mind the vast technical demands involved in performing it. |
| 81 | *** High points from the the sonatas for the five Joyful Mysteries include the feather light passagework in Sonata I ("The Annunciation") depicting the rustling of Gabriel's wings as he appears to Mary, and the single-movement Sonata IV ("The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple"), an elaborate Chaconne over a bass ostinato with a solo part full of ebb and flow that requires absolute technical and emotional mastery to successfully perform. |
| 82 | *** The sonatas for the five Sorrowful Mysteries use less resonant ''scordatura'' tunings to keep the atmosphere subdued; the effect is particularly powerful in Sonata VI ("Christ on the Mount of Olives") as it creates a suitably reverent mood for Jesus' prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. These sonatas also include some of the most vividly programmatic moments in the cycle, including percussive outbursts in Sonata VII ("The Scourging at the Pillar") representing the whip hitting Jesus' body, and strident chords and tremolos in Sonata X ("The Crucifixion") as Jesus is nailed to the Cross and Jerusalem is rocked by an earthquake at the moment of His death. |
| 83 | *** The sonatas for the five Glorious Mysteries open with Biber's most remarkable use of ''scordatura''; in Sonata XI ("The Resurrection"), the centrepiece of which is a jubliant setting of the hymn "Surrexit Christus hodie", the two middle strings (usually tuned to D and A) are swapped to create not just the visual image of crossed strings below the violin's bridge, but a sonority almost unique in the history of violin music. The aria and variations in Sonata XIV ("The Assumption of the Virgin") offer another stellar example of Biber's mastery of the possibilities of a ground bass. |
| 84 | *** But Biber saves the best for last with a passacaglia that marks one of the seminal moments in solo violin repertoire (it is sometimes claimed to be the first solo violin composition). The ground bass, a simple four-note descending scalar figure from the first line of a hymn to the Guardian Angel, provides the foundation for an extraordinary contrapuntal masterpiece that calls upon every bit of technical and interpretive skill the violinist possesses, building to a radiant final shift from G minor to G major. |
| 85 | ** Among Biber's surviving vocal works, the most jaw-droppingly awesome is the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IWpwbw6-So Missa Salisburgnensis]]'', a gargantuan setting of the Latin Mass in which Biber took full advantage of the multiple organs and possible locations for choirs and orchestras in Salzburg's cathedral. The work is scored for ''two'' eight-voice choirs, two groups of two violins and four violas, a woodwind section of four recorders, two oboes, and two clarions, two groups of four trumpets and a set of timpani, an additional brass section of two cornets and three trombones, and ''two'' organs and basso continuo for a total of ''53'' "voices".[[note]] This makes it an example of the "Colossal Baroque", an artistic movement that is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.[[/note]] Any live performance is guaranteed to be a musical and spiritual experience unlike any other. |
| 86 | * Georges Bizet may have died young, but he left plenty of awesome music behind to secure his place in history. |
| 87 | ** His masterpiece, ''Theatre/{{Carmen}}'', is one of the most well-known operas in popular culture, and one of the most oft-performed operas in the world. Try the Big Chorus Number [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tu4H1VnAgw "Les Voici"]] (a.k.a. "Entry of the Toreadors") from Act IV, or the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTuNUZEFBJk Habanera]], or the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqm3z1AMDSA Seguidilla]], or the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCJaDJGIjQE Toreador Song]], which is possibly one of the most famous operatic songs for a man of all time! And there are all kinds of other gems sprinkled throughout the opera, from beginning (the famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkkhWewenwY Prelude to Act I]] combines instrumental versions of "Les voici" and the Toreador Song) to end. |
| 88 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tLrPVkfCIQ "Au fond du temple saint"]] from ''Theatre/ThePearlFishers''. One of the most famous duets in opera, and the best known piece from the whole opera. |
| 89 | ** His [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUTD86ocblc "L'Arlésienne"]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_dLof0KUD4 suites]] show that Bizet's talents extended beyond the operatic stage; the concluding Farandole from the second suite is a particular standout. |
| 90 | * French composer Léon Boëllmann was a master organist whose most familiar composition is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOyHci0j518 Suite gothique.]] The concluding Toccata is in turn the most familiar movement from the suite, blending vicious technical demands with a haunting atmosphere that lives up to the "Gothic" moniker. |
| 91 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8C8frqCKKg Polovtsian Dances]] from Aleksandr Borodin's opera ''Prince Igor'' starts with a slow section that was ripped off as "Strangers in Paradise" for the 1953 Broadway musical ''Kismet'', but then continues to a fast, bombastic, and very ''"O Fortuna"''-ish section that has been used in a lot of movie trailers. |
| 92 | * The ecstatic [[http://johnborstlap.com/audio/ last episode]] of John Borstlap's symphonic poem ''Psyche''. |
| 93 | * English composer Havergal Brian remained almost completely obscure until fairly late in his life; of his 32 symphonies, ''21'' were written after his 80th birthday, and ''seven'' after his 90th birthday. Many of his symphonies are rather ambitious in scale, but none more so than [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSfAA5UiR-8 No.1 in D minor, the "Gothic",]] named in the ''Guinness Book of World Records'' as the longest symphony ever performed, and the one calling for the largest orchestra. Although, at an hour and fifty minutes, it can easily overwhelm the listener, and the sheer orchestral forces involved[[note]] The second part of the symphony calls for four vocal soloists (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), ''four'' full choirs, a children's choir, two piccolos, six flutes (one doubling alto flute), six oboes (one doubling oboe d'amore, one doubling bass oboe), two cors anglais, two E-flat clarinets, four B-flat clarinets, two basset horns, two bass clarinets, a contrabass clarinet, three bassoons, two contrabassoons, sixteen horns (eight offstage), two E-flat cornets, twelve trumpets (eight offstage), a bass trumpet, eleven tenor trombones (eight offstage), a bass trombone, a contrabass trombone, two euphoniums, two tubas, six sets of timpani (four offstage), a glockenspiel, a xylophone, two bass drums, three snare drums, a long drum, two tambourines, six sets of cymbals, a tam-tam, a thunder machine, a set of tubular bells, a set of chimes, a set of chains, two triangles, a bird scarer, a celesta, a pipe organ, two harps, twenty first violins, twenty second violins, sixteen violas, fourteen cellos, and twelve double basses. (The instrumental first part of the symphony "only" requires about two-thirds of the orchestra.)[[/note]] mean performances and recordings are few and far between,[[note]] Only around a half-dozen performances of the uncut symphony have been successfully mounted, including at the BBC Proms in 1966 (with Brian, then aged 90, in attendance), 1980, and 2011; it has also been recorded just three times, in 1966, 1989, and a live recording at the 2011 Proms.[[/note]] it is a truly staggering work to both see and hear performed. |
| 94 | * Benjamin Britten is widely considered the greatest British composer in the 20th Century, and not without cause: |
| 95 | ** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vbvhU22uAM Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra]]'', where each instrument of the orchestra plays a variation on a theme (namely, the Rondeau from Henry Purcell's incidental music to the play ''Abdelazer'') in turn, is not just a great introduction to orchestral music, but a great piece of music in itself.[[note]] It was originally written for an educational film, and may be performed with spoken introduction to each instrument.[[/note]] |
| 96 | ** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2DLroz9Ac0 Simple Symphony]]'' for string orchestra is based on tunes Britten wrote as a child. |
| 97 | ** The ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=625WOYzdvFw War Requiem]]'' combines the Requiem mass with Wilfred Owen's poems from World War I to make an extremely moving work. It was first performed at the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. |
| 98 | * Max Bruch's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCNHM7TCcPs Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor]] is regularly named alongside the violin concerti of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms as one of the four great German Romantic violin concerti, and it's not hard to see why; between a first movement packed with dazzling solo cadenza passages that serves as the introduction to a slow movement of astonishing beauty and a major-key finale of unbridled exuberance, it's an utter delight for musicians and audiences alike. |
| 99 | * David Brunner's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZSz0pBiRvw All I Was Doing Was Breathing]] is seriously sexy. How? (1) According to the composer, it's written for "SSAA chorus with soprano soloist, cello, tabla, Tibetan finger cymbals, brass bowls, jangle stick, elephant bells and ankle bells". (2) The lyrics are by Mirabai, a 16th century Hindu mystic who spent her life writing [[GodIsLoveSongs passionate poetry]] to Krishna. (3) The last section (4:10 to the end), which builds and builds to an ecstatic climax only to drop to a solemn ending. |
| 100 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohPzurDZzZ4 Piano Concerto in C]] by Ferruccio Busoni is an absolutely monumental work in five epic-length movements, taking well over an hour to perform and taxing the soloist's skill and endurance to its very limit (even though the piano mostly provides decorative filigree over melodies introduced by the orchestra, the solo part requires fingers, hands, and arms of cast iron to perform). Busoni intended the work to encompass everything he admired about architecture and nature; as the [[http://www.theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/mast_image_landscape/public/mastimages/c30555117fe6ff7a131b23ac77b927df4cffa011.png?itok=23KtH6Fh engraving on the cover of the score]] illustrates, the grandeur of the odd-numbered movements pays homage to different ancient architectural styles (Greco-Roman for the opening Introito e Prologo, Egyptian for the mammoth central Pezzo serioso, and Assyrian for the concluding Cantico), while the finger-destroying frenzies of the even-numbered movements have more natural inspiration (the bird and flowers represent the multi-faceted scherzo of the Pezzo giocoso, while the cypress trees represent the wild tarantella of the All'Italiana). The moment in the finale (in which the pianist finally gets to rest for a bit after having played almost continuously since about four and a half minutes into the first movement) when the full-voiced men's choir enters with a passage from Danish playwright Adam Oehlenschläger's ''Aladdin and His Magic Lamp'' is truly heart-stopping. If you have a soloist, orchestra, and choir who are up to the challenge, it is a thing of wonder to see performed live. |
| 101 | * Dietrich Buxtehude was one of the most widely admired German[[note]] Sort of; he is believed to have been born in Helsingborg in Skåne, at the time part of Denmark but now part of Sweden, but he spent most of his life in northern Germany.[[/note]] organists and composers of the middle Baroque era; Music/JohannSebastianBach famously ''walked'' 280 miles from his home in Eisenach to see Buxtehude perform in Lübeck in 1705-06, and Music/GeorgeFredericHandel, Johann Pachelbel, and Music/GeorgPhilippTelemann were also fans. |
| 102 | ** One of his most awesome compositions is a setting of the Gregorian chant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSbXZMvW95U Te Deum laudamus,]] which takes the melody of the first phrase and several later phrases in the chant and uses them as the basis for an elaborate contrapuntal masterpiece that builds to a spectacularly triumphant climax in its final measures. |
| 103 | ** Buxtehude's organ preludes were a huge influence on Bach, with their extensive use of contrapuntal devices including augmentation, diminution, and inversion to develop a melody that seems simple at first but is ripe with possibility. For example, try the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS-IeYqokQw Prelude in C major, BuxWV 137,]] which opens with a pedal solo before leading to a series of explorations of various fugal subjects and ending with an exuberant chaconne and coda. |
| 104 | ** Buxtehude's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re69T_EQ2pw Passacaglia in D minor (BuxWV 161)]] -- also known as the OminousPipeOrgan piece from Music/{{BTS}}'s "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" -- is a melancholy yet majestic treat for any organ lover. Though it begins quietly, it steadily builds up stops until it reaches a truly awe-inspiring finish that deftly switches between duple and triple meter. This piece was said to be a major influence on Bach's own passacaglias, particularly the Passacaglia in C minor which takes heavy inspiration from it. Also see [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYotUjC7VTs this version]], arranged for solo piano. |
| 105 | * Music/JohnCage is certainly a polarising composer, but his fans find plenty of awesome in his music. |
| 106 | ** His prepared piano music. Regardless of how you feel about his later music, these earlier pieces are texturally fascinating, melodically innovative (and hummable!) and rhythmically exciting. For example, try listening to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBBt5lyeUCs Totem ancestor]]. |
| 107 | ** His 4'33" is definitely SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic and arguably the greatest MindScrew in music history. |
| 108 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwU37osOkQA Prelude (Marche en Rondeau)]] from Marc-Antoine Charpentier's ''Te Deum'', written near the end of the 17th century and one of the most enduring trumpet fanfares of the middle Baroque era. It is often known as "the Eurovision theme" as it was adopted as the ident of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)[=/=]''Union européenne de radio-télévision (UER)'' and has played at the start of every Series/EurovisionSongContest. Also it's used as a first part of theme music for ''Jeux sans frontières'' (''Games without Frontiers'' or ''Games Without Borders''), a Europe-wide television game show. |
| 109 | * English Baroque composer Jeremiah Clarke is little known today, but has the curious distinction of having written two enduring marches which were both, for many years, attributed to the more famous Henry Purcell (see corresponding entry). |
| 110 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1088E6E2fY The Prince of Denmark March]], better known by its colloquial name of "The Trumpet Voluntary". The sheer majesty of the opening fanfare has made it popular as an alternative to [[LohengrinAndMendelssohn the Bridal March]] from ''Lohengrin'' as a wedding processional (it was played, for example, during the 1981 wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales), and its [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRrss4kBi2M transcription for organ]] (with optional trumpet) has an even greater sense of pomp and ceremony. |
| 111 | ** Just as bright and majestic is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5kcfIaeDEY March]] from ''The Island Princess'', colloquially known as "Trumpet Tune in D". (''The Island Princess'' was a collaboration between Clarke and Henry Purcell's younger brother Daniel, which may have led to the misattribution.) It sounds especially powerful when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPVPV95Oz-M arranged for pipe organ.]] |
| 112 | * Technically, it's Classical and something else, but Classical Crossover and Classical Fusion definitely deserve mention. Just start with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiaOFOMPOBc "Explosive"]] from Bond and go from there. |
| 113 | * Mention the name of Rome-born, London-based composer Muzio Clementi to most pianists, and they'll probably think of pieces for beginning students (the Op.36 sonatinas, especially No.1 in C major,[[note]] Which received a savage parody by Erik Satie in the ''Sonatine bureaucratique'', a musical portrait of a dull white-collar worker with copious references to, if not always direct quotes from, the Clementi sonatina.[[/note]] are often among the first multi-movement pieces piano students learn). Which is unfortunate, as his contributions to music history are many; he made numerous pioneering developments in piano-building technology, served as Music/LudwigVanBeethoven's publisher in the United Kingdom, and founded the Philharmonic Society of London (now the Royal Philharmonic Society), which commissioned Beethoven's Symphony No.9. As a composer, he is most well-known for writing over a hundred piano sonatas, and while they may not have revolutionised the form the way Beethoven's sonatas did, they are still irresistibly charming. |
| 114 | ** Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart may have said in a letter to his father that Clementi was technically accomplished but expressively sterile, but he was clearly a fan of the extroverted [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnMFaEpfeiE Sonata in B-flat, Op.24 No.2,]] as he lifted the opening melody of the first movement for the main theme of the overture to ''Theatre/TheMagicFlute''. The appeal of Clementi's sonata continues through a dignified slow movement and a spritely finale. |
| 115 | ** Perhaps Clementi's greatest achievement as a composer is his last piano sonata, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsO4krTdsjk Op.50 No.3 in G minor]] (''Didone abbandonata''). It stands out as his only programmatic sonata, a purely instrumental setting of Pietro Metastasio's operatic libretto about the suicide of Dido, Queen of Carthage, after her new husband, Aeneas of Troy, [[Literature/TheAeneid flees with his fellow Trojan refugees and without so much as a word of explanation or farewell.]] The music spans the range of emotions felt by Dido before her suicide, including rage, jealousy, and despair, making the listener feel every bit of her pain before she ends it all. |
| 116 | * Music/AaronCopland is one of the most highly regarded American composers of the 20th century, and there are plenty of reasons why. |
| 117 | ** In his Symphony No. 3, the introduction of the main theme in the fourth movement. It's audibly a variation on the themes of the prior three movements - except it is also the famous "[[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200000006/default.html Fanfare for the Common Man]]". It's like an OverlyPrePreparedGag, except instead of a joke, it has ''pure musical triumph.'' ([[Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer ELP]]'s rendition of "Fanfare for the Common Man" is pretty awesome too.) |
| 118 | ** A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkEVWwOIGc Copland medley]] with "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "Simple Gifts" has been a staple of the WVU marching band for a long time now. |
| 119 | ** Copland's ballet ''Rodeo'' - especially the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsReWx9XdNs Hoedown]] - is often cited as uplifting souls and generating tears.[[note]] Although a generation of TV viewers can't help hearing "Beef - it's what's for dinner!" over the last few measures.[[/note]] |
| 120 | * Arcangelo Corelli is widely regarded as the codifier of the Italian Baroque tradition, and there are many reasons why composers for several centuries afterward regarded him as an important influence. |
| 121 | ** Perhaps his most familiar composition is the last of his twelve violin sonatas, Op.5, known as "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BECZDIuqEvA La Folia]]". Based on one of the oldest known European musical harmonic progressions, it is framed as a set of variations on a songlike melody that itself has provided the material for variations by countless other composers (among them Liszt, who used it in his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhHVTeuW5zI Spanish Rhapsody]], and Rachmaninoff, who took it as the basis for his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZTSzvcW9q8 Variations on a Theme of Corelli]]). There's also an orchestral version, "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h50Ob9vPbiY Concerto Grosso La Follia]]" by Geminiani. |
| 122 | ** The twelve concerti grossi published as Corelli's Op.6 are often regarded as the definitive prototypes of Baroque concerti. The most often performed and recorded is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPLwOdQDQcc No.8 in G minor,]] known as the "Christmas" concerto; the last of its six movements, which is marked "Pastorale ad libitum" and shifts to G major, is among the most charming and serene pieces Corelli composed. Perhaps the most influential of the twelve, however, is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3smZkpqXYHs No.4 in D major,]] which is in four movements and follows a similar pattern to that used by Classical and Romantic symphonies, with a slow introduction to its first movement, a slow second movement, a dancelike third movement, and a jaunty finale. |
| 123 | * François Couperin is perhaps the most well-known French Baroque composer,[[note]] Although his music was some of the least "purely French" of his compatriots; his guiding philosophy was uniting the French musical tradition, typified by Jean-Baptiste Lully (as well as Couperin's uncle Louis), and the Italian musical tradition, exemplified by Arcangelo Corelli.[[/note]] and with good reason; his solo keyboard and chamber works are positively overflowing with inventive and beautiful pieces. |
| 124 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf-LMHrslHw "Les barricades mystérieuses"]] from the 6th keyboard "ordre" in B-flat is one of Couperin's most fascinating compositions, an ingeniously constructed ''rondeau'' of ever-shifting melodic and harmonic textures, with a title that has been a source of speculation since its composition. It has inspired arrangements and/or original compositions in genres including jazz, rock, and electronic music. |
| 125 | ** Perhaps his most spectacular keyboard work is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acxipN-HSdc "Le Tic-Toc-Choc"]] from the 18th "ordre" in F, in which the performer's hands are intended to play on two different manuals as they are in the same range for most of the piece. However, when played on a piano with just ''one'' keyboard and the hands almost on top of each other, it becomes even more amazing to see and hear. |
| 126 | ** Among Couperin's chamber works, the four ''Concerts royaux'' are the most frequently performed and recorded, and represent some of his most successful marriages of French and Italian influences.[[note]] Couperin did not specify instrumentation in the score, allowing the performer(s) to make those decisions; they can be played by a solo keyboardist or by one or two melodic instruments with basso continuo.[[/note]] Standout moments include the gentle Prelude and the hand-in-glove counterpoint of the Menuet en trio from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1uIU4ADO5w No.1 in G major,]] the imitative call-and-response of the Allemande fuguée and Air contre-fugué and the hypnotic Echos from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpyhGc2KOvA No.2 in D major,]] the contrapuntally dense Prelude and strident Chaconne from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSeRqu4wV0 No.3 in A major,]] and the pair of Courantes (a stately Courante française and a flighty Courante à l'italienne) and exuberant Forlane from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1pAUPtyPo No.4 in E minor.]] |
| 127 | * Henry Cowell's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgn4SQFgU9Y Three]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJRf6jmbMc Irish]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ae75gJVrzQ Legends]] Suite. While modern pieces that rely heavily on dissonant clusters for their effects, they're ALL amazing pieces of work. |
| 128 | * Gaetano Donizetti has proven one of the more enduring operatic composers of the early Romantic era: |
| 129 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3_8wz_xNI0 Lucia's Mad Scene]] from ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' is a glorious moment in the spotlight for any singer playing the title character. |
| 130 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh2Vh8jwyQA "Una furtiva lagrima"]] from ''L'Elisir d'amore''. One of the most famous tenor arias. |
| 131 | * Guillaume Dufay was one of the most highly regarded composers of the early Renaissance, codifying many practices of polyphonic writing for the next few centuries. One of his finest works is the motet [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOWHvIZzXPI "Nuper rosarum flores",]] written in honour of the consecration of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral Florence Cathedral]] in 1436 by Pope Eugene IV. Such an extraordinary building needs an extraordinary piece of music to celebrate it, and Dufay delivers; across four stanzas, Dufay weaves two-voice counterpoint in the countertenor and tenor voices through 14 measures, then follows this with 14 measures in which the counterpoint lies over a two-voice canon on the Gregorian chant "Terribilis est locus iste" ("Aweful is this place"),[[note]] That's "aweful", not "awful".[[/note]] said to be inspired by the two layers of Filippo Brunelleschi's celebrated dome for the cathedral. Moreover, the four stanzas, though all 28 measures long, feature different numbers of beats per measure; the first has 6, the second 4, the third 2, and the fourth 3, claimed to be an homage to the cathedral's dimensions.[[note]] Some musicologists and music historians dispute these interpretations.[[/note]] All building up to a final radiant "Amen" as the major/minor ambiguity that pervades throughout finally resolves into major. |
| 132 | * Paul Dukas was so intensely self-critical that he would never agree with someone who described any of his music as awesome (or even worth preserving, to the point that we're lucky any of his music survived his personal purges); his audiences have always been willing to agree to disagree with him. |
| 133 | ** His [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3osY987i7fA Symphony in C]] is three movements full of exquisite music. The first movement is a three-theme sonata form allegro. The second movement is in E minor and has only two themes, but also modulates a few times. The finale wraps everything up with a spirited rondo. |
| 134 | ** By far Dukas' most well-known and beloved composition is his musical interpretation of Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe's poem ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNaNDXyXRFo L'apprenti sorcier]]'' ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice"), a piece that was a hit with audiences even before being immortalised forty years later in the third segment of Creator/{{Disney}}'s ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' with WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse in the title role. From the haunting opening measures, to the immediately hummable theme as the apprentice brings the broom to life, to the orchestral frenzy as he is then forced to splinter the broom with an axe - only to create hundreds of brooms that cause the music's energy to build even higher, to the outburst of the final measures, it sticks in the memory even without the animated accompaniment. |
| 135 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85FtJJG2oqY Piano Sonata in E-flat minor]] is a 45-minute musical epic, from its expansive opening movement to its ultimately triumphant final measures. The third movement, a wild ride of a scherzo with a contrasting slow trio section, is a particular highlight. |
| 136 | * Marcel Dupré was nicknamed "the Paganini of the organ", as his technical prowess at the instrument was second to none. And just as Paganini composed fiendishly technically difficult works for the violin to show off his skill, so Dupré did the same for organ: |
| 137 | ** Several of the three Preludes and Fugues, Op.7 were declared unplayable by Dupré's composition teacher, Charles-Marie Widor, and for the first few decades after they were published, only Dupré himself was up to the challenge of playing them publicly. The ebullient [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMEDWmeJ6ew No.1 in B major]] matches a scintillating, semiquaver-driven toccata with a fugue that requires considerable acrobatics for its entrances in the pedal. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyFSFmugRa4 No.2 in F minor]] is the most reserved of the three, but it offsets its modest technical demands by requiring considerable emotional sensitivity to play successfully. And [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16wogGqWmF0 No.3 in G minor]] is the toughest of the lot, with a prelude that gallops along full speed and, at the climax, calls for three-note and four-note chords ''in the pedal'', followed by a fugue on an ostensibly gigue-like subject that builds to a gargantuan coda for full organ. |
| 138 | ** One of Dupré's most popular compositions, thanks to its seasonal theme, is ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LFb-H0z6LU Variations sur un Noël]]'' (''Variations on a Christmas Carol''), in which he uses the melody of the 15th-century French carol "Noël Nouvelet" as the basis of ten contrapuntal variations, including three canons (one of them a double canon) at different intervals and a fugato, all building to a virtuosic, celebratory coda in which the minor tonality finally explodes into major. |
| 139 | * French organist and composer Maurice Duruflé, a student of Paul Dukas, shared his teacher's viciously intense perfectionism; he held himself to almost impossibly high standards, with nothing less than his very best deemed worthy of publication (or preservation of any sort). Despite living to be 84, he only published ''fourteen'' compositions[[note]] A few more works were published after his death.[[/note]] - and the first, ''Triptyque'' (three fantasies for piano on Gregorian chants), was later withdrawn when Duruflé decided it wasn't good enough. The good news is that this means the works he did see fit to publish are nothing less than spectacular, and while his choral works (especially the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRzPi0CA1rg Requiem]]) are heart-stoppingly beautiful, it is his organ works for which the word "awesome" is most fitting. |
| 140 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQgP_mzEcuk Scherzo in F minor]] was composed while Duruflé was still studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, and is a harbinger of great things to come (at least, those he was willing to submit for publication). The first few measures, far from being a perfunctory introduction, lay the groundwork of several aspects of the feather-light yet lightning-quick main theme, as well as the slower interludes. And while the scherzo fades into a sunset glow rather than going out in a blaze of glory, it still stands out for requiring the soloist to play chords on two different manuals ''with one hand''. Duruflé later revised and orchestrated the scherzo as the second part of his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuWHRbK9jwo Andante and Scherzo,]] revealing the music's more wryly humorous side. |
| 141 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZl9JlZz2Y8 Prélude, Adagio, et Choral varié]] on the plainchant melody of the Pentecostal hymn "Veni, creator spiritus" is a masterclass in how choral tunes of the Middle Ages can transcend the centuries by continuing to reveal new facets of themselves.[[note]] As the original Gregorian chant uses the Mixolydian mode, Duruflé's treatment of it does likewise, which can scramble the unwary listener's sense of tonality.[[/note]] The Prélude grows out of a triplet figure spun from the third line ("Imple superna gratia"), with a contrasting theme based on the second line ("Mentes tuorum visita") thrown in. As the Prélude tapers off, the organist pushes the stops in one by one for the hallowed ground of the Adagio, which incorporates more fragments of the "Veni creator" melody as the tonal centre climbs by minor thirds until it comes full circle for the final section, which opens with the first full statement of the hymn melody in truly majestic fashion. The four variations include a dialogue between the ''cantus firmus'' in the pedal and the "Imple superna gratia" melody in the manuals, a variation for manuals only, a canon at the fourth that returns to the sacred atmosphere of the Adagio, and another two-voice canon incorporating the triplets from the Prélude before the four phrases of the theme dissolve into a whirlwind of counterpoint, all building to a spectacular coda for full organ in which a melody based on the "Amen" plainchant booms forth in the pedal. |
| 142 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwuo5WN_a4I Suite]] opens with a sinister Prélude that represents OminousPipeOrgan at its finest, emerging from the shadows with a two-part theme that intensifies across three iterations (its tonal centre dropping by a major third each time)[[note]] This forms an intriguing juxtaposition with the entire Suite's tonal centre, which ''rises'' by a major third with each movement.[[/note]] to a powerful climax before ebbing away for an improvisatory second half, then retreating back into the darkness whence it came. The graceful yet solemn Sicilienne takes cues from Debussy and Ravel to create a compelling exercise in light and shade; as in his previous works, Duruflé's mesmerising counterpoint requires that the organist play two manuals with one hand in several passages. But the real fireworks come in the non-stop virtuosity of the concluding Toccata, full of fluid runs and rapid block chords that, while relentless, have an air of spontaneity to them that is sure to exhilarate performer and listener alike as the music gallops toward its victorious final measures.[[note]] Not that Duruflé saw it that way; he regretted publishing the Toccata and never included it in his concert programmes.[[/note]] |
| 143 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7joUtiMFOqg Prélude et Fugue sur le nom d'Alain]] was written in memory of Duruflé's friend Jehan Alain, who was killed on the battlefields of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and uses a musical mnemonic of his surname (rendered as A-D-A-A-F) for a monumental work that incorporates the melody of Alain's own composition "Litanies" near the end of the prelude, then strips the theme down for a fugal subject over which ever busier countersubjects are laid and more and more stops are pulled out, culminating in a transcendent coda for full organ that unites the themes of the prelude and the fugue before a triumphant final shift to D major.[[note]] Alain's younger sister Marie-Claire is one of the most celebrated organists of the second half of the 20th century, having made over 250 recordings - including several of the Prelude and Fugue in her brother's memory - and taught a significant fraction of the other celebrated European organists of the era.[[/note]] |
| 144 | * Manuel de Falla ranks alongside Issac Albéniz and Enrique Granados as one of the greatest Spanish composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and by far his most famous composition is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDxBSb_BUvc "Danza ritual del Fuego"]] ("Ritual Fire Dance") from his ballet ''El amor brujo''. The sinister trilling in the strings that opens the piece conveys a vivid image of flames burning brightly as an almost primal melody appears over it as the dancers on stage dance around, and sometimes over, the fire. |
| 145 | * Though French composer Gabriel Fauré has long been overshadowed by two of the next generation of French composers, [[Music/ClaudeDebussy Debussy]] and [[Music/MauriceRavel Ravel]], he wrote many pieces of outstandingly beautiful music that are well worth hearing. |
| 146 | ** Fauré started early. When he was nineteen and still in college, he received a homework assignment to write a song for SATB choir and piano or organ. The resulting song, "Cantique de Jean Racine", is probably the only homework assignment to have [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantique_de_Jean_Racine its own Wikipedia article]]. It is sweet, deceptively simple, and beautiful beyond words--even the volunteer children's choir they have singing the song on [[Website/{{Wikipedia}} The Other Wiki]] can't much ruin it. |
| 147 | ** Fauré's ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtJeTMRzn8A Requiem]]'' in D minor departs from the usual trend for Requiem masses by deliberately omitting the "Dies irae" sequence altogether (saving the fire and brimstone for the brief "Dies illa, dies irae" passage in the "Libera me") and making its section "Pie Jesu" a separate movement instead. The 6th movement, "Libera me", and the 7th movement, "In Paradisum", were used to poignant effect in the final episode of British detective series ''Series/InspectorMorse''. In performances and recordings, the ''Requiem'' is frequently paired with the "Cantique de Jean Racine" to create a programme of some of the loveliest sacred music ever composed. "In Paradisum" is often used in films; in Jon Amiel's ''The Silent Twins'', about June and Jennifer Gibbons, it's actually the love theme. Amiel also directed ''Film/{{Copycat}}'', so perhaps that's AuthorAppeal. It also appears in ''Film/{{S1m0ne}}'', ''Film/TheThinRedLine'', ''Series/{{Endeavour}}'' and ''Film/{{Novitiate}}'' among many others. |
| 148 | ** Shortly before his death at the age of 79, Fauré completed his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiOFD5WCzrw String Quartet]] in E minor after putting it off for decades.[[note]] Music/MauriceRavel had dedicated his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieRQyyPowH0 String Quartet]] in F major to Fauré in 1903; while Fauré wasn't exactly enamored with it at first, he did ask to see the manuscript for it again a few days later, saying "I could have been wrong".[[/note]] What resulted was three movements full of highly moving and dynamic music, particularly in the second movement ''Andante'', where Fauré has a field day with dynamics; crescendos and diminuendos happen frequently. The third movement ''Allegro'' combines scherzo and finale in an utterly spellbinding way before neatly wrapping everything up in the glory of E major.[[note]] Sadly, he never heard it performed, as his hearing had deteriorated to the point that what little sound he could still hear was horribly distorted, leading him to decline an offer of a private performance while he was on his deathbed.[[/note]] |
| 149 | * César Franck's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpKlEmrO_AM Le Chasseur Maudit]], which tells how the titular "accursed hunter" is punished by God for hunting on the Sabbath. There are four sections, all of them epic. The hunter ignores the church bells and heads to the forest (section 1, a noble slow introduction). He relentlessly pursues his prey (section 2, containing the main "chase" theme). He reaches the heart of the forest (section 3, a slow interlude superficially reminiscent of section 1 but much more mysterious). Something stirs in the trees (a creepy transition that ends with a terrifying blast from the horns), and suddenly the hunter is himself being chased (section 4, which cleverly repeats the "chase" theme from section 2 but much faster and with creepier instrumentation). The hunter hears church bells as fate closes in on him. Basically, it's awesome. |
| 150 | [[/folder]] |
| 151 | |
| 152 | [[folder:Composers G-N]] |
| 153 | * Niels Gade was a Danish contemporary and friend of Mendelssohn, who is not well known outside Denmark,[[note]] He was very popular in Germany for a time and succeeded Mendelssohn as conductor of the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, but shortly afterwards the First Schleswig War forced him to return to Denmark, after which he never regained his popularity abroad.[[/note]] but wrote some awesome music just the same. |
| 154 | ** Like his friend and idol, Mendelssohn, Gade tried his hand at concert overtures at an early age, and his ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psLVh2QkACk Echoes of Ossian]]'' is awesome evocative romantic music at its finest. |
| 155 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lcus9Kchiw Morning song]] from the {{cantata}} ''Elverskud''. |
| 156 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbhzSXAu_hI Brudevalsen (Bridal Waltz)]] is traditionally danced by the newlyweds at every Danish wedding, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5_84MAKlc as shown here by the Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark.]] |
| 157 | * Traditional Georgian Music. For example, the wedding song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlxC7IaFxks Lechkhmuri Makruli]]. |
| 158 | * Music/GeorgeGershwin wrote in a variety of styles; relevant to this page, he is widely regarded as one of the first American composers to leave a significant mark on classical music. |
| 159 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSq_nwoG43s "Rhapsody in Blue"]]. From the first clarinet trill to the last soaring chords... It never quite leaves you alone. |
| 160 | ** His [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxUHcXUJZgY Concerto in F]] is easily the most popular piano concerto by an American composer, deftly blending classical, blues, ragtime, and jazz styles and featuring a spellbinding repeated note-dominated finale that builds to a triumphant concluding statement of the main theme from the first movement. |
| 161 | ** The tone poem [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU1X3Wut-k0 "An American in Paris"]] is another skilled fusion of diverse genres, punctuated by the din of car horns familiar to anyone who has visited the French capital, and featuring blues interludes as the title character has a moment of homesickness. |
| 162 | * Classical composers from Latin America tend to be overlooked compared to their counterparts from Europe and (to a lesser extent) the United States, and Exhibit A for the case that they deserve more attention is Argentina's Alberto Ginastera. His [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesUKzsJjfg Piano Concerto No.1]] ranks among the most savagely difficult piano concerti ever composed, blending European influences with South American sensibilities to create something truly remarkable. The first movement bookends a set of variations with furious passages showcasing the piano, and follows this with a scherzo that takes the opposite tack by bracketing a dramatic centre with more mysterious episodes. The otherworldly atmosphere continues through the viola solo-led slow movement, but its solemnity is swept aside by the violent concluding "Toccata concertata", the most original and terrifying of the four movements, and a true SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome for any soloist and orchestra up to the task.[[note]] Keith Emerson of Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer liked the toccata so much, he included an arrangement of it on the band's 1973 album ''Brain Salad Surgery'' (which, for legal reasons, required presenting it to Ginastera for his personal approval; the composer was duly impressed).[[/note]] |
| 163 | * Russia's Alexander Glazunov has the misfortune of being [[OvershadowedByControversy more well-known for his alcoholism than for his music]][[note]]He was the conductor of the premiere of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No.1 in D minor, which was such an unmitigated disaster that the composer hid on the fire escape with his hands over his ears and needed to undergo hypnotherapy before he could compose again; the future Mrs. Rachmaninoff famously thought Glazunov was drunk during the performance, but the more likely reality is that the orchestra were desperately under-rehearsed. Meanwhile, Glazunov's sometime conservatory student Music/DmitriShostakovich recalled in later life that Glazunov kept a bottle of vodka hidden in his desk drawer and would sip from it through a tube concealed in his coat during lectures.[[/note]]. While he may not have been as iconoclastic as some of his later life contemporaries, such as Prokofiev and Stravinsky, many of his compositions are still fine examples of late Romanticism. |
| 164 | ** Glazunov's most popular work is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igqj4lAV6UY Violin Concerto in A minor,]] which becomes particularly mesmeric in the hands of American violinist Hilary Hahn. As well as being full of first class showcases for the soloist (the second theme in the "first movement" is especially lovely), it is structurally unusual, being nominally in one movement but divided into three or four subsections - just how many, and where each section begins and ends, remains a topic of debate. |
| 165 | ** The first composer to make the (alto) saxophone the star of a concert piece for soloist and orchestra was probably Debussy, who (very reluctantly) composed a Rhapsody on commission from the American saxophonist Elisa Hall; however, Glazunov, on commission from the German-born alto saxophonist Sigurd Raschèr, was the first major composer to write a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfL2Tf9L_f4 concerto for the saxophone]], accompanied by string orchestra.[[note]] Raschèr was one of the most influential classical saxophonists of the 20th century; his aggressive campaigning on the instrument's behalf resulted in over 200 saxophone compositions bearing dedications to him. In 1969, he and his daughter Carina, a soprano saxophonist, were two of the founding members of the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, to which another 250 compositions have been dedicated.[[/note]] It has rightly found a place in the classical saxophone repertoire, its single movement (in four subsections) carrying performer and listener alike on a remarkable journey that gloriously melds the mellow sound of the soloist with the more strident tones of the strings. |
| 166 | ** Glazunov composed two piano concerti, both late works. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bz4f3iTJ9Y No.1 in F minor]] was a favourite of the Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter; its first movement is full of high drama alternating with a Rachmaninoff-like second theme,[[note]] It sounds particularly similar to the opening of the third movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No.2 in E minor, composed at around the same time.[[/note]] while the second movement is an expansive theme and variations uniting slow movement, scherzo, and finale, with the ninth variation ingeniously bringing back all of the major themes from the first movement. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNYb21fZLPw No.2 in B major,]] like the concerti for violin and saxophone, is in just one movement in several subsections, with the themes introduced in the first few minutes being put through all manner of permutations and modifications; the slow F major interlude just before the halfway mark contains some of Glazunov's loveliest melodic writing. |
| 167 | * Reinhold Gliere is a Russian/Soviet composer whose works are relatively unknown to the West, which is a pity, as there is a lot to like about his music. |
| 168 | ** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9-ATDu81vY Hymn to the Great City]]" from ''The Bronze Horseman'' is a stirring tribute to Saint Petersburg. It has since been given words to form [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQtQybP5gLU an actual anthem]] for Saint Petersburg. |
| 169 | ** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJgZ-GiPlvM Russian Sailors' Dance]]" from ''The Red Poppy'' is lots of fun to both play and hear. |
| 170 | ** His tone poem "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3OWtfpMRoY Heroic March for the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR]]" is epic in musical form. |
| 171 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRi9eKMMJZw "Holiday in Ferghana"]] is evocative of a wild Eastern bazaar. |
| 172 | * Polish-American composer Leopold Godowsky, though he wrote some phenomenally difficult original music, is perhaps best known for taking 26 of Chopin's 27 études[[note]] the omission being the sombre Op.25 No.7 in C-sharp minor[[/note]] (see corresponding entry) and cranking their technical demands up to eleven and beyond in a set of 54 studies[[note]] numbered 1-48 (skipping 37) with six extras, and usually referred to as "53 Studies" as there are two versions of No.28[[/note]] which tax almost any pianist's skill to its absolute limit, and any performance of them in appropriately skilled hands is undiluted awesome. While many of the studies "simply" involve re-scoring the Chopin études for left hand alone or reversing the melodic and harmonic roles of the right and left hands, some studies go further: |
| 173 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfpyKx_ZGF4 No.4 in A minor ("Ignis fatuus")]][[note]] "Will-o'-the-wisp"[[/note]], the second patterned after [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3j57AdHSvg Chopin's Op.10 No.2]], transfers the fluid chromatic runs from the original to the left hand and casts them against double note triplets in the right hand. |
| 174 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6COvccsx8E&t=9m0s No.9 in A minor ("Tarantella")]], the third study based on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqHL2nvWs2U Chopin's Op.10 No.5 in G-flat major]], takes a major key original on the black keys and transforms it into a minor key étude on the white keys. |
| 175 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5eYKI-a6No No.15 in G-flat major ("Nocturne")]], the second inspired by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZWjOzBl0zU Chopin's Op.10 No.7 in C major]], preserves the melody and repeated notes of the original but completely transforms its character into a nocturne of which Chopin would have been proud. |
| 176 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l23bezetql8 No.18 in F minor]], the second re-imagining of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0umohcLS1I Chopin's Op.10 No.9]], includes an imitation of Chopin's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm7VtX1kfbs other F minor étude, Op.25 No.2]], without losing sight of the original piece. |
| 177 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkWYG4_9MBY No.24 in A-flat major]], the second patterned after [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRqynzR_8Ts Chopin's Op.25 No.1 ("Aeolian Harp")]], is carefully constructed to sound as though there are ''two'' pianists playing a piece for four hands. |
| 178 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X0kFOUeXvU No.32 in F minor ("Polonaise")]], the second study adapted from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqopGyxnzeM Chopin's Op.25 No.4 in A minor]], preserves the melodic outline of the original, but otherwise completely re-shapes it, casting aside the left-hand leap focus of the original and changing the key, the time signature, and the character to fit the model of a polonaise - and, as if one complete restructuring isn't enough, Godowsky includes a major key re-imagining of the same étude (with the melody from the original now in the left hand) as a contrasting trio section. The original étude can still be heard within it, but it is almost an entirely new piece, three times as long as the original and at least three times as awesome. |
| 179 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9nNBhDdnuY No.34 in C-sharp minor ("Mazurka")]], the second study based on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkdgFfKIWbA Chopin's Op.25 No.5 in E minor]], does something similar to No.32 by preserving the melodic outline of the original but changing the key and the atmosphere to fit the model of a mazurka (like the polonaise, a Polish dance of which Chopin wrote many examples), creating something almost entirely new. |
| 180 | ** And finally, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie_IFjxCnJ0 No.47 in G-flat major ("Badinage")]] combines both of Chopin's études in G-flat major, Op.10 No.5 and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hc5FKmr3FA Op.25 No.9]], into a coherent whole, while [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaHhLxp20Jc No.48 in F major]] does the same thing with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG1Mv892-lE Chopin's Op.10 No.11 in E-flat major]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnIPt-Fqiqk Op.25 No.3 in F major]]. (Godowsky apparently planned [[WhatCouldHaveBeen a study combining Chopin's three études in A minor]] - Op.10 No.2, Op.25 No.4, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMIIxm1bGo Op.25 No.11]] - but never got around to writing it.) |
| 181 | * Charles Gounod remains one of the more popular French composers from the mid-19th century, having contributed substantially to the reputation of grand opera in Paris. |
| 182 | ** Gounod's most famous opera, ''Faust'', boasts the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW-6HMenF74 Soldiers' Chorus]], which is basically WarIsGlorious in musical form. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRpdXdxF-ng Church Scene]] (where [[{{Satan}} Mephistopheles]] finally reveals his true identity to Marguerite) is terrifying when done well, while the final trio and chorus ("Christ est ressuscité!"), backed by pipe organ and brass fanfares, is absolutely majestic, as a celestial choir proclaims Marguerite's salvation and she ascends into Heaven. |
| 183 | ** Gounod's version of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZG-wdVWN54 Ave Maria]]", based on the C Major Prelude in J.S. Bach's ''Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1''; Gounod's arrangement is sometimes misattributed to Bach himself! It also, ironically, is often transposed to keys other than C Major. |
| 184 | * Percy Grainger was born in Australia and spent the majority of his life in the United States, but he is most closely associated with his settings of English folk dances, many of which he arranged (or, to use his preferred phrase, "dished up") for anything from solo piano to wind bands to full orchestras to organ... each arrangement revealing new facets of the music. |
| 185 | ** Whatever one may think of Morris dancing, Grainger's settings of melodies intended to accompany it are sure to put a smile on any listener's face. The sprightly [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojWtrtSSw00 "Country Gardens"]] is his most famous folk dance setting, followed closely by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJyjkWhP5Q "Shepherd's Hey"]] (which finds time to quote "Country Gardens" near the halfway mark), both pieces conjuring up vivid musical pictures of a sunny day's drinking and dancing in a rural English village. |
| 186 | ** Grainger was also inspired by traditional Irish music. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66wSECRpWIY "Molly on the Shore"]] is a delightfully lively setting of two reels, "Temple Hill" and "Molly on the Shore", and will leave you breathless trying to keep up. But if you want a more reverent Grainger, try his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1Vvrgk6os "Irish Tune from County Derry",]] better known as "Danny Boy" and just as sure to make listeners misty-eyed as his folk dance settings are to make them smile. |
| 187 | ** But Grainger didn't need existing melodies to be awesome; he could just as easily create his own. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2lCIeCbLZE "Colonial Song"]] starts with the hallowed atmosphere of "Irish Tune from County Derry" but builds in grandeur to a remarkable coda that, in the solo piano version, makes clever use of half-pedalling in the final measures. The merry [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGCV8zCjUNI "Handel in the Strand"]] combines a melody based on Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations with an effervescent portrait of the music halls to which London's Strand was once home. And [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trNErmvQbdg "The Immovable Do"]] is more than just a wordplay-inspired title;[[note]] "Immovable Do" refers to a solfege system in which "Do" always represents a pitch of C; this contrasts with "Movable Do", in which "Do" is the tonic of the scale, as in "Doh, a Deer". In Grainger's composition, it also refers to a drone on C that sounds continuously throughout.[[/note]] the climax three-quarters of the way through is one of his most rousing musical moments. |
| 188 | * Spanish composer Enrique Granados is most well-remembered for his piano suite ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmW5SBMQ_S4 Goyescas]]'', inspired by the work of his fellow countryman, painter Creator/FranciscoDeGoya (though more by his artistic style than by specific paintings); the highlight of the suite is the fourth movement, "The Maiden and the Nightingale", full of rapid arpeggiated figures and trills to imitate birdsong around more traditionally songlike melodies, all adding up to a sublimely beautiful few minutes of music. |
| 189 | * Edvard Grieg has more than earned his place as Norway's greatest ever composer. |
| 190 | ** Grieg's incidental soundtrack to Creator/HenrikIbsen's ''Theatre/PeerGynt'' has surpassed its source material outside Norway to become some of the most instantly recognisable classical music ever written, especially [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRpzxKsSEZg In the Hall of the Mountain King]]. After the inexorable buildup, when the music finally swells and crashes, you can almost feel every cymbal crashing in your face. For a slightly different taste - but no less awesome by any means - the cover by the band [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGigthgbpDI Apocalyptica]] deserves a standing ovation every time. |
| 191 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKfGDqXEFkE Piano Concerto in A minor]] is one of the most familiar concerti ever written, filled with Grieg's hallmark memorable melodies as he pays tribute to the piano concerto of Music/RobertSchumann in the same key. Like Schumann, Grieg opens with an attention-grabbing cascade down the piano's register, after which the orchestra and piano pass the first theme back and forth until a transitory passage leads to a more lush second theme; the first theme rises to epic levels in the virtuosic solo cadenza. After a serene, Beethovenian slow movement, it's off to the races for the energetic finale - energy that subsides for a charming F major interlude that re-appears in A major for the majestic final pages. Rachmaninoff liked Grieg's concerto so much he based his own first piano concerto on it. |
| 192 | ** Grieg was first and foremost a nationalist composer, celebrating the folk music traditions of his native land, and some of the most striking examples come in the four [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ckVfgSYBdg Norwegian Dances]] for piano duet. From the furious No.1 in D minor with its relaxed centre section, to the buoyant No.2 in A major with its frenzied centre section, to the boisterous No.3 in G major with its solemn centre section, to the effusive No.4 in D major with its dignified centre section, they are four glorious homages to all things Norwegian. For added awesome, try [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax3tdHwqvvo Hans Sitt's orchestral version.]] |
| 193 | * Norwegian composer Eivind Groven's awesome works begin with his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8QgJC88Ri0 piano concerto.]] |
| 194 | * Canadian pianist-composer Marc-André Hamelin, one of the foremost interpreters of Leopold Godowsky's Studies After Chopin (see corresponding entry), decided to answer the question of how Godowsky's planned but unwritten study combining Chopin's three A minor études might have sounded by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8memPmhpIA writing such an etude himself.]] Rather than following the structure of one etude and working the other two into it,[[note]] as Scottish composer and musicologist Alistair Hinton did in his (so far unrecorded) 1977 interpretation of the "triple étude" (working the other two études - and snippets of ''fourteen'' other Chopin études ''and'' the F minor Fantaisie, Op.49 - into the structure of Op.25 No.11), which he later dedicated to Hamelin[[/note]] Hamelin shifts back and forth between the overall structures of the three études so that each dominates at different times while the other two follow in its path,[[note]] Specifically, the first third follows Op.25 No.11, the middle third follows Op.10 No.2, and the final third follows Op.25 No.4.[[/note]] and the results are pure awesome from start to finish. |
| 195 | * Michael Haydn has never enjoyed the same reputation as his older brother Music/{{Joseph|Haydn}}, but his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnHJJgiaxDU Requiem Mass]] is well worth a listen. Mozart liked it so much, he took inspiration from it when writing his own Requiem Mass. |
| 196 | * Samuel R. Hazo's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9XPLxeUrRE Ride]] is an energetic piece with an epic alto sax solo at 1:04. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4yvZF1cMz0 Sevens]], the piece that starts out alternating between 11/16 and 7/16 time and in the key of G-flat. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VDlFEUgnw Arabesque]], starting out with three epic flute solos and then getting much more epic as it goes on. Finally, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhrOde0qT78 Fantasy on a Japanese Folk Song]], a beautiful piece. |
| 197 | * German composer Adolf von Henselt was revered as a piano virtuoso by such contemporaries as Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann thanks to both his large finger span and his expressive legato technique; Sergei Rachmaninoff cited him as an influence on his own career. However, the sheer technical brutality of his compositions is subtle enough that most listeners are unaware of it, never more so than in his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hoaIZXCHU8 Piano Concerto in F minor,]] a former warhorse of the piano concerto repertoire that is now mostly played by specialists on the "technician" end of the TechnicianVersusPerformer scale. And yet, far from being hollow virtuosity, the concerto is packed with moments of formal ingenuity, such as its use of the same melodic ideas in different guises, and outstanding lyricism, particularly in the chorale in the first movement development (which sounds as though it requires at least three hands when the piano takes over the melody) and the charming (yet still savagely difficult) Larghetto. |
| 198 | * Hildegard of Bingen's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qko_Rnnr1jI "O Ecclesia"]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwS80A6kp7k "Alleluia, O Virga Mediatrix"]] are two of the most beautiful Gregorian chants ever written. |
| 199 | * Music/GustavHolst is one of the more popular British composers of the 20th century, and with good reason. |
| 200 | ** By far Holst's most familiar work is ''The Planets'', a suite of seven pieces dedicated to each of the seven planets besides Earth[[note]] The suite was composed about fifteen years before Pluto's discovery in 1930; though Holst died in 1934, he never considered writing a piece for Pluto, partly because of his MagnumOpusDissonance regarding the work. An extra movement called "Pluto, the Renewer" was commissioned from composer Colin Matthews in 2000 and, even following Pluto's re-classification as a dwarf planet in 2006, is still occasionally, if rarely, included in performances and recordings.[[/note]], many of them outstanding classics. The suite overall has a remarkable symmetry (or perhaps anti-symmetry). Where the opening "Mars, the Bringer of War" is brutal and concrete, the concluding "Neptune, the Mystic" is ethereal and abstract; where "Venus, the Bringer of Peace" is tranquil and mostly revolves around soloists, "Uranus, the Magician" is vulgar and revolves around full orchestral passages; where "Mercury, the Winged Messenger" is breathlessly light and fast, "Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age" is slow, heavy, and reflective. At the centre is "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity", itself symmetrically constructed with joyous outer sections framing a heartfelt chorale. |
| 201 | *** The opening "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGGlL1wexQk Mars, the Bringer of War]]" was a major inspiration behind much of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' soundtrack. This is the music we will play when we go to war against the stars. (Or, if you're [[WesternAnimation/TheVentureBros #21 and #24]], something to [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments make you feel all badass]].) |
| 202 | *** "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" is the suite's most famous movement; some would say that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B49N46I39Y&t=3m07s the string solo]] practically qualifies as a SugarWiki/{{Heartwarming Moment|s}}. Holst recomposed that part to create "I Vow to Thee My Country", one of England's many unofficial anthems. At the time he was assigned to set the words to music, he was overworked to the limit and relieved beyond belief to discover that they fit this part of "Jupiter". |
| 203 | *** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51oHwMiqslo Uranus, the Magician]]". Starts out bombastic, gets quiet, then ''epic'', then quiet again, then finally revs up to ''fucking'' '''mega epic''' for the finale. |
| 204 | *** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaNuYvj-jcc Neptune, the Mystic]]". Pure mystery, with a gorgeous EtherealChoir. It's also the first piece in music to be written with an intentional fadeout ending, even in a live performance setting. Holst ''nailed'' it. (Holst specified that the chorus is to be placed in an offstage room, and at the end, while the chorus is repeating the last bar over and over, the door to the room is to be closed slowly...) |
| 205 | ** Holst's symphonic tone poem [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDF3AG3Gp4 Egdon Heath]], written to evoke the setting of Thomas Hardy's ''The Return of the Native'', is both harmonically and emotionally mysterious. Holst actually considered it his best work, but it never became popular. |
| 206 | * Johann Nepomuk Hummel studied under Mozart as a boy and later under Haydn, but as a composer he is largely overshadowed by his teachers and by his contemporaries and friends Beethoven and Schubert. Which is a shame, as his music is well worth a listen. |
| 207 | ** By far Hummel's most famous work is his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uPgmrVr-VI Trumpet Concerto in E major]][[note]] Often transposed down a semitone to E-flat major.[[/note]], one of the most frequently performed and recorded trumpet concerti. The second movement's journey from a solemn A minor to a triumphant A major and the buoyant finale which follows it without a break are especially delightful. |
| 208 | ** Among Hummel's five piano concerti, the most frequently performed and recorded, with good reason, are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqrNZW5H7kc No.2 in A minor]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fd4jRw840M No.3 in B minor]]. Highlights include the Larghetto from the A minor concerto (which leads straight into the stark finale) and the timpani figure which opens the B minor concerto in a similar gesture to Beethoven's violin concerto. Chopin was known to be a fan of both works, and they influenced his own piano concerti (see corresponding entry). |
| 209 | ** Hummel wrote at least nine piano sonatas, the most awesome of which is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTjtrWh5Q8I No.5 in F-sharp minor]] (its early fans included Music/RobertSchumann). The lively finale, in which the minor mode persists to the very end, is particularly exhilarating to hear and play. |
| 210 | * Czech (more specifically, Moravian) composer Leoš Janáček is, stylistically, quite unlike any of his late 1800s/early 1900s contemporaries. Rather than tearing down tonality and re-building it as Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School did, he used his love of Moravian folklore and folk music to push the boundaries of what conventional tonality could do, and his approaches to harmony, thematic development, and orchestration are remarkable in their originality. |
| 211 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV6GI3ROj8c Sinfonietta]] might as well be subtitled "Why brass sections are awesome." As well as strings, woodwinds, harp, and percussion, it calls for brass forces including four horns, ''twelve'' trumpets, two bass trumpets, four trombones, two tenor or "Wagner" tubas, and a bass tuba. The fanfare played by the extra brass instruments in the first movement and its triumphant return in the finale (the only movement to bring together the entire brass section) are goosebump-inducingly powerful moments. Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer liked the fanfare so much, they used it for the song "Knife-Edge" on their eponymous debut album. |
| 212 | ** String Quartet No. 2, called "Intimate Letters" by the composer, was written for Kamila Stösslová, a married woman 40 years his junior who may have never loved him back. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WICGA3VLG7Y third movement]] has been interpreted as a lullaby for the son she never bore him. |
| 213 | * Music/AramKhachaturian stands with Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich as one of the three titans of Soviet music. There are plenty of reasons why: |
| 214 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3l3r_DRI Sabre Dance]] from ''Gayane'' is one of the most instantly recognisable tracks in all of classical music. Or, boosting the awesome quotient, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANZ45vCCUe0 Vanessa Mae's remix]]. And to further up the awesome quotient, there's dancers too. |
| 215 | ** Listen to his "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of5ebCY5__Q Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia]]" (known to fans of vintage British television as the theme to ''The Onedin Line''). Then dry your eyes. |
| 216 | ** Also the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexcMRKVMkk violin]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v4W34SsreA concerto]]. |
| 217 | * "По́люшко-по́ле" (''Polyushko-polye'', or ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hliuEte028 Song of the Plains]]'') by Lev Knipper, with lyrics by Viktor Gusev. As stirring as Soviet patriotic songs get. |
| 218 | * Zoltán Kodály's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1NsG0ATFvo Vainamoinen makes music]] for women's choir and piano. The choir gets memorable melodies, playful counterpoint, and tricky rhythms. The piano part is beautiful, epic, and fun to play (which can't be said for a lot of choral literature). To elaborate, the piano isn't doubling the melody (which would be boring), but playing either huge rolled chords that span most of the instrument, jumpy staccato figures, or really fast trills. The huge chords are the most fun, though, so Kodály wisely puts them in the introduction and the dramatic ending. |
| 219 | * Korobeiniki, aka the ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' theme. OlderThanTheyThink. Most Westerners have only heard it in MIDI format on their Game Boys, but [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E3IWzDxPQU with full orchestra]]... AWESOME. It also gets an outstanding [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tapzwyMgziE remix]] for the ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Brawl'' soundtrack. |
| 220 | * "Elves' Hill" by Friedrich Kuhlau was written in 1828 to celebrate a wedding in the Danish Royal Family, and the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NpRttZ2XNc Ouverture]] has everything needed [[PatrioticFervor for such an occasion]]: tender, lyric folk-songy themes alternate with rousing brass and percussion chords, and the whole thing leads up to a finale where the manliness of the already [[RatedMForManly manly]] royal anthem "King Christian" is taken up to eleven. |
| 221 | * "Vesti la giubba" from ''Theatre/{{Pagliacci}}'' by Ruggero Leoncavallo is one of the most recognisable tenor arias ever composed, and was used to great effect in ''Film/TheUntouchables1987''. Enrico Caruso, widely regarded as the greatest tenor of the first half of the 20th century, made it a staple of his repertoire, the emotion of a man who has just discovered his wife loves another and now has to put on a literal [[SadClown clown's face]] to perform a Theatre/CommediaDellArte version of that very scenario coming through in every note. |
| 222 | * [[OminousLatinChanting Medieval Latin Chanting]] time. From the ''Libre Vermell de Montserrat'': [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5cWAXe9AkU Cuncti simun concantentes - AVE MARIA!]] |
| 223 | * Hungarian-American composer György Ligeti is one of the most fascinatingly avant-garde composers of the second half of the twentieth century, with his techniques of "micropolyphony" (in which individual ''members'', rather than sections, of an orchestra or choir have their own melodic lines) creating walls of sound in which melody, harmony, and rhythm dissipate so that shifts in timbre carry the music as different performers enter and exit. |
| 224 | ** The haunting orchestral work ''Atmosphères'' is one of Ligeti's most enduring compositions thanks to its use as the overture in ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', and it represents one of the high points of his use of micropolyphony and varying timbre for musical effect. You may not find yourself humming it, as there's no melody to hum, but it never quite leaves you. |
| 225 | ** If you'd rather listen to something more transparent, try [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6LmG9myHxA "The Devil's Staircase",]] the thirteenth entry in Ligeti's second book of piano études. It is effectively a musical equivalent of Creator/MCEscher's ''[[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Ascending_and_Descending.jpg Ascending and Descending]]'', rising higher and higher and yet turning in circles at the same time, until the person running up the endless staircase finally collapses from exhaustion. |
| 226 | * Hans Christian Lumbye was the music director and in-house composer for Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen for almost thirty years and wrote tons of festive music that earned him the nickname "The Johann Strauss of the North". It was well deserved: |
| 227 | ** Lumbye's most well-known work, the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rZQRT7Zj6I Champagne Gallop]]'', is full of popping corks and joyful melodies. If this does not cheer you up, nothing will. |
| 228 | ** Many composers have been inspired by trains, but few more charming than Lumbye in his ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdsgKp-ku0k Copenhagen Railroad Steam Gallop]]''. Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga... |
| 229 | ** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anMJWy5pGDY Britta Polka]]'', ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR6PDkZQ3dk Koppelia Polka-Mazurka]]'', and the poetic suite ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmHm0MvMfNA Drømmebilleder (Pictures from a Dream)]]'' are also worth a listen. |
| 230 | * Russian composer Sergey Lyapunov was a keen fan of Liszt's Transcendental Études (see corresponding entry), and thought it a shame that the Hungarian composer never realised his plan to complete a full set of 24 pieces in all the major and minor keys. So Lyapunov decided to complete the circle with his 12 Transcendental Études, Op.11, which hold their own very well against their more famous predecessors. |
| 231 | ** The spooky [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_m9wOidBvo No.2 in D-sharp minor ("Ronde des fantômes")]] is a perpetual motion whirlwind that darts in and out, until, with a final flourish, the ghosts that have been dancing for the last three minutes vanish into thin air, leaving us wondering if we imagined the whole thing. |
| 232 | ** The majestic [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3mKub2eVpY No.3 in B major ("Carillon")]] casts the sound of tolling bells against the melody of a Russian Orthodox hymn, building to a spectacular climax uniting both ideas that sounds as though it is written for at least three hands, and a coda in which the lowest B on the piano thunders like a giant bell under a clangor in the upper voices that gets louder and louder until a final release. |
| 233 | ** The turbulent [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pphKr-DZxcU No.4 in G-sharp minor ("Térek")]] is another furious perpetual motion etude, the melody and accompaniment both winding and twirling like the rushing river for which the piece is named, the energy only ebbing for two short passages marked "quasi flauto" and "quasi piccolo".[[note]] Like the fourth étude in the Liszt set ("Mazeppa"), Lyapunov took poetic inspiration for this piece; namely, Mikhail Lermontov's poem "The Gift of the Terek", in which the river presents the Caspian Sea with the "gift" of the lifeless body of a Cossack warrior who fell in battle. The first two stanzas of Lermontov's poem appear at the beginning of the score of Lyapunov's étude.[[/note]] |
| 234 | ** The violent [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPXSPfybJiE No.6 in C-sharp minor ("Tempête")]] is a captivating musical depiction of a thunderstorm that seems to be unleashing the very forces of Hell itself in a coda in which the minor key gloom remains firmly in place to the bitter end. |
| 235 | ** The expansive [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChoTngdCWfI No.8 in F-sharp minor ("Chant épique")]] starts by alternating a preview of the main melody with harplike figures to set the stage for an epic tale of adventure, drama, and romance (represented by a more easy-going interlude, the melody from which returns in boisterous fashion for the coda). |
| 236 | ** The whirlwind [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmETWjOU-do No.9 in D major ("Harpes éoliennes")]] is a successor to "Chasse-neige" from the Liszt set, with incredibly light and rapid oscillations representing the strings of Aeolian harps being set in motion by equally light and rapid wind-like figures, cast against a songlike melody. |
| 237 | ** The tempestuous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iilKZ92jhhg No.10 in B minor ("Lesghinka")]] is the most frequently performed of the set, and was conceived as a tribute to Lyapunov's teacher, Mily Balakirev, and especially to the older composer's "Islamey" (see corresponding entry), which uses the Lezginka dance as a basis for its outer sections. The exotic melodies and rhythms carry performer and listener alike on a remarkable journey that ends with a last gasp shift to an exuberant B major. |
| 238 | ** The playful yet fiendishly difficult [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du4JajhSVVA No.11 in G major ("Ronde des sylphes")]] is Lyapunov's answer to Liszt's "Feux-follets", the sprites in the title skipping and tripping up and down, back and forth, and, like the will-o'-the-wisp, disappearing as quickly as they appeared. |
| 239 | ** The giant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw-dTEPf8Yc No.12 in E minor]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5e1z7tXRYk ("Elégie en mémoire de François Liszt")]] is a tribute to the man who inspired it all, and a fitting coda to both sets of études, combining parallel octave thunder straight out of the Hungarian's own library with soaring and swooping melodies, building to a coda that, far from mourning that Liszt is dead, celebrates that he lived. |
| 240 | * Mexican music is underappreciated so here's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vwZAkfLKK8 Danzon no.2]] by Arturo Márquez. |
| 241 | * Pietro Mascagni may only be known today for his one-act opera ''Cavalleria Rusticana'' (a case of FirstInstallmentWins, as it was his first opera), but it packs an incredible amount of awesome into its short runtime. |
| 242 | ** It takes a tenor of Olympian fortitude to get through the "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuZo_J8MJlE Siciliana]]" serenade without rushing through it or cracking. It requires blasting off from a standing start, at top volume, at the very top of the tenor range, from backstage or sometimes ''under'' the stage. And it occurs in the middle of the ''overture'' to the opera. |
| 243 | ** The rich vocal harmonies of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxnQaAZsW2Y Regina coeli]]" (the "Easter hymn") are an utter delight for the ears. |
| 244 | ** The soprano aria "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLIRnkqg7wE Voi lo sapete]]" is a real tour de force for the singer playing the role of Santuzza, as she explains the opera's tangled romantic plot to her former lover's mother. |
| 245 | * William Mathias's ''Salvator Mundi'', a 7-part Christmas cycle for women's choir, piano, and percussion. Particularly recommended are the creepy [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx775Rq6ek Mirabile Mysterium]], the beautiful [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx775Rq6ek Lullay]], and the joyous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx775Rq6ek Welcome, Yule]]. |
| 246 | * Nikolai Medtner was a compatriot and friend of Music/SergeiRachmaninoff; both composers were talented pianists who continued to write in the Romantic idiom when it was widely seen as outdated, and both lived their final years in voluntary exile from post-Revolutionary Russia (Rachmaninoff in Beverly Hills, Medtner in London). Medtner's music has been largely overshadowed by Rachmaninoff's, as it generally requires several listens to fully understand, but once given a chance, it reveals many dimensions of awesome. |
| 247 | ** Among his three piano concerti, the most spectacular are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3hrXBvRass No.2 in C minor,]][[note]] Medtner dedicated the work to Rachmaninoff, who returned the favour by dedicating his fourth piano concerto to Medtner.[[/note]] with its sweeping, technically brutal opening movement and its charming second movement which leads straight into the sprightly finale, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI3oNmBFzOU No.3 in E minor]] (''Concerto-ballade''), whose first half is based on Mikhail Lermontov's poem "Rusalka", the story of the love of water spirits for a drowned knight, and whose second half is an expansion of the story by Medtner showing the knight's eventual redemption, the music vast in scope and ingenious in construction from start to finish. |
| 248 | ** Medtner's fourteen piano sonatas include several which bend the traditional definition of the term "sonata" (they often refer to single-movement works, sometimes part of larger suites, that use the "sonata allegro" structure of introducing and developing melodic ideas), but they collectively represent the Romantic piano sonata's last hurrah, and include some of his most stunning compositions. |
| 249 | *** Medtner got off to a flying start with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8ZfH0xBVhg the Op.5 sonata in F minor,]] the only one to follow a traditional four-movement structure - and even then, the last three movements are played continuously. It already shows Medtner's almost Lisztian gift for exploring many facets of the same melodic ideas and for using those ideas across movements; the haunted Intermezzo and prayer-inspired slow movement end with the same coda in different keys, the second theme of the exposition from the first movement plays the same role (transposed from minor to major) in the finale, and fragments from the first three movements show up in the last to bring things full circle before the triumphant, major-key coda. |
| 250 | *** The most popular of Medtner's piano sonatas in his lifetime was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl-wMyox7QU the Op.22 sonata in G minor,]] a compact work in a single movement with a slow F minor interlude that includes some of his most endearing harmonies. The exposition and recapitulation that frame it take some of their cues from the sonata's slow introduction, a technique of thematic development that Medtner was fond of using. |
| 251 | *** The ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQvmCWyXe5E Sonata-skazka]]''[[note]] Often translated as "Fairy Tale Sonata".[[/note]] in C minor and the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qcqKJ8XwNQ Night Wind]]'' sonata in E minor were published as a pair, but could scarcely be more different. Where the ''Sonata-skazka'' is a short, three-movement work that moves from a compact sonata allegro to a slow rondo to a finale that integrates themes from the first two movements, the ''Night Wind'' sonata is a vast, single-movement epic, the longest of Medtner's piano sonatas and a masterpiece of thematic presentation and development. The first half is a sonata allegro in [[UncommonTime 15/8 time]], while the second half introduces new ideas alongside the melodies of the first half, until they all dissolve into a whirlwind in the piece's final pages. |
| 252 | *** Medtner published three suites under the title "Forgotten Melodies"; [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrI4yj1VQyc the first]] opens with the ''Sonata reminiscenza'' in A minor, a wistfully nostalgic single-movement work that has become his most popular sonata. The introduction is woven through several other pieces in the set, most notably the concluding "Alla reminiscenza" in which the motif of recollection finally transitions from A minor to A major to bring a sense of closure deliberately withheld from the sonata itself. Meanwhile, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJ0HFjipNc the second]] "Forgotten Melodies" suite ends with the diptych of the serene "Canzona matinata", with a troubled minor-key interlude, and the violent single-movement ''Sonata tragica'' in C minor, in which the minor-key melody from the preceding piece is cleverly woven into the exposition and development, only to be swept aside by the pessimistic recapitulation based on two very different versions of the same melody. |
| 253 | *** The ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ALQNFMxrS0 Sonata romantica]]'' in B-flat minor and ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7eAEjxpAQ0 Sonata minacciosa]]'' in F minor were published as a pair, and though more similar than the ''Sonata-skazka'' (which is quoted near the end of the ''Sonata romantica'') and ''Night Wind'' sonata, they are still very different works. The ''Sonata romantica'' is in four continuous movements; the opening Romanza is tinged with sadness, but builds spectacularly to the opening crashing chords of the angry Scherzo. The latter finally stomps off into the shadows, only for a single note to linger on into the reflective Meditazione, which raises more questions than it answers as it leads straight into a finale that, in both the development and the coda, unites the themes of all four movements in a masterstroke, with the sonata coming full circle as the first melody heard becomes the last as well. The single-movement ''Sonata minacciosa'' is a more experimental and chromatic work; the fugue at the centre of its development and its final shift to F major (where the ''Sonata romantica'' remains anchored in the minor mode throughout) are especially potent. |
| 254 | ** The last of his three violin sonatas, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11P6ZWmBnLM No.3 in E minor]] (''Sonata epica''), is every bit as epic as its subtitle suggests. The massive first movement is almost an entire musical journey on its own, by turns mysterious, agitated, jaunty, triumphant, sombre, anguished, with many chances for the violinist to show off technical brilliance and emotional sensitivity, and it contains many musical ideas which recur in the later movements. The tense scherzo, heart-rending slow movement, and tragedy-to-triumph journey of the finale round off 40 very exhilarating minutes. |
| 255 | * "To this we've come" from ''Theatre/TheConsul'' by Gian Carlo Menotti. Passionate, desperate, and incredibly powerful. |
| 256 | * Music/OlivierMessiaen's music is characterised by a bold approach to scales and tonality which he described as "Modes of limited transposition", and while it takes some getting into, it's worth the effort. |
| 257 | ** The crown jewel of Messiaen's chamber music is ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSVu1zbF94 Quatour pour la fin du temps]]'' (''Quartet for the End of Time'') for piano, clarinet, violin, and cello, composed while he was a POW in Stalag VIII-A during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and inspired by a passage from the Literature/BookOfRevelation. Its eight movements span a wide spectrum of emotions, from joyful anticipation of being received by God, to longing for a simpler time, to violence and chaos depicting the seven trumpets announcing the end of time. Messiaen matches the diverse emotions with diverse instrumental textures; the solemn third movement, "Abîme des oiseaux", is an interpretive ''tour de force'' for solo clarinet, the piano sits out the cheekily humorous fourth movement Intermède, and the heartfelt fifth and eighth movements, "Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus" and "Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus", are duets for piano with cello and violin respectively. |
| 258 | ** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovMnmIoZh74 Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus]]'' (''Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus'') is the greatest of Messiaen's solo piano compositions, a two-hour testament to both the "modes of limited transposition" and the composer's deep Catholic faith. The twenty pieces in the set approach the "subject" of the infant Jesus from every direction imaginable, yet are bound together by several recurring themes, creating an extraordinary sense of both unity and diversity at the same time. |
| 259 | ** Among Messiaen's orchestral works, the apex is the monumental ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Qh9Tttngk Turangalîla-Symphonie]]'', an epic in ten movements for piano, ondes Martenot (an early electronic instrument producing theremin-like sounds), and expanded orchestra.[[note]] The word "Turangalîla" is a portmanteau of two Sanskrit words, ''turanga'' and ''lîla'', and roughly translates as "Love song of time". And yes, ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' fans, the character of Turanga Leela is named after this piece.[[/note]] The piece is inspired not, as is usual for Messiaen, by Catholicism, but instead by the great love stories, especially ''Literature/TristanAndIseult'', and the most important unifying musical idea across the symphony is nicknamed the "love theme". Highlights include numerous technically blistering solo cadenzas for the piano; the dizzying dance of the fifth movement, "Joie du Sang des Étoiles", in which the lovers' union is imagined as a cosmic transformation; the transcendent sixth movement, "Jardin du Sommeil d'amour", which sees the "love theme" receive its heart-stopping first full presentation; the savage, atonal seventh movement, "Turangalîla 2"; and the boundless sense of joy and fulfillment as the "love theme" is belted out by the full orchestra in the finale. |
| 260 | * Modest Mussorgsky may only be remembered for two pieces, but what pieces they are: |
| 261 | ** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5pnoSgIuVo Night on Bald Mountain]]", used for a memorable (if nightmare-inducing) segment of the original ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}''. There's also the even rarer [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqNzOG34fKQ original version]] that included the operatic vocals and it actually sounds even better. |
| 262 | ** ''Pictures at an Exhibition'' sounds a bit thin in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMg_A8eYweY original version for solo piano]], but then Maurice Ravel came along and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXy50exHjes scored it for orchestra]] and found all manner of subtleties of colour and texture in the suite widely viewed as Mussorgsky's masterpiece. Particularly amazing bits are the instantly hummable (if deliberately rhythmically uneven) "Promenade" theme that re-appears throughout the suite,[[note]] Fans of 1980s Britcoms may recognise it as the theme to ''Series/TheNewStatesman''.[[/note]] the alternately frantic and sinister "Gnomus", the hauntingly nostalgic "The Old Castle" (Ravel gave the melody in his version to an alto saxophone, a rarity in orchestral music at the time), the plodding "Bydlo" (Ravel gives the ox-cart driver's song to a solo tuba, also a rarity at the time), the frenzied and otherworldly "Hut on Fowl's Legs", and the majestic conclusion that is "The Great Gate of Kiev", especially the moment when the "Promenade" theme enters about halfway through. |
| 263 | * Conlon Nancarrow was a modern composer who liked to write pieces that no human could possibly play. These pieces might be impossibly fast or precise, contrapuntal lines at different tempi (and strange tempo ratios), and some very thick counterpoint. Obviously, if nobody could play these pieces, there could be a problem in finding performers. His solution? He wrote them for player piano, a piano that plays itself. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyRCdyNb3Eo The results]] are startling and rather spectacular. He did this partially as an extension of the harmonic theories of Henry Cowell, previously mentioned on this page. |
| 264 | * Carl Nielsen is the most widely known composer to come out of Denmark, and while he may not enjoy the same fame as his counterparts in Norway and Finland, Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius, he still wrote a great deal of awesome music. |
| 265 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfS7TVQhQTw second movement]] of his Symphony No.3, ''Espansiva'', is a balsamic Pastorale, with a soprano and a baritone vocalizing softly in the background. Sublime. |
| 266 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYrCiE7U0_0 Symphony No.4]], ''Inextinguishable'', more than lives up to its subtitle (referring to the composer's appraisal of the human spirit as, well, inextinguishable), especially in the finale when Nielsen calls for the thunder of DramaticTimpani from both sides of the stage, the timpanists almost duelling with each other. |
| 267 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN24JMf72Ck second movement]] of his Symphony No.6, ''Semplice'', is delightfully weird: a small group of wind and percussion instruments goofs around and bumps into each other, finds a melody snippet or two, gets heckled by a yawning trombone, and then fizzle out. |
| 268 | ** His [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESgpQ0fCHSQ Clarinet Concerto]] from 1928 features a battle between a poetic, wildly mood-swinging clarinet and an aggressive snare drum and is a strong contender to the title "Best clarinet concerto not written by [[Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart Mozart]]". |
| 269 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llljRefLiRw "The Fog is Lifting",]] from the incidental music to ''Moderen'', is a beautiful little nature piece for flute and harp. It is a StandardSnippet on Danish television for idyllic landscapes, and rightfully so. |
| 270 | ** Unusually for a composer of orchestral music, Nielsen was also a popular composer of melodies for songs and hymns. He wrote music to more than 200 songs, many of which are still sung today. The most popular one is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPFZh-6M7Pw "Jens Vejmand"]] (Jens the Roadman), where the melody is a perfect match to the quiet socially indignant text about a poor, old roadman, who spends his whole life paving the roads for others with stones, but is only given an old, rotten board to mark his grave. |
| 271 | [[/folder]] |
| 272 | |
| 273 | [[folder:Composers O-Z]] |
| 274 | * Flemish composer Johannes Ockeghem's ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPBxSbM9cSo Missa prolationum]]'' is one of the masterpieces of late 1400s polyphony, consisting almost entirely of progressive canons, starting with the voices pairing off to sing unison mensuration canons (in which the voices sing the same melody, but in different time signatures, so that they get further out of time with each other as the music unfolds), then gradually widening the interval between the voices by one step per movement, until they are separated by an octave by the "Osanna" in the Sanctus. Even more remarkably, he notated the canons by writing out the melodies ''once'' and using the relative positions of the C clefs to indicate which voice started on which note, and different time signatures to indicate which voice sang at which speed. And it isn't just an intricately-constructed contrapuntal tapestry; the melodies, which are all believed to be Ockeghem's own (departing from the usual practice of using Gregorian chant or secular melodies as the foundation of counterpoint), are absolute delights that are sure to carry the listener to realms of pure bliss. |
| 275 | * Music/JacquesOffenbach is one of the most enduringly popular French composers[[note]] Sort of; as his family name implies, he was born in Cologne in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, but he was based in Paris from the age of 14 onward.[[/note]] from the generation between Hector Berlioz and Gabriel Fauré, and he is one of the most influential theatrical composers from 1800 onward. |
| 276 | ** It may be impossible to listen to the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQRnHvw3is Galop]] (AKA "The Can-Can") from ''Orpheus in the Underworld'' without picturing ChorusGirls straight out of a painting by Creator/EdgarDegas or Creator/HenriDeToulouseLautrec, but that's what makes it awesome, with a level of sheer energy that is infectious enough to tempt many listeners into joining the dancers on the stage. |
| 277 | ** Offenbach didn't live to see the premiere of his opera ''Theatre/TheTalesOfHoffmann'', and so he never saw the powerful effect the duet [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DVkGTbIBR0 "Belle nuit",]] more commonly known as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7czptgEvvU Barcarolle,]] can have on an audience, its gently swaying accompaniment evoking images of Venetian gondoliers making their way down the city's canals even before the melody first appears. |
| 278 | * Tarik O'Reagan needs a page of her own for her awesome Latin chant revamps. For example, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XegceffiX0M Columba Aspexit]]. |
| 279 | * Carl Orff may only be remembered for his song cycle of 23 of the 254 poems from ''Music/CarminaBurana'', but it has still given us enough awesome music to ensure that his memory will endure.[[note]] Many listeners are surprised to learn that ''Carmina Burana'' is actually part of a triptych of song cycles collectively known as ''Trionfi''; the others include ''Catulli Carmina'', a setting of some of the love poems of the ancient Roman poet Catullus, and ''Trionfo di Afrodite'', a depiction of the rituals for a Greco-Roman wedding. [[FirstInstallmentWins Neither of the other two is anywhere as famous as]] ''Carmina Burana''.[[/note]] |
| 280 | ** The opening (and closing) chorus, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWiyKgeGWx0 "O Fortuna",]] is one of the most instantly recognisable pieces in all of classical music, and with good reason. From the opening with the full chorus bellowing "O! FOR-TU-NA! VEL-UT LU-NA! STA-TU VARIABILIS!" to the hushed, otherworldly murmuring of the rest of the first verse and the second to the "all Hell breaks loose" ''fury'' of the third verse (starting with "Sors salutis! Et virtutis!") that rushes toward a final triumphant shift from minor to major, it is a truly transcendent experience for performer and listener alike. |
| 281 | ** "In Taberna Quando Sumus", an [[OminousLatinChanting Ominous Latin]] ''drinking song''. In the tavern, according to the words, no-one thinks of death; they're just there to drink and gamble - some will win, some will lose. The song then treats us to two long lists - one of the people whose health is toasted by the drinkers, and one of the identities of the drinkers themselves. Finally, the singers say that they are the ones who are cursed and are destitute in spite of all the merry drinking that goes on, and curse those who slander them. |
| 282 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvI9R16I6SU "Tempus est iocundum"]] might just be the happiest song ever written, a celebration of the exhilaration of newfound love. |
| 283 | --->"O, o, o,\ |
| 284 | Totus floreo!\ |
| 285 | Iam amore virginali totus ardeo!\ |
| 286 | Novus, novus, novus amor est\ |
| 287 | Quo pereo, quo pereo, quo pereo!"[[note]] Translation: "O, o, o, I am bursting out all over! I am burning all over with first love! New, new, new love it is that I am dying of, that I am dying of, that I am dying of!"[[/note]] |
| 288 | * Johann Pachelbel is a OneHitWonder ''par excellence'' in classical music, which is a shame, as his music goes so much deeper than the one piece by which most listeners know him. |
| 289 | ** [[Music/PachelbelsCanon The "one hit" in question is his]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlprozGcs80 Canon in D]], another of the most instantly recognisable works in all of classical music. It is sometimes joked that if a classical enthusiast is asked to identify a piece of classical music used in film or television, 90% of the time the answer is either Pachelbel's Canon or [[Music/CarminaBurana Orff's "O Fortuna"]]. But as overexposed as it may be, it still represents a stunning display of counterpoint, the three violin lines fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw throughout while also tracing a clear melodic journey over the two-measure ground bass (which is so ubiquitous beyond the canon that [[PachelbelsCanonProgression there is a trope dedicated to it]]). |
| 290 | *** Like the melody, not so keen on the violins? [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkuWlSioQpQ Try a vocal arrangement for boy sopranos.]] |
| 291 | *** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM This comedic take]] lampshades just how prevalent the PachelbelsCanonProgression is in Western culture. |
| 292 | ** Interested in seeing what there is to Pachelbel besides the Canon? Start with his keyboard works. |
| 293 | *** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bof_0yy0Qb8 Hexachordum Apollinis]]'' is a collection of six sets of variations on original themes,[[note]] With the possible exception of the sixth aria, "Aria Sebaldina", which has been speculated to be based on a now lost melody associated with Pachelbel's then-employer, St. Sebaldus' Church in Nuremberg.[[/note]] and as well as codifying the practice of composers writing variations on their own themes rather than on existing religious or secular melodies, they represent the apex of Pachelbel's keyboard output. The technical and emotional spectrum covered by each set of variations is truly remarkable, as is Pachelbel's ingenious use of stringed instrument textures in some of the more elaborate variations. |
| 294 | *** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_2WfX4CSu8 Chaconne in F minor]] is one of Pachelbel's finest organ compositions, presenting 22 variations on the same ground bass figure (which retreats into the background during some of the variations) that pick apart and re-assemble the harmonic progression rather than offering different perspectives on the melody. |
| 295 | * Niccolò Paganini is widely regarded as one of the most technically gifted performers ever to pick up a violin (to the point that a popular rumour at the time was that he had sold his soul to the Devil to play so well), and he composed music so that he could perform it himself and show off his technique. The awesome factor is inevitable. |
| 296 | ** Paganini's most famous compositions are the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8j1x3pTOyo 24 Caprices, Op.1,]] and the most famous of them is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJymvZiEFeo the fiendishly tough No.24 in A minor, here played by Jascha Heifetz.]] There's a reason why no one is allowed to surpass Paganini in sheer awesomeness of all that he could do with a violin. As for Heifetz, his playing of this piece is something very unique. To make it more awesome, this is among the most widely viewed classical videos on Youtube, and Heifetz himself runs into several millions of views overall which further cements his place as one of the greatest violinists ever. |
| 297 | ** Paganini's six violin concerti are sometimes accused of sacrificing musicality on the altar of virtuosity, but there are so many "How is that even possible??" moments in them that it's hard not to be spellbound. From the first performances, audiences were astonished by the technique Paganini needed to dash off long double stop scales in thirds, sixths, and octaves, double stop harmonics, seemingly endless passages right at the top of the violin's register that require incredibly precise intonation, rapid fire pizzicato, and so much more. The concerti also stand out for their pioneering use of "Turkish band" instruments such as bass drums, cymbals, and triangles. And as for musicality, you'll find plenty of that in the most famous movement from the concerti, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaxHZxvmSwQ the finale to No.2 in B minor,]] known as "La Campanella" because of its use of a small bell (usually rendered using a triangle). Music/FranzLiszt - the piano's answer to Paganini - liked it so much he assembled an equally popular arrangement for solo piano (see his subpage for details). |
| 298 | * Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina lived during the Renaissance and is considered basically the best composer of the styles contained therein. Specifically he mastered Renaissance polyphony, the art of setting the same melody into multiple voices, letting them start at different times and letting them lock together, in chord and syllable, almost by accident. There is almost nothing under his name that isn't beautiful. Try the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRfF7W4El60 Missa "Papae Marcelli"]] as a starting point; composed after the Catholic Church under Pope Marcellus II raised ever louder objections to the use of secular melodies in liturgical music, it instead uses fragments of Gregorian chant as its melodic building blocks, and shows that whatever Palestrina used as the thread for his contrapuntal tapestries, the results were pure heavenly beauty. The "Amen" at the conclusion of the Credo is especially glorious. |
| 299 | * Christian Petzold might not be a particularly famous name, but there is a ''[[StandardSnippet very]]'' famous piece ''to'' that name: the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUA_TrKqVXI Minuet in G major]], which was [[MisattributedSong attributed to Bach until the 1970s]] due to its inclusion in the Anna Magdalena Notebook in Bach's handwriting; ol' J.S. neglected to list a composer for the piece in the notebook. |
| 300 | * Henry Purcell is widely regarded as England's greatest composer from before 1800, for many reasons: |
| 301 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWRcx9LHBJU Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary]]. It's mostly known as the [[SoundtrackDissonance unfitting]] opening theme in the film of ''Film/AClockworkOrange''. |
| 302 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3wAarmPYKU When I am laid in earth]], the famous lament from ''Dido and Aeneas''. Heart-breakingly beautiful... |
| 303 | * Jean-Philippe Rameau is second only to François Couperin among the most beloved French composers of the Baroque era. |
| 304 | ** Among Rameau's surviving keyboard suites, the G minor suite stands out for almost entirely comprising character pieces, few more hypnotically fascinating than [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDsOFR4XVwk L'egiptienne,]] its whirlwind arpeggios and crossed hands creating a powerful image of a captivating, alluring north African girl. |
| 305 | ** The opera ''Les indes galantes'' was inspired by a visit to the court of Louis XV by a delegation led by Chief Agapit Chicagou of the Mitchigamea. It was coolly received in its earliest performances, but Rameau still had faith in the music, and repurposed it as a suite of concert pieces for solo harpsichord or orchestra. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvd4tMkFHc Rondeau]] (sometimes subtitled "Les sauvages") is one of the most popular pieces from the opera, its driving rhythm anchoring a remarkable meeting of the minds between Native American and European artistic traditions. |
| 306 | * While [[http://members.home.nl/petravz/Alfred%20Reed%20-%20Russian%20Christmas%20Music.mp3 the entire piece]] is epic, the Cathedral Chorus (ending) of Alfred Reed's [[http://www.imeem.com/wiwiey/music/uHS50tCY/alfred-reed-russian-christmas-musicmp3 Russian Christmas Music]] is simply awe-inspiring. |
| 307 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0 "Dies Irae"]] part of the Requiem Mass has inspired awesomeness in composers for centuries, as a number of entries on this page attest. "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is an example of a popular song inspired by the Dies Irae. |
| 308 | * Respighi's ''Pini di Roma'' - so awesome, it influenced Music/JohnWilliams (and even more awesome when it accompanies [[WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}} humpback whales flying into the Aurora Borealis]]). Of special note is the final movement, [[http://youtu.be/TQwGTe_MueM "I pini della Via Appia" (The Pines of Appian Way)]], which has been described as follows: |
| 309 | --> Misty dawn: a legion advances along the Via Appia in the brilliance of the newly-risen sun. Respighi wanted the ground to tremble under the footsteps of his army and he instructs the organ to play bottom B flat on 8', 16' and 32' organ pedal. The score calls for ''buccine'' - ancient trumpets that are usually represented by flugelhorns. Trumpets peal and the consular army rises in triumph to the Capitoline Hill. |
| 310 | * The entirety of Liliane Riboni's "Jeanne d'Arc" album, a ConceptAlbum retelling the story of UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc, Liliane herself in the role of Joan. For anyone lucky enough to own or track down a copy of this obscure record/CD/cassette, every second is epic. From "Ouverture" which gives us a taste of everything to come, "Lettre Aux Anglais (Un Grand Hahay)", a song that could only be described as 15th century StadiumRock, the villain song "Pierre Cauchon", and the epic tear jerker finale "Rouén, Seras-Tu Mon Tombeau?", this album has everything that makes a classical album epic. |
| 311 | * Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is one of the more well regarded of the "Mighty Handful" of five Russian nationalist composers of the late 19th century, much of his music transcending Russian borders to have universal appeal. |
| 312 | ** By far Rimsky-Korsakov's most famous composition is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYAJopwEYv8 "Flight of the Bumblebee"]], an orchestral interlude from his opera ''The Tale of Tsar Saltan'' that is almost synonymous with music that hurtles along at breakneck speed and has been arranged as a solo for almost every instrument in the orchestra (and some outside it). |
| 313 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FHFJ0lU9Us Russian Easter Festival Overture]]. Part beautiful, part powerful and energetic, part takes your breath away... It's quite possibly one of the most epic overtures ever written. |
| 314 | ** Although the four-way 1872 collaboration between the members of the "Mighty Handful" (excluding Balakirev) on an operatic setting of Viktor Krylov's libretto for ''Mlada'' never quite reached completion,[[note]] Most of the music was completed, but the work was never staged. Because the composers re-used most of their music in other contexts, to this day there has never been a published version of the four-person collaboration on ''Mlada''.[[/note]] Rimsky-Korsakov composed his own setting of the libretto in 1889-90. The most celebrated movement from his opera-ballet is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAXEdXeSM7I Procession of the Nobles]] from Act 2, its sense of dignity and ceremony making it a popular processional march for graduations and the opening ceremonies of sporting events, including the [[UsefulNotes/TheWorldCup 1994 FIFA World Cup.]] |
| 315 | ** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lEx0ytE_0 Scheherezade]]'', Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic setting of stories from ''Literature/ArabianNights'', is as epic in scope as the tales that inspired it. Highlights include the sumptuous second movement theme and variations, "The Kalandar Prince", and the emotionally intense love theme from the third movement, "The Young Prince and the Princess", one of the composer's most instantly familiar melodies and one of the suite's unifying musical ideas. |
| 316 | ** ''[[https://youtu.be/Lh6mDL-VwYw Capriccio Espagnol]]'' is a love letter to Spanish folk melodies, with plenty of cool orchestrations (such as strings being asked to imitate guitars). |
| 317 | * ''El Condor Pasa'', by the Peruvian composer Daniel Alomia Robles. So epic that Paul Simon inadvertently ripped it off when he was told it was a traditional tune, but the composer's son sued him for it in the friendliest way possible and the misunderstanding was cleared up. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVMXEnL8liM The Twelve Girls Band arrangement]] is arguably the most awesome, especially from 2.56 to the end. |
| 318 | * Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo created some of the most enduringly popular works for classical guitar, which is all the more remarkable when one notes he didn't actually play the instrument (he was a pianist, and had been nearly blind since he was 3 years old). Far and away his most popular work is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye-FvKCZp3s Concierto de Aranjuez,]] inspired by the palace gardens at Aranjuez.[[note]] The newly installed fascist government under Franco required that music composed in Spain either celebrate, or be open to interpretation as celebrating, the virtues of the new political situation; luckily for Rodrigo, they didn't see his celebration of the palace gardens of Habsburg monarchs as an ideological threat.[[/note]] While the doleful central Adagio is so powerful it is often performed separately from the outer movements, said outer movements are full of life, wit, and charm, creating vivid imagery of being surrounded by the serenity of nature. |
| 319 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxIr_cvUfwM second movement]] of John Rutter's ''Gloria''. |
| 320 | * Camille Saint-Saëns may be most well-remembered for ''Carnival of the Animals'' (a work so different to the rest of his output that he withheld it from publication until after his death), but the awesomeness in his music goes far deeper. |
| 321 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCZq33BrOo Symphony No. 3 in C minor]], commonly referred to as the "Organ" symphony because it uses that instrument.[[note]]Although the term "organ symphony" usually refers to a symphony ''for'' an organ rather than ''with'' an organ.[[/note]] The most awesome moment is the entrance of the organ in the second half of the second (and final) movement, going from near silence in the orchestra to the full organ in an instant; it also marks the point where the music shifts to C major. It was memorably used as the ending theme in ''Film/{{Babe}}''. |
| 322 | ** "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix", from his opera ''Samson et Dalila''. Seductive and perfect. Also the wild Bacchanal from Act III. |
| 323 | ** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LupmmElMoI Danse Macabre]]". The GrimReaper rocking out to xylophone (in one of its first prominent appearances in western classical music) and PsychoStrings? Yes please! Play this on Halloween. Loudly. |
| 324 | ** Where ''Carnival of the Animals'' itself is concerned, there's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcAJpsWWuIY Fossils]], a gleeful parody of "Danse Macabre", complete with xylophone. And [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsD0FDLOKGA Aquarium]], almost the perfect accompaniment for scuba diving or spacewalk scenes. And then there's the vibrant, humorous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18dFGcejbTQ Finale.]] |
| 325 | ** Saint-Saëns composed five piano concerti, of which the most popular, with good reason, is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v57cJC6broI No.2 in G minor]], moving from an expansive, slow opening movement to a playful scherzo and a frenzied, tarantella-like finale that offers a real showcase for the pianist's skill. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IEYtta_ZsI No.5 in F major, the "Egyptian",]] is also a half-hour of awesome from the sweeping grandeur of the first movement to the by turns mysterious and genial slow movement (which uses the overtones produced by the piano strings to remarkable effect in two passages) to the bouncy, virtuosic finale. |
| 326 | ** Saint-Saëns also composed a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv6XFrQHthU Requiem Mass]], perhaps one of his more underperformed works, in memory of his friend and patron Albert Libon. Compared with other Requiem Mass settings of his time, which tend to be more symphonic (think of the Requiem Masses by Verdi and Dvořák, to give two examples), Saint-Saëns' Requiem is relatively shorter and more subdued so it can be played in a liturgical setting. The resulting piece is sorrowful, yet it is expressed beautifully, especially in the "Requiem - Kyrie" movement. |
| 327 | * Music/ErikSatie's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7DBoiyBoJ8 "Trois Gymnopédies"]]. Three short, but insanely beautiful pieces. Fittingly, many modern media use them, often the first, to enhance the impact of sad or emotional moments, to great effect; examples include ''VideoGame/MOTHER3'', ''[[Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', and ''Film/MyDinnerWithAndre''. |
| 328 | * Domenico Scarlatti, a contemporary of Bach and Handel, wrote many, many sonatas for the harpsichord (555 if we go by the most widely used catalogue, compiled in 1953 by American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick), but special mention goes to the whimsically named [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4x86sE8ygg "Cat's Fugue" in G minor]]. The story goes that Scarlatti had a pet kitty named Pulcinella that liked to walk across the keyboard. The unusual melody line that serves as the main subject is said to be a phrase the cat unwittingly played one time, which Scarlatti [[SelfImposedChallenge decided to write down and build a fugue on]]. |
| 329 | * The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJYuwhU0qZE Concert Etude in A-flat, Op.1 No.2]] by Paul de Schlözer is considered one of the most difficult piano pieces ever written and is four minutes of pure awesomeness. It is all the more impressive since the two Op.1 etudes are the only known pieces written by de Schlözer.[[note]] This has given rise to a popular story that the pieces were actually written by the more well known piano composer Moritz Moszkowski, who then lost the manuscript to de Schlözer in a card game. The A-flat etude does sound a bit similar to Moszkowski's Étude de Virtuosité in A-flat, Op. 72, No. 11, but then again it is no crime to be inspired by the work of others.[[/note]] |
| 330 | * Austrian-born Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most influential composers from the early 20th century, if also one of the most divisive; he founded the Second Viennese School, which effectively tore down conventional tonality, melody, and harmony and replaced them with the twelve-tone technique, a musical language that emphasises each tone of the scale equally.[[note]] Strictly speaking, this approach was not completely new, having originally been codified by Schoenberg's fellow Austrian Josef Matthias Hauer in 1919, but Schoenberg is regarded as having popularised it.[[/note]] |
| 331 | ** Even in the decades since his death, Schoenberg's iconoclastic approach to tonality has struggled to gain mainstream acceptance, which may be why his most frequently performed and recorded work is one of his earliest: the lush ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq7-VuPcA_Y Verklärte Nacht]]'', a half-hour string sextet in one movement inspired by the poem of the same name by Richard Dehmel in which a woman confesses to her lover that she is pregnant by another man.[[note]] If the music wasn't controversial enough, adapting a poem that dared not to condemn sex outside marriage was even more so.[[/note]] It places one foot in traditional tonality, recognisably moving from D minor to D major to signify the woman's lover happily accepting her pregnancy, but its advanced metric and harmonic language - including an inverted ninth chord that wasn't classified by any contemporary harmony texts, leading to a joke that it didn't even ''exist'' - makes it clear that Schoenberg had a wealth of ideas about how to move music forward from the very start. |
| 332 | ** His vocal-heavy ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWai0SEpUQ A Survivor from Warsaw]]'' is a bleak piece was written in tribute to Holocaust survivors. |
| 333 | * Alexander Scriabin is in a class apart among his contemporaries. In his youth, he composed in a Romantic vein inspired by Chopin and Liszt, but by the end of his short life, he was writing dissonant, atonal music closer in spirit to Schoenberg. He was guided by his keen synaesthesia, which caused him to associate the tones of the scale to colours, so that in his mind, a musical composition doubled as a work of visual art.[[note]] Scriabin's diagnosis as a synaesthete has been called into question by later researchers.[[/note]] |
| 334 | ** Among Scriabin's early piano works, one of the most frequently performed is the technically brutal [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7SW49y4WQE Etude in D-sharp minor, Op.8 No.12,]] a frenzy of double octaves, repeated notes, stretches of up to a perfect eleventh, and acrobatic leaps in both hands. It was one of Russian virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ClDFmFmr0k favourite encores,]] and his performance must be seen, as well as heard, to be believed. |
| 335 | ** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAnVrdQ3qFk The Poem of Ecstasy]]'', described by the author Henry Miller as "like a bath of ice, cocaine, and rainbows", stands at the border between "middle Scriabin" and "late Scriabin". Although this paean to the creative spirit and its place in the cosmos follows a traditional sonata form outline, it takes a bolder approach to harmony based around whole tone scales, allowing Scriabin to cloud the listener's sense of tonality. The climactic final C major chord, for which the orchestra is joined by organ and low bells, may go on for over 15 seconds in many performances and recordings, but such a transcendent buildup requires something unique as a resolution, and Scriabin more than delivers. |
| 336 | ** Scriabin's synaesthetic approach to music receives its most intense realisation with ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GEwho6Dbnc Prometheus: The Poem of Fire]]'', the score of which includes instructions for lights of various colours to fill the performance space as the piece unfolds courtesy of an instrument of his own design called the ''clavier à lumières'', a keyboard that projects coloured light according to the notes that are played.[[note]] The ''clavier à lumières'' has been only very occasionally used in performances of the work, with many different approaches taken to the integration of coloured lights with the music over the years.[[/note]] The music itself, which is only loosely inspired by the myth of Prometheus, is a stellar example of Scriabin's later, dissonant style, with the only conventionally tonal moment coming with the final F-sharp major chord for piano and full orchestra. |
| 337 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj1luIOQHLw Piano Sonata No.9]] (''Black Mass'')[[note]] Scriabin did not confer this nickname (a counterpoint to Sonata No.7, which he called ''White Mass''), but he approved of it.[[/note]] exemplifies the atonal style of Scriabin's final years, its heavy use of chromaticism and minor ninths creating a sense of unease from the very opening measures. The piece builds in intensity and menace until it climaxes with a grotesque march, then recedes back into the shadows whence it emerged. |
| 338 | * Jean Sibelius is Finland's most famous composer, and his music became an integral part of the country's search for its national identity in the early 20th century, but even non-Finns can find plenty to love about his music. |
| 339 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci3RPAOFok4 Finlandia]], one of many tone poems doubling as a love letter to Sibelius' homeland. |
| 340 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfBTiv3WGU0 The Swan of Tuonela]] guards the realm of the dead in Finnish mythology, and Sibelius' depiction of the singing swan gliding slowly over the dark waters of Tuonela is wonderful. |
| 341 | ** Sibelius is widely held to be one of the 20th century's greatest symphonists, and with good reason; he experimented with form in a way few composers had done since Beethoven, and still managed to fill every page with charming melodies and emotional power. |
| 342 | *** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPd9znWgGLk Symphony No.2 in D major]] puzzled early critics, but audiences loved it, from the first movement in which the main musical ideas initially appear as fragments and only assemble into a coherent whole during the development (an inversion of traditional sonata allegro structure), through the haunting slow movement, the urgent scherzo, and the finale whose grandeur and eventual triumph is widely regarded as a musical depiction of Finland's struggle for independence[[note]] A claim Sibelius always denied; the inspiration for the symphony was not Finland but Italy, to which the composer's patron, Baron Axel Carpelan, sent him on holiday in the autumn and winter of 1901.[[/note]] and optimism for the future. It remains one of his most popular symphonies. |
| 343 | *** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAFouzo3ZHQ Symphony No.5 in E-flat major]] is the main competitor with No.2 for the title of Sibelius' most popular symphony.[[note]]It is also his only multi-movement symphony to have every movement in a major key (the first and third movements are in E-flat, while the second is in G).[[/note]] From an opening movement that fuses sonata allegro and scherzo in a way that defies analysis to this day, to a serene slow movement framed as a set of variations, to the soaring "swan call" finale that ends with the final cadence being played as six staggered outbursts from the full orchestra, it sticks in the memory long after the final unison E-flat.[[note]]Sibelius came up with this ending while he was making his final revisions on this symphony in 1919.[[/note]] |
| 344 | *** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg7WsTuxMSQ Symphony No.7 in C major]] is a formal masterpiece that unfolds over just one movement. Where most symphonic movements rarely change tempo and frequently change key to provide contrast, Sibelius changes tempo frequently and only fleetingly moves away from C major and C minor; however, the presentation and development of the symphony's many memorable ideas feels completely natural throughout, and it has quite possibly the most enigmatic ending of any piece of classical music. |
| 345 | ** His [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTbY1n3Iz8 Violin Concerto in D minor]] is a favorite among the virtuosos, and rightfully so - not least as it frequently rates as one of the most technically difficult in the violinist's standard repertoire. |
| 346 | ** Sibelius also had his upbeat moments. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIois3Gaegk March]] from the ''Karelia Suite'' is full of jaunty cheer. |
| 347 | * Bedrich Smetana was the first major Bohemian/Czech nationalist composer, and remains one of the most beloved. |
| 348 | ** ''Ma vlast'' (''My Country/Homeland'') is a set of six symphonic poems, each poem depicting some aspect of the countryside, history, or legends of Bohemia. |
| 349 | *** The second poem, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdtLuyWuPDs "Vltava"]] (sometimes referred to by its German title, "Die Moldau"), depicts the river that runs through Bohemia towards its junction with the Elbe; it is Smetana's best-known and most internationally popular orchestral composition, and rightly so. |
| 350 | *** While not as famous as "Vltava", the other poems of ''Ma vlast'' are not without awesome, especially the first, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04SMDpMkOI8 "Vysherad"]], where the harp and song of the bard Lumir recreates the glory and fall of the ancient castle Vysherad of Prague, is goosebump-inducing. |
| 351 | ** Second behind "Vltava" among Smetana's most famous works is his outgoing, energetic [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDPBWnHT_vw overture]] to the opera ''The Bartered Bride''. From the initial burst from the orchestra introducing the overture's two motifs, to the string sections entering one or two at a time with the second motif as the music builds to the triumphant entrance of a third theme, to a tapestry weaving all three ideas together, and ultimately to an exuberant coda, it is six and a half minutes of exhilaration and delight. |
| 352 | ** The ''skočná'' near the beginning of ''Bartered Bride'''s Act 3, better known as "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGqEFZLhYFg Dance of the Comedians]]", was originally meant to be the musical backdrop of a circus. One could argue this aspect still shines through every time the piece was repurposed to score [[WesternAnimation/WileECoyoteAndTheRoadRunner Wile E. Coyote's latest attempt to catch the Road Runner]]. |
| 353 | * Robert W Smith, anyone? [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md9onM3mqOI The Ascension]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBIRHv16c58 Inferno]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENktaqylQac Paradiso]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rZGcc7sczs Into the Storm]]. |
| 354 | * Tim Souster was a prolific British composer who dabbled in many different styles, both classical and modern, but was ultimately unable to escape the library music ghetto. Which is a real shame, as many of his compositions, such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3CJjImZDU "Assembly"]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwB79Nmyp5U "Captivity"]][[note]]better known as Dr. Weird's theme on ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce''[[/note]], are quite inspirational. |
| 355 | * Although Music/DmitriShostakovich frequently worked his "musical monogram" of "D E-flat C B" into his music, Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson outdid him many times over with his gigantic [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0qZRRj3vnQ Passacaglia on DSCH]], dedicated to Shostakovich himself.[[note]] Stevenson presented Shostakovich with a copy of the score at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival.[[/note]] Over 70 minutes long, the piece repeats a seven-bar version of the "DSCH" theme throughout as it moves through a huge variety of musical forms including a sonata allegro, a Baroque-style dance suite, several sets of variations on other themes, a percussive tribute "to emergent Africa", and a concluding triple fugue on the DSCH theme, Bach's musical monogram (B-flat A C B-natural), and the "Dies irae" plainchant theme. It is truly a thing of wonder when performed live or recorded. |
| 356 | * The fame of Johann Strauss I rests almost entirely on the jubilant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eab_eFtTKFs Radetzky March,]] a celebration of Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz' victory at the Battle of Custoza, and a piece which many Austrians wish were the country's national anthem. The melodies are instantly hummable, and every measure swells with pride and exhilaration. |
| 357 | * Johann Strauss II followed in his father's footsteps as a composer, particularly of Viennese waltzes, which the elder Strauss may have codified but with which the younger Strauss remains synonymous. |
| 358 | ** Easily Strauss' most famous waltz is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTYymbbEL4 "An der schönen blauen Donau",]] better known in English as "The Blue Danube". While the main theme of Waltz No.1 is the most famous thanks to the instantly memorable interplay between a graceful rising arpeggio and its playful answer, the way the other waltz themes weave in and out of the spotlight until the theme of Waltz No.1 returns for the final word helps to make the entire piece a masterwork.[[note]] Music/JohannesBrahms was a big fan of the work; when Strauss' stepdaughter Alice asked Brahms for his autograph, he wrote down a snippet of "The Blue Danube" with the caption "Leider nicht von Johannes Brahms" ("Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms").[[/note]] |
| 359 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og3joyCntrI "Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald"]] ("Tales from the Vienna Woods") paints a compelling picture of the rural beauty outside Strauss' home city (ironically so, as Strauss had a deep fear of nature!) and the folk music traditions found there, emphasised by prominent use of a zither for several of the waltz melodies. The unusually long introduction sets up the pastoral atmosphere beautifully, and the first waltz melody, heard as the music finally settles into its nominal home key of F major, is a real winner. |
| 360 | ** Strauss assembled several waltz themes from his operetta ''Das Spitzentuch der Königin'' into the delightful [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s9oM_vNlyY "Rosen aus dem Süden"]] ("Roses from the South"), highlights of which include the playful upward leaps of the first waltz melody and the lyrical scalar motion of the second waltz melody. |
| 361 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkoRSojz7_g "Kaiser-Walzer"]] ("Emperor Waltzes") were composed in honour of a meeting between Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary, and whatever one's opinion of said heads of state, the grace and dignity of the first waltz melody (hinted at throughout the introductory march) and buoyancy of the second waltz melody help to give the whole work an irresistible charm. |
| 362 | ** Strauss is also famous as a composer of polkas, and it doesn't get much more exciting than [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q_86qyUzRM "Unter Donner und Blitz"]] ("Thunder and Lightning"), the dizzying ebb and flow conveying a vivid musical image of a summer storm. |
| 363 | * Richard Strauss may not have been related to Johann Strauss father and son, but his music is just as instantly familiar, and just as awesome. |
| 364 | ** Although most of Strauss' chamber music consists of youthful works in a style that borrows heavily from Mendelssohn, the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L838Gfi8Hmw cello sonata]] and the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUcJLoVTTkI violin sonata]] are highlights of the late 19th century repertoire for their solo instruments, demonstrating a keen grasp of the musical and technical possiblities the cello and the violin provide. The pseudo-improvisational slow movement of the violin sonata is especially clever. |
| 365 | ** Strauss' most remarkable concert work for soloist and orchestra is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q_zSvns0QY Burleske in D minor,]] a real showpiece for any pianist and orchestra up to the challenge. Much of the melodic material of the work is contained in the four-measure opening phrase for solo timpani, and while the piano part is full of both technically incandescent and emotionally potent music, the timpanist is given the last word as well as the first to tie things up neatly. |
| 366 | ** The tone poem ''Music/AlsoSprachZarathustra'' is Strauss' masterwork. While the score for ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' was still being composed, Creator/StanleyKubrick played this among other pieces to provide atmosphere during filming, and liked the effect so much he made it the centrepiece of the film's official score (along with the "Blue Danube" Waltz by the other Strauss); the opening [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0eXnT2aiAM "Sunrise"]], one of the musical embodiments of the word "epic", still conjures majestic images of planets and stars. |
| 367 | ** His "Four Last Songs", for soprano and orchestra, written towards the end of his life, when Germany was devastated after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, are among the most beautiful and grandest sad music ever written: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YD_8E4ZVxY "At Sunset"]] (Turn up your speakers!) |
| 368 | * Music/IgorStravinsky grabbed classical music by the collar and dragged it - kicking and screaming at first, but eventually more willingly - into the twentieth century. |
| 369 | ** ''Theatre/TheRiteOfSpring'' shocked its first audiences with its [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooi7eomsTuc musically violent depiction]] of a VirginSacrifice. It's now regarded as one of the greatest works of its era, and rightly so. Creator/WaltDisney liked it so much he made it the only work by a living composer to be incorporated into ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}''.[[note]] Though Stravinsky did not approve of how the music was used.[[/note]] |
| 370 | ** Listen to the finale of ''Theatre/TheFirebird'' and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erOEatu5aH8 weep]]. |
| 371 | ** The majestic ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqWZGUO_eoc Symphony of Psalms]]'' was named by ''Time'' magazine as ''the'' outstanding classical composition of the twentieth century, its settings of verses from Psalms 38, 40, and 150 carrying the listener on a wave of glorious music to realms usually unreachable by mere mortals. |
| 372 | * The operettas of [[Creator/GilbertAndSullivan librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan]] may be viewed as lightweight fluff, and when they're not, they're generally parodying heavy-handed drama through exaggeration, but the duo still sprinkled a wealth of outstanding tunes throughout their work. |
| 373 | ** From ''Theatre/TheSorcerer'', we have "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKsSnVC8wbk My Name Is John Wellington Wells]]", a patter sales pitch for a witchcraft firm (and in this video sung by the original [[Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack Darth Sidious]]). |
| 374 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6_vyGuhkfA "For he is an Englishman"]] from ''Theatre/HMSPinafore'' is one of Gilbert and Sullivan's many affectionate parodies of patriotic songs, but it is by far the most catchy and memorable. |
| 375 | ** The patter song to end all patter songs, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl76hvfncnM "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General"]] from ''Theatre/ThePiratesOfPenzance'', may be the pair's most well-known composition, and is an awesome moment not just for them but for any singer who can get through it without stumbling. For that matter, the opera also contains two brilliant examples of counterpoint, first "How Beautifully Blue the Sky" and "When the Foeman Bears His Steel", which is also the TropeNamer for GoYeHeroesGoAndDie. |
| 376 | ** ''Theatre/{{Iolanthe}}'', as well as featuring a beautifully orchestrated [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiYmol0p9kE overture]] that spins together six songs from the operetta,[[note]] It stands out as one of the few overtures composed solely by Sullivan rather than by his assistants (variously including Alfred Cellier, Eugene d'Albert, and Hamilton Clarke) working under his direction; the others include those for ''Theatre/PrincessIda'', ''Theatre/TheYeomenOfTheGuard'', ''Theatre/TheGondoliers'', ''Theatre/TheGrandDuke'', the lost overture to ''Thespis'', and the seldom-performed overture to ''Theatre/UtopiaLimited''.[[/note]] includes one of the great choral entrances of the Savoy operas in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnaDBVmlg6U "Loudly Let the Trumpet Bray"]] (AKA The March of the Peers). Although the onomatopaeic imitations of trumpets and drums help to present the Lords as pompous twits (before their dialogue firmly establishes them as such), it still manages to be one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most stirring collaborations. |
| 377 | ** Koko, the Lord High Executioner in ''Theatre/TheMikado'', is generally played as an utter buffoon, but his entrance song, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gq2ZfjZ9I4 "Behold the Lord High Executioner",]] is one of the operetta's highlights. Another is the song immediately following, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGBa5i_HXQw "As Someday It May Happen"]] (AKA the "Little List" song), which Gilbert deliberately wrote in such a way as to allow the cast and crew to tailor the lyrics to skewer whichever contemporary objectionables they saw fit to ridicule, and which many a Koko through the years has used to hilarious effect. |
| 378 | ** Sure, ''The Mikado'' was a ToughActToFollow, but ''Theatre/{{Ruddigore}}'' has some truly spectacular tunes. "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN838j1cAwA Welcome Gentry]]" culminates in the successful combination of two different time signatures simultaneously, "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0OtWYNfXo When the Night Wind Howls]]" is simply amazing, and "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzT09-xnS_U My Eyes Are Fully Open]]" is one of their best patter songs. |
| 379 | ** Sullivan's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozEJo-YEP1A overture]] to ''Theatre/TheYeomenOfTheGuard'' weaves fragments of six songs and/or instrumental cues from the rest of the operetta to create a triumphant introduction to one of their most popular collaborations. |
| 380 | * Thomas Tallis, a 16th-century English composer of choral music, wrote a '''40-part''' chorale, called ''Spem in Alium''. It was written for 8 separate five-voiced choirs. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn7ZW8ts3Y The voices in this song will lift up your soul and carry it off to heaven.]] |
| 381 | * Speaking about being carried off to heaven, Sir John Tavener's amazing "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezuIDtL6ydg Song for Athene]]" was probably unfamiliar to most Americans until it was played the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. |
| 382 | * Music/GeorgPhilippTelemann was so insanely prolific, even by the standards of "working stiff" composers in the Baroque era, that he was listed in ''Literature/GuinnessWorldRecords'' for the sheer volume of his output (not least as he is far more fortunate than many of his contemporaries in terms of how much has survived). But what truly elevates him to awesome levels is the sheer diversity of his oeuvre; he was equally at home composing sacred and secular vocal music, solo sonatas and suites, concerti, chamber works, and orchestral works, for numerous combinations of instruments, for anyone from novices to virtuosi, incorporating elements of French, German, Italian, and even Polish music, and serving as an important link between Baroque and Classical music. Music/JohannSebastianBach and Music/GeorgeFredericHandel were among his biggest fans and personal friends. |
| 383 | ** One of Telemann's most enduringly popular collections of instrumental music is ''Tafelmusik'', a collection of three "productions", each of which includes an orchestral suite, a quartet for three melodic instruments and continuo, a concerto for two or three solo instruments, a trio for two melodic instruments and continuo, a sonata for solo instrument and harpsichord, and a final movement from the orchestral suite. No two pieces use the same combination of instruments, and Telemann matches the astonishing variety of textures with a cornucopia of melodic and contrapuntal brilliance that reveals new facets of itself with every listen. |
| 384 | ** If you want more proof of Telemann's versatility, try ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62pSDDznKUY Essercizii musici]]'', a collection of twelve solo sonatas and twelve trio sonatas. The solo sonatas include two each for violin, transverse flute, viola da gamba, recorder, oboe, and solo harpsichord, while the twelve trio sonatas pair the six instruments off in every possible way except three (recorder/flute, violin/obbligato harpsichord, oboe/viola da gamba). The virtuosity demanded of the soloists is staggering, and once again provides the thread for a magnificent tapestry of melodies and countermelodies that ranks among Telemann's very best. |
| 385 | * Ophelia's Mad Scene from ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' by Ambroise Thomas. Thirteen minutes long, incredibly difficult, and incredibly haunting. |
| 386 | * Modern classical, but classical still: composer Christopher Tin of the Video Games example Baba Yetu, released [[http://www.christophertin.com/callingalldawns.html an album]] called "Calling All Dawns." This album can basically be described as more than an hour of SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic. A song cycle depicting day, night, and dawn, it is made up of 12 songs (including an epic reorchestration of Baba Yetu itself). Each song is sung in a different language, each segues smoothly into the next, sometimes with no break, and the album ends on the same sequence of notes with which it began. And it is stirringly, [[TearJerker tear-jerkingly]] beautiful. |
| 387 | ** Special SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic mention goes to "Rassemblons-Nous" (Let Us Gather), which from the title sounds like it would be some type of Kumbaya song, but in French. Instead, it's a techno-backed anthem about [[ScrewDestiny giving destiny the finger]], building a LaResistance against death itself, and pure, unmitigated AWESOME. |
| 388 | ** "Kia Hora Te Marino" needs a mention too. Sung in Maori, it would make for a great anthem for peace. More or less, it's a powerful ending to an incredible album. |
| 389 | * Ralph Vaughan Williams has more than earned his place as one of the most beloved English composers. |
| 390 | ** ''The Lark Ascending.'' It is often presented in concert or recorded programs along with ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y7nJL1hpUU Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis]]'', which is heart-stirring and emotionally rending without ever being sappy. |
| 391 | ** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib8LUJkMEjU Fantasia on Christmas Carols]]'', especially once the "Come All You Worthy Gentlemen" part starts at roughly 4:25 (depending on the recording). Near the end, the choir is alternating verses of "Come All You Worthy Gentlemen" and "The Sussex Carol". |
| 392 | ** Vaughan Williams' symphonies: No.7, known as ''Sinfonia Antarctica'' (adapted from his score for the 1948 film ''Scott of the Antarctic''), and No.5 in D major, especially the second movement. And his Norfolk suite. It is said that Vaughan Williams more than anyone matched the epic mode of Tolkien. |
| 393 | * Music/RichardWagner may be the main focus of satires of operatic excess, but that's only because there's so much awesome to satirise. |
| 394 | ** His most famous piece is the Bridal Chorus from Act III of ''Lohengrin''. The vocal portion is commonly known as "Here Comes The Bride", and it is proceeded by a prelude that sounds regal and welcoming to couples to be. |
| 395 | ** ''Ride of the Valkyries''. Unfortunately, this one's picked up a few nasty connotations due to the Nazis' usage of it. But then, it could be argued that more people associate ''Ride of the Valkyries'' with ''Film/ApocalypseNow'' than with ThoseWackyNazis. Or with Bugs Bunny - "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!" Or the tank driver in ''VideoGame/StarCraft''. |
| 396 | ** Also, ''Götterdämmerung''. Oh hell, all of ''Theatre/DerRingDesNibelungen'' is pretty amazing. |
| 397 | ** Looking beyond the ''Ring'', the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdR7li8K7E4 Pilgrims' Chorus]] from ''Tannhaüser'' is outstanding. |
| 398 | * British composer William Walton started out in the 1920s as a wild, anti-establishment avantgardist (check out his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX5GnJg3K9k Facade]] from 1922). So it is a bit ironic that he is mainly remembered for writing music with a high helping of PatrioticFervor: |
| 399 | ** When George VI was crowned in 1936 Walton wrote the awesome ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M9xZlA2zn8 Crown Imperial]]'' march, which has since been played frequently at festive occasions in the House of Windsor. |
| 400 | ** Sixteen years later, when George's daughter Elizabeth was crowned, Walton did it again with ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGY3L_NCHjw Orb and Sceptre]]''. |
| 401 | ** During WWII Walton drove ambulances and wrote music to morale-boosting films. His rousing music to ''The First of the Few'', a (highly romanticized) biopic about John Mitchell, the man who constructed the ''Spitfire'' fighter plane, became an instant success and was later made into the triumphant ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVSm_f7bO8s Spitfire Prelude and Fugue]]''. |
| 402 | * The fame of English composer Philip Heseltine, better known by his ''nom de plume'' of Peter Warlock, rests largely on the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY9rX1aF-Nc Capriol Suite]]'', a collection of six dances originally composed for piano duet and later arranged for both string and full orchestras. The melodies were lifted from the 1589 dance manual ''Orchésographie'' by Thoinot Arbeau,[[note]] Another ''nom de plume''; it is an anagram of his real name, Jehan (Iehan in 16th century French) Taborout. The book is framed as a dialogue between Arbeau and his student, Capriol; the latter lends his name to Warlock's suite.[[/note]] but the harmonies (except those in the second movement Pavane) are entirely Warlock's own. Highlights include the strident opening Basse-Danse; the Bransles, a medley of several melodies from Arbeau's anthology with a lyrical major key interlude and a coda that keeps dialling up the tempo; the ethereally laid-back Pieds en l'air; and the concluding Mattachins, a sword dance that boasts the suite's most dissonant chords to represent the clash of the dancers' sabres. |
| 403 | * In 1988, a kid named Eric Whitacre entered the University of Nevada with plans to become a rock star. But somehow he ended up in the choir instead, and since then has been turning out piece after piece of dramatic, breathtaking music in the classical style. He wrote his first piece, "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7nf1agjkBU Go, Lovely Rose]]", at 20, and his dream came true: amongst the choral-music community, he ''is'' a rock star, equaled only by the work of Morten Lauridsen. "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKuxKUKl5Ig The Seal Lullabye]]" (commissioned for the movie that [[WhatCouldHaveBeen became]] ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda1''), "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3rRaL-Czxw Water Night]]", ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean''[='=]s "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KotRRIVieQ0 Mermaid Song]]" (co-written with Music/HansZimmer)... this guy's done it all. Perhaps his most surreal piece is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgQCq4yrSDg "Godzilla Eats Las Vegas!"]], an [[AffectionateParody affectionate pastiche]] of every cliche Las Vegas music act out there. For best results, watch the slideshow behind the ensemble and/or read Whitacre's [[http://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/wind-symphony/godzilla-eats-las-vegas program notes]] while listening. |
| 404 | * Charles-Marie Widor is often held up as Exhibit A in the argument that in the late 19th and early 20th century, the greatest organists and organ composers were based in France;[[note]] Not coincidentally, it is possible to trace a line from teacher to student directly from Music/JohannSebastianBach to Widor. In the last two years of his life, Bach gave organ lessons to the German organist Johann Christian Kittel; Kittel's students included Christian Heinrich Rinck, whose own students included Adolf Friedrich Hesse. Knowledge of the Bach tradition crossed the Rhine after Belgian organist Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens was sent to study under Hesse; Widor was one of the first students to whom Lemmens passed on this knowledge. He later collaborated on the publication of a complete edition of Bach's organ works with a young Albert Schweitzer.[[/note]] as well as possessing incredible technique, he had a keen sense of what the vast array of sounds available on the church and cathedral organs of his day could do, and composed pieces to take maximum advantage of it. |
| 405 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-gzmGu1J4 Toccata]], the finale from his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByRkggPFiMM Symphony No.5 for Organ in F minor,]] is Awesome Music, but seeing it played, it also doubles as a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome for any organist who can successfully pull it off! (And that includes [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8vz1D_L_OE Widor himself.]]) It's often played as a post-recessional by church organists who want to show off after an Easter or Christmas mass. But truly appreciating the awesomeness of the finale requires [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MkaWrX8oHA hearing it in context,]] as the capstone following an epic first movement that moves from a set of variations to a chorale and then doubles back to the variation theme for a spectacular coda, a low-key scherzo and trio, and two slow movements, one solemn and dignified and the other almost otherworldly in its beauty. |
| 406 | ** Widor's Organ Symphonies contain a lot of moments that deserve to be more widely known. Two which are particularly impressive are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmjpkvXbyII Symphony No. 6 in G minor, Op 42. No.2, Allegro]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zswHI0BGaU Symphony No. 9 "Gothique", Allegro.]] |
| 407 | * While Music/JohnWilliams got his start in film scores, during the 21st century he branched into concert pieces. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2E-PHhxtYg Highwood's Ghost: An Encounter for Cello, Harp, and Orchestra]] is a haunting piece that makes you feel uneasy and yet enthralled. |
| 408 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc5mHwnSmHE Tempered Steel]] by Charles R. Young; if you don't like it that much, try being backstage while an ensemble is playing it. |
| 409 | * The Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka is a hidden gem among Baroque composers; he counted Bach and especially Telemann among his close friends and advocates of his music.[[note]] Telemann in particular was disgusted to see Zelenka's music effectively kept under lock and key by the Electors of Saxony after his death, one reason he spent two centuries languishing in obscurity.[[/note]] He was a master of counterpoint in both vocal and instrumental music, but also more adventurous when it came to harmony and structure than many of his contemporaries. Try the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztQzcL7FELs six sonatas for two oboes and bassoon]] as a starting point; each one positively overflows with charming melodic ideas and expertly written three-voice counterpoint. |
| 410 | [[/folder]] |
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