1. Bartok
2. Rimsky-Korsokov
3. Liszt
4. Tchaikovsky
5. Varese

Ya I like Bolero a lot so I guess yo can throw a little Maurice Ravel on my list also.

Beethoven wasn't "unique" enough. I'm going to write that down.

Nikki Sixx
Mick Mars
Tommy Lee
Vince Neil

Bad joke, Motley sucks btw.

Yeah, I don't think anyone was thinking that this thread was lacking in the hair metal dept.

Now were those guys composing in the Baroque or the Classical period? I forget... :rolleyes:

For people new to "classical" music, I think that 20th century European composers are really the way to go. There seems to be a much more engaging vigorous dynamic going on, a lot more minor key "doom & Gloom", especially with the Russians like Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff. I find it to be a lot more accessible than most of the earlier periods

My faves:
Shostakovich
Bartok
Holst
Rachmaninoff
Sibelius
Prokofiev

I don't think you can go wrong with any of those.

I would also add Stravinsky and Mahler to that list. All of those composers are great gateways into the world of orchestral music.

I would also suggest to anyone that is new to classical music to put off listening to the more heavy 20th-century avant-garde stuff, which includes: Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Harry Partch, John Cage, Eric Satie, Alban Berg (among many others), until they are well versed with the big composers from the Baroque (ie. Bach, Vivaldi), Classical (ie. Beethoven, Mozart), and Romantic periods (ie. Liszt, Berlioz). I say this because the avant-garde stuff might scare off a classical music newbie!

It's been a few years since I was playing piano seriously but my favorite composer was always Bach. I had studied with a teacher who studied with Rosalyn Tureck so I was taught a lot of Bach. Other than that I would say that French Impressionism is my favorite period of music.

My dad feels Bach created the epitome of musical compositions, Pomegrant. He adores Bach! So, I grew up listening to my dad practicing various Bach piano pieces, which aren't so easy to play, are they, since your left hand isn't just providing accompaniment for the right hand!

Since I'm not a proficient piano player, the only Bach song I can sightread and play...but luckily also one of my favorites...is Prelude 1 in C Major:

And here is what I WISH I could play, but I just don't think it sounds as nice on the violin!!

I would have to agree with you father. Even in his most simplistic works there is great amounts of depth and complexity which I guess stems from the ornate culture of the baroque period. However I think Bach transcends baroque music and he really did a lot of experimentation with harmonies. I just really admire that he did his music even when his music was going out of fashion.

I'm trying to remember some of my favorite pieces but remember BWV numbers after all of these years isn't too easy. I'll post some videos once I find them.

Cellos are just so much more beautiful than violins.

I always enjoyed this fugue a whole lot.




I can't find youtube videos of the Italian Concerto movements that I like but it's a wonderful piece.

I've found some Goldburg vartions though and I suppose everybody likes Glen Gould although my teacher didn't because her teacher apparently was heated rival of Gould. The 70's was just so much cooler for musical feuds.

My dad says the exact same thing about how wonderful the harmonies are that Bach sets up throughout his music! I am an untutored listener, so I think I appreciate Bach's music much more simplistically than my dad, who was born with perfect pitch and knows all the frequency differences among notes, plus is instantly aware of the chords and different keys used.

I think the one downside to Bach's music is that sometimes the music's intricacy takes over at the expense of the music's emotion. Even my dad agrees with me on this. Some Bach pieces feel rather robotic to me. However, others are painfully beautiful, and those are the ones I prefer.

Yes, cellos are just much warmer and resonant than violins, I agree...although when I play lower notes on the violin I get to imagine I'm playing a cello but high up, so then the violin isn't so bad! ;) And the violin can sound very sweet.

Thank you for sharing some of your favorite pieces!

The Bach Partita reminds me of the Bach Double we Suzuki violinists always love playing, I think, when we are kids. I remember enjoying it very much. I'm sure you know it, of course, but here it is anyway...and the violins don't sound too shabby! :p:

Bach Double Violin Concerto





I had never heard of Bach's English Suites before last week, when I asked my dad what his current favorite music is and he said he really finds the Allemande portion of English Suite #1 to be lovely. We first listened to Suite #2 by accident (so now, thanks to your post, I've heard it twice), and then to Suite #1. It begins at 2:57 in this video, which I like because the pianist plays the piece more slowly than in some other recording I heard that was of Glenn Gould, actually!:

Bach - English Suite #1



I looked up both your teacher's teacher, Rosalyn Tureck, and Glen Gould to learn more about their rivalry. Wikipedia says, "In a CBC radio special on Glenn Gould, the host told Tureck that Gould cited her as his 'only' influence. She responded by saying she knew that she was an influence, and that it was very kind of him to say so." The rivalry perhaps shows up in her phrasing when she says she knows she was an influence! :laughing: It's too bad...both are deceased now, I see.

My top 5:

Beethoven
Sibelius
Debussy
*gasp* Verdi (I generally love operas though :o:, Wagner & Mozart - Runners up!)
Bach

And my top 5 works would be:

1. Debussy - La Mer
2. Verdi - La Traviata
3. Sibelius - En Saga
4. Bach - Goldberg Variations
5. Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major (Waldstein)

I'd never heard Bach's Goldberg Variations before Pomegrant posted a video (above), and now I'm listening to all 30 to appreciate them more.

I like the way Bach constrains himself to be creative within certain limitations he decides upon. For example, I read that in the Goldberg Variations, "after a statement of the aria at the beginning of the piece...the variations do not follow the melody of the aria, but rather use its bass line and chord progression." Goldberg Variations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I never thought of just using the chord progression or bass line to form musical variations of a theme, instead of just doing simpler variations of the melody! Listening to the Goldberg Variations, I wouldn't have realized this is what is going on unless I had read about it.

My piano teacher at my school is considering having our class of 10 as a collective play the Goldberg variations for our winter recital, with 3 variations a piece.
I hope to god he doesn't do it, I hate playing Bach, and Gould's rendition of them has scared me out of my wits.

My top 5 classical composers are:

- Pyotr Tchaikovsky(1840 – 1893)
- Ludwig van Beethoven(1770-1827)
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Sir Edward Elgar(1857 - 1934)
- Antonín Dvorak(1841 – 1904)

I've been thinking tonight about Beethoven and how I feel about his music because I had the chance to play his 2nd Symphony for the first time this week and have mixed feelings about it.

I've decided that playing Beethoven's 2nd Symphony is very enjoyable, especially the 4th movement, because it has a lot of activity to keep a violinist busy. No time to think about anything else other than the music during that piece! You have to pay attention to catch all the notes, and certain brief passages are very lovely, which makes playing the movement engrossing.

However, when I listen to the piece (when I'm not playing it), I find myself getting bored. While I am intrigued that Beethoven was realizing the torture of his increasing deafness right around the time he wrote this sunny-sounding symphony in 1802, the music doesn't inspire me. I'd never want to sit through listening to others play the 4th movement, but I enjoy being part of the orchestra making the music.

This is one reason I'm not an ideal orchestra member. I like playing in the orchestra, but I don't really care about performances because if *I* were in the audience, I'd be daydreaming like mad during most of this piece to find something more interesting for me to think about:



I also tried listening to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, since rondo likes it, but I find I don't care for it at all. Actually, I first wrote that I hate it. It sounds so tedious to me, so dry, so overdone, so directionless. All those little notes flitting about. Funny, how people's tastes can differ so much.

So, I don't think Beethoven would be on my list of 5 favorite composers, if I had such a list. I also don't like most Bach music because it seems too mechanical and emotionless to me. I'm in a "classical cynical" mood right now, I think! :p:

Beethoven is ok. However, I myself find it amazingly frustrating that through centuries of wonderful music the entire classical genre is usually generalized to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Chopin... occasionally Tschaikowsky(whom I adore, but still). I feel if the true depth, and variance, of the genre were exposed to the world, there'd be a lot more fans.

In my findings, Beethoven definitely has his hits, and definitely has his misses.

My favorites vary greatly, depending on my frame of mind at the time, what I've been listening to...where I am...any number of things. There are times I may love Beethoven, but times he may be the last composer in the world I'd want to listen to.

To be quite honest, I've never been so much a fan of this whole piece in general, and not just the fourth movement - it doesn't really evoke any strong emotion within me. Then again, I'm really not in a Beethoven mood right now.

I'll say that my favorites (for the time being) are:

1.) Maurice Ravel
2.) Rachmaninoff
3.) Tchaikovsky
4.) Stravinsky
5.) Shostakovich

In particular, I've been listening to a lot of Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin.

A wonderful version of the third movement (Menuet) from this piece is:


The piece as a whole is wonderful, but that particular movement is superb. Easily one of my favorite compositions at present.

I'm also kind of obsessed with his 3 part piano composition, Gaspard de la nuit.

Here's the piece in its entirety, separated by movement into three separate videos:

Movement I: Scarbo


Movement II: Le Gibet


Movement III: Ondine


It's really a pretty dark, haunting piece, but I find it exceedingly beautiful.

Amazing choices, I've been finding myself enjoying quite a bit of all four recently.

Paganini
Pachelbel
Mozart
Bach
Steve Reich (not that sure he fits in)

God, in no particular order probably Händel, Rossini, Stravinsky, Copland and Brahms.
But I'm never really sure. It differs :)

Bach
Weiss
Mozart
Bethoven
Chopin

Schnittke
Bach
Mozart
Shostakovich
Beethoven


... and Berg

Felix Mendelssohn
Bach
Mozart
Beethoven
Chopin

Bach
Mozart
Beethoven
C.P.E Bach (Bach's son)
Tchaikovsky

I honestly don't understand history's obsession with preserving Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, and Bach over all other composers. None of them are bad composer. Bach, especially, is really fun to listen to. I just don't feel they are truly amazing in the face of composers later which have evolved the sound of orchestral composition by lightyears.

Not to dis those guys, I just feel people need to dig a little bit deeper in the genre. I honestly am not that well versed in it. But, I think a lot of people are cheated out by it. It's almost as if you made a time capsule, and chose only to put Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson, and Eric Clapton on the list expecting it to represent the entire plethora of stylistic quirks that consist of modern guitar for the past two centuries.

Updated List:

1. Bela Bartok
2. Franz Lizst
3. Rimsky-Korsokov
4. Gyorgi Ligeti
5. Sergei Rachmaninov

Special Mentions: Domenico Scarlatti, Edgard Varese, Igor Stravinsky, Harry Partch, Tchaikovsky, and Ravel.

1. Tchaikovsky
2. Beethoven
3. Bach
4. Rachmaninov
5. Handel

you can add Gustav Holst as an optional No 6 to my list

I've been playing classical piano for a while now and I'm just in love with classical music so it's really hard for me to narrow it down to 5 composers but if I had to my list would look something like this:
1. Beethoven
2. Bach
3. Chopin
4. Dvorak
5. Tchaikovsky

To add to the conversation about Beethoven, Bach and Mozart all being considered the greats I think they really deserve it. To be honest, I never really understood the fascination with Mozart, but Bach and Beethoven made some pretty incredible accomplishments. I think a lot of it has to do with the historical context.

Bach was composing at a time where it was considered heresy to use a tritone in composition. He did some amazing things with counterpoint that really helped progress the form and manipulation of traditional music. The Art of Fugue is a perfect example of how he manipulated counterpoint to create these unbelievable multi-layered pieces. Not to mention he composed a massive amount of pieces for almost every instrument.

Beethoven is widely considered to be the founder of Romanticism. By analyzing the progression of his piano sonatas, it clearly shows his movement from Classical to Romantic. He started out with some innovative yet conservative sonata form movements and by the end of his time he completely broke sonata form down into extremely dramatic and powerful movements which Romanticism is known for. He was the first to write development sections that ran for the bulk of the piece and this continued onto later composers of the Romantic era creating pieces that seem like one big dramatic development.

So that's just my two cents on why I think they really deserve all the praise they receive.

1) J.S. Bach (by far number one)
2) Mozart
3) Beethoven
4) Rachmaninoff
5) Chopin

Mozart
Beethoven
JS Bach
Haydn
Schubert

Tchaikovsky as No. 7

Fucking solid. I'm curious about why, if you don't mind explaining details.

Beethoven
Paul Dukas
Tchaikovsky
Stravinsky
Mozart

Dukas wrote very little though.

I love The Sorcerer's Apprentice (L'apprenti sorcier).
Dukas: The Sorcerer's Apprentice | | guardian.co.uk Arts

Chopin
Rachmaninov
Boris Tchaikovsky
Shostakovich
Beethoven

I love all of their piano concertos and Chopin's nocturnes.