Top Ten Pieces of Music Written Before 1900

Me ^ | 12-05-01 | Pharmboy

[Pharmboy]

Ask the question this way: If you were stranded on a desert island with a CD player and a good sound system, what ten pieces would you take with you that were written before the 20th Century?

My list:
1) Beethoven's Appassionata sonata for piano
2) Bach's Partita Number 2 for solo violin
3) Mozart's Symphony Number 41
4) Wagner's Overture to Tristan und Isolde
5) Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 131
6) Chopin's Ballade Number 4
7) Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (IMO the only worthwhile thing he ever wrote)
8) Schubert's Impromptus (all of them)
9) Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata
and 10) Bach's Mass in B Minor

[Sandshark]

Mozart- Symphony #40
Mozart- Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Chopin- Nocturne #2

[Pharmboy]

That is an excellent suggestion keta--please, start another list tomorrow. It should be quite interesting. Other than Bach, Handel, Hayden, Mozart, early Beethoven and Albioni, I don't know much else.

[BluesDuke]

I like your entire list, but I would have tossed out Strauss in favor of Rossini's The Barber if Seville. My absolute favorite.

Promise not to shoot if I say I prefer The Rabbit of Seville (classic Warner Brothers animated satire with Bugs Bunny as the barber)...*grin*...I'm not much for opera, but I do enjoy The Magic Flute (Mozart) and Tremonisha (Scott Joplin - his only opera)

Kind of a shame to have noted this as pre-1900, otherwise I'd have added to my list (assuming we are staying with classical music) Mr. Gershwin himself playing Rhapsody in Blue, a recording of which I have - well, it's Gershwin's own piano roll, accompanied by Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, but it is still breathtaking.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

Tomaso Albinoni - Adaigio in G Minor
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto
Beethoven - 5th Symphony, 9th Symphony, Moonlight Sonata
Wagner - Ride of the Valkeries
Debussy - Claire de Lune

[rightofrush]

Wagner - Ring Cycle

When Sam Clements (Mark Twain) toured europe, he attended a Wagnerian Opera.
When asked what he thought of Wagner, Sam replied "His music is better than it sounds."

[Pharmboy]

Wow! What the hey is it about high school and Bolero?? I bet some psychologist wrote an article about how it has positive effects on young men. My high school was all male and had 4700 students.

[BluesDuke]

We've had many votes for Water Music; it perhaps leads the league at this point in votes.

Which is kind of why I made a point of mentioning the Boulez recording - when I bought it back in the early 1980s, it was at the time one of the extremely few recordings of the complete Water Music, and for my money it's the richest of the lot.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

Strauss - Don Juan Symphonic poem for orchestra

[BluesDuke]

...What the hey is it about high school and Bolero?? I bet some psychologist wrote an article about how it has positive effects on young men.

I am still trying to figure out why there have been those who swear Bolero is so ideal for, er, romantically intimate (ho ho ho) interludes. Frankly, I have never felt any impulse during any playing of Bolero except, perhaps, to take up bullfighting...

[Pharmboy]

I have heard that also...the prelims, the foreplay and then...and then...the BRASS COMES IN!

[rightofrush]

Other than Bach, Handel, Hayden, Mozart, early Beethoven and Albioni, I don't know much else.

You know enough, enough to inclue Hayden, which few have.
IMHO, I do think that Beethoven's 9th is the best piece of music that man has created, with all of Bach taking 2nd, and all of Hayden 3rd.

[TheLion]

Beautiful music depends on the ear of the listener. Beethoven is quoted as saying: "He who truly understands my music must thereby go free of all the misery which others bear about with them". Makes you almost feel sorry for those who can't "hear" the music. It actually doesn't register with many people and then to varying degrees. There is such a wealth of great music. Try Beethoven's 3rd and 4th Piano Concertos with Murry Perahia on the Piano. Also Beethoven's Triple Concerto. Verdi's Nabucco Opera is another piece I love but didn't see here.

[BluesDuke]

Your secret is safe with me!

(P.S. Do you remember an even more classic laceration of one of the classics? The Looney Tuners had a brilliant - and Oscar-winning - whack at Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in What's Opera, Doc?...and, brother, did Bugs Bunny give a rather pompous opera singer named Giovanni Jones what for - not to mention a not-bad impersonation of Leopold Stokowski - in Long Haired Hare. Come to think of it, think of it this way: if the Warner Brothers gang could have made as many excellent comedies as they did spun off classical music, what does it tell you that they were even aware of such music, compared to today's cartoonists who wouldn't be able to tell Rachmaninoff from Kid Rock, Mendelssohn from Eminem?)

[dread78645]

recommend Mozart's Requiem

Looking it up ...
Mozart: Requiem
  von Karajan or Carlo Maria Giulini ? (i'm a bit partial to Herr Karajan's "god and thunder" interpretations).

On my next Amazon order.

[BluesDuke]

I have heard that also...the prelims, the foreplay and then...and then...the BRASS COMES IN!

Translation: It's Ravel's fault that we call being sexually aroused being horny?

[Intolerant in NJ]

Anything Rachmaninov wrote before 1900, if that has to be the cutoff....