Finally, I have specific comments about most of my favorite pieces that might whet people's appetites to hear them:

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Bach:

Anna Magdalena Songbook: Minuet - The songbook was in honor of his wife. The minuet was made into The Toys' "A Lover's Concerto", but altered to 4 beats per measure instead of 3. Bist du bei mir wasn't actually written by Bach, but people tend to think it was because he included it and pieces by other composers in his Songbook. It is one of those pieces that didn't grab me at first, but then I suddenly realized is gorgeous, ethereal and haunting.

Brandenburg Concerto #3 M1 - my favorite of those concertos, all based on those opening 3 notes, similar to how the famous part of Beethoven's 5th is based on the opening 4 notes. The 2nd movement is just a few ending notes Bach wrote, and the performer is supposed to improvise the rest. I first heard this piece from the famous electronic album from the late 1960s, "Switched-on Bach", by Walter Carlos. It remains my all-time favorite album, my "desert island disc" that I would choose if I were going to be stranded on a desert island and could only take one album with me. It is an excellent introduction to Bach's music that makes it easier for the beginner to appreciate. The pieces have more pizzazz than played conventionally, and the separate voices to the pieces can be heard more distinctly. (The only piece on the album that I don't like electronically is Air on a G String.) In that version of this piece, the improvised 2nd movement is turned into a phantasmagora of electronic sound effects. (My favorite part is the 7-dimensional intergalactic dweezle-crickets quietly chirping in the background. At least, that's what I call them.)

The opening (and recurring) theme of the 1st movement of the 6th Brandenburg Concerto has an unusual sound, which I could best describe as effervescent.

Chorales: The 4 I rated highly are just wonderful, triumphant and majestic. The tunes should be immediately catchy. They all make me feel great to be alive. On the other hand, Wachet Auf seems to be a popular piece, but I think it's kind of slow, boring and overlong.

Chorale Prelude "Ich ruf zu dir..." is deeply sad and gorgeous, becoming somewhat less sad toward the middle, but ending again in quiet sadness.

Harpsichord Conc #5 M2 - this ethereal mellow movement, which seems to portray being transfixed with quiet awe at the majesty of the universe, has been used in a number of movies, as I said above.

Violin Conc #1 & 2, Conc for 2 Violins - The slow middle movements of all 3 of these took me many hearings to appreciate, but they are well worth the effort. They are all gorgeous, deeply moving and melodic. M2 of the 1st Violin Conc is somber, and reminds me of deepening shades of dusk falling. The 2nd Violin Conc is the best of the 3 overall, and M1 perhaps familiar even to newcomers to classical music. M2 is deeply somber and plaintive, slowly building in emotion as it goes. The Conc for 2 Violins is all intensely emotional, like a primal scream, or maybe an opposite scream, of ecstasy. The fast outer movements of all 3 pieces took me few hearings to appreciate, and are lively and melodic, but not as great as the middle movements.

3-Part Invention #2 - I have no idea why, but this ethereal piece seems like the music they would surely play at the end of the universe. It has a similar feel as the Harpsichord Conc #5 M2, but a bit livelier, and at the same time, tinged with some wistful feeling, like saying goodbye forever. This piece can really be ruined by being played too fast, as in one recording I have of it; it completely destroys the mood of it.

Little Fugue - majestic and melodic, slowly building to a magnificent ending, almost as great as the famous Tocatta and Fugue. A fugue is a piece in which the different musical voices come in one by one at staggered times, each playing the same theme, but in different keys.

Sinfonia to Cantata #29 - I first heard this magnificent majestic piece as the opening to "Switched-on Bach", and it blew my mind. It still does, every time I hear it. To me it is like an hour of musical enjoyment crammed down into just a few minutes of pure intense musical ecstasy. It makes me feel great to be alive, more so than any other music. Conventional versions of this piece, played by a full orchestra and organ, are virtually as magnificent as the electronic version. Bach used this same music as the 1st movement of the Partita #3 for Solo Violin. That version, played just by an unaccompanied violin, is very nice, but doesn't do justice to it. It deserves something far grander.

Suite for Orchestra (Overture) #3 M1,2 - Bach's Suites are also called Overtures because the 1st movement of each suite is the overture, and the rest of the piece is considered almost an afterthought. The overture is a more substantial, longer movement than the ones that follow. The overture to his 3rd Suite is another majestic piece of Bach's, with several different parts to it, almost a suite in itself. That is followed by the famous "Air on a G String", well-known in its own right, a mellow meditative piece which starts with a long extended note that slowly builds in loudness over 15 seconds.

Tocatta and Fugue in d for Organ - One of the greatest pieces in music history. The booming opening is the obligatory music used in movies about haunted houses, that the ghost always plays on the organ, and seems to portray pure terror. The 1st movement, a tocatta, is a piece that is supposed to sound improvisational, as if the musician was just making it up as he goes along. The 2nd movement, the fugue, is another majestic piece of Bach's. While this piece is great on the organ, it is far grander with a full orchestra. In the recording I have, the greatest moment is when the fugue begins even as the sound from the last note from magnificent end of the tocatta is still dying down -- Wow. The fugue ends just as magnificently.

Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 Prelude #1 - The Well-Tempered Clavier is 2 books of 24 sets of preludes and fugues each, one for each possible key that a piece can be in. Bach wrote it to demonstrate a new way he invented to tune ("temper") the clavier (harpsichord), that has been used ever since. (An explanation of what that means would get too technical.) The ethereal 1st prelude is by far the most famous, and seems to portray childlike awe. I heard one famous musician say that he heard that piece as a child, and was so awed by it that he instantly knew what he wanted to do with his life. I also love Prelude #7, probably helped because it is one of the pieces in "Switched-on Bach". It subtly, slowly builds in emotional intensity.

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Barber:

Adagio for Strings - As I said above, this is deeply sad, moving, elegantly simple, gorgeous music that ran all through the movie "Platoon". It slowly builds to an emotional climax, stops, and there's a quiet reprise of the beginning that ends it.

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Beethoven:

Piano Concerto #4 - I love the 1st movement, especially the way it opens, with the piano playing such a mellow, blissful theme, that reappears throughout the movement. Before Beethoven, a concerto always opened with the orchestra playing, and then the soloist coming in later and playing the same themes. But Beethoven brings the piano in right from the opening note. Much of that movement is bursting with joy. The 2nd movement is rather dark and troubled, the 3rd movement a nice lively end.

Piano Concerto #5 "Emperor" - Among my favorites of his is the gorgeous romantic 2nd movement (which leads right into the 3rd movement, which, objectively, is rather nice, but which I hate, only because that means the 2nd movement is over!). The 1st movement is grand and glorious, and gave the concerto it's nickname, "Emperor".

Violin Concerto - one on my top 10 list, the 3rd movement is famous, lively and melodic, but I especially love the romantic 2nd movement (which leads right into the 3rd movement without a break). Notice how the 1st movement is all based on the opening 5 soft drumbeats in the background. It starts out sounding not too promising, but steadily becomes sweeter and more intensely emotional and more gorgeous, right up to its rousing conclusion -- just wonderful.

Coriolan Overture (for Shakespere's play "Coriolanus") - stunningly dramatic, filled with emotional outbursts, has maybe the best use of dramatic silences ever, plus a recurring part that is both quiet and fast, an unusual combination that evokes an air of suspense and mystery.

Egmont Overture - also great, dramatic and glorious, right from the overpowering, thundering opening notes. Marred only by Beethoven's one flaw, his grandiose endings that keep on ending, and ending, but still don't end, till they get to the point of silliness. Especially ridiculous in this case, to have such a long ending for such a short piece. I once heard a parody of his music, a 5-minute piece that was all ending!

Pathetique Sonata - the gorgeous romantic 2nd movement is famous in its own right, and the rest of it is great as well.

Walstein Sonata - The 1st movement is very dramatic and serious-sounding. Then the middle movement is anything but beautiful, but really interesting. It gives the feel of being in a dungeon, complete with dripping water that is like Chinese water torture. Then it leads right into the 3rd movement, which, after being in a dungeon, seems much happier than it even is.

Moonlight Sonata - The 1st movement is of course the famous part, quiet, dreamy and romantic, yet with a troubled hint just below the surface. The 2nd movement is a charming minuet, but nothing to write home about. But I like the 3rd a lot too, manic and dramatic. Someone else named it the Moonlight Sonata; all Beethoven intended was a sonata with a different order of movements for a change, instead of the usual fast - slow - fast pattern, a slow - moderate - fast pattern.

The Appasionata Sonata has themes in both the 1st and 3rd movements that are schizophrenic, where the tune that lasts only a few seconds starts out with one emotion yet ends with a completely different one. But this isn't a piece people may appreciate without repeated hearings (I didn't). Now I love it.

Symphony #3 "Eroica" (Heroic) - was in honor of Napoleon, until he declared himself emperor. Then, Beethoven, who was one of those L-word people, and was for democracy and freedom and equality and all sorts of evil non-Fox "News" things like that, angrily scratched out the dedication to him. The 2nd movement is a funeral march, unheard of at the time to put in a symphony. The 4th movement, notice how the happy dainty little tune near the beginning keeps coming back a number of times, each time transformed into something completely different, another time in a minor key and sad, the last time triumphant, slow and loud. Unfortunately this symphony's end shows Beethoven's one huge flaw at its worst, his preposterously long and grandiose endings.

Symphony #4 - nicknamed "Surprise", but I don't think I'll be spoiling the surprise if I explain what it is. He starts out the piece suicidally sad, but it turns out to be a big practical joke on the audience. The music finally reaches a loud peak of anguish ... only to turn into an enormous musical belly laugh! The whole rest of the 1st movement is filled with musical imitations of laughter, ranging from chuckling to "laughing in church", that building, explosive burst of laughter when you know you shouldn't laugh, but finally can't contain it. All Beethoven's deliteful way of saying, "Fooled ya!!!!" The rest of the symphony is lighthearted too, especially the deliteful, beautiful 2nd movement.

Symphony #5 - nicknamed "Fate", because Beethoven himself said about the most famous 4 notes in all of musical history, that open the piece, "This is fate knocking at the door". Most people probably think the 1st movement is all there is to the symphony ... but there's more. The graceful, finally soaring 2nd movement reminds me of one of those dreams where you discover that you can fly, and you are gliding over gorgeous idyllic countryside of rolling green hills and streams and valleys, with a feeling of utter serenity. The 3rd and 4th movements are not only connected, but intertwined in an ingenious way. The 3rd movement is a scherzo, a fast-paced minuet. The glorious thundering main 4-note theme that practically opens it after a few quiet notes harks back to the 1st movement theme, except this time all the same note. Then in the last section of the scherzo, the same beginning theme should appear again at the end, and it does -- except this time, instead of thunderingly loud, on the horns, it's extremely quiet, the strings playing it pizzicato (plucking the strings rather than bowing them). What's going on here? An expectant tension starts building up in the music like this is all leading to something, and after a long quiet section ... suddenly the music bursts forth in the 4th movement. As I suspected, and later found out was right, Beethoven was actually portraying the kind of near-death experience where people think they're going through a dark tunnel, and suddenly burst out of it into the light, which they usually interpret as heaven. (Remember that by the 3rd Symphony, he was already going deaf, and his health was rapidly deteriorating in other ways, so the prospect of death loomed large for him, and his symphonies dwell on the subject.) Then somewhere in the middle of the 4th movement, another surprise -- that quiet version of the 3rd movement theme, played pizzicato, appears again, leading to a repeat of that bursting into the light. The 4th movement is a sonata allegro, and the same theme is serving as both the end of the scherzo 3rd movement, and the beginning of the 1st section of the 4th movement, repeated at the end after the development section of the sonata allegro. In that way, the 2 movements are ingeniously intertwined. Unfortunately, the symphony ends with another of his preposterously long and grandiose endings.

Symphony #6 - is nicknamed "Pastoral", because it expresses Beethoven's love of the natural world. It is absolutely gorgeous and deliteful, another on my top 10 list. (If you've seen Disney's movie "Fantasia", this was one of the pieces in the movie, done to a setting out of Greek mythology.) The 1st movement is called "The Awakening of Joyful Feelings Upon Entering the Countryside". An interesting thing is that the development section is different than usual. Instead of a mess of chopped-up bits of different tunes in shifting keys, Beethoven creates a feeling of tension more by repeating a single bit of a tune over and over again, for a good minute or 2, with not much key-changing or other tunes. You should be able to pick out that middle section with all that repetition, of just a 5-note descending theme. The 2nd movement is called "By the Brook". Technically, the 1st note is the "tune", a 1-note tune, and all that follows increasingly elaborate embellishments of that "tune". Then near the end, he throws in some musical bird calls. He actually composed it while sitting by a brook. The 3rd, 4th and 5th movements all run together (obviously this symphony does not have a normal 4-movement structure), and are called "The Village Festival", "The Storm" and "The Song of Thanksgiving After the Storm". To me, part of the festival music even sounds like squaredancing music. Notice how, when you first hear the rumblings of the approaching storm, the music briefly continues, only at twice normal speed. What do you do when a storm is about to end your party prematurely? Party faster, to try to squeeze it all in! While the storm section evokes a storm wonderfully, Rossini did it still better in the storm section of the William Tell Overture. The gorgeous blissful repeating (and continually varying) song in the 5th movement is also called "The Shepard's Song".

Symphony #7 - "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me". Beethoven sort of does again in the 1st movement what he did in the Surprise Symphony, only this time, starting with a very serious-sounding beginning rather than sad, only to turn into an incredibly happy tune that seems to me to be about the simple pleasures of everyday life. This music was featured prominently in part of Carl Sagan's famous PBS series "Cosmos". Then the 2nd movement is a funeral march again, like in the 3rd Symphony, notable because the tune consists of almost entirely the same note, played 12 times in a row, and then after a short 2-note staircase upward, another note played 7 times in a row. Not much to make a tune out of, but he manages it.

Symphony #9 - is possibly the greatest musical work ever. It's nicknamed "Choral", because Beethoven did something unprecedented again, having a chorus sing in it, in the 4th movement. In the 1st movement, incredibly enough, he manages to convey the idea of infinity. How on earth could anyone convey the idea of infinity in music?? (Other than have the music go on forever, that is.) Well, he does it, in that opening 2-note theme, which gets repeated 3 times in all, first at a high pitch, then medium, then in a low rumbling pitch that makes it sound like far off in the distance. It's like, with just a few brushstrokes, he gives the idea of this repeating pattern occurring regularly throughout a volume of space that goes off into the distance, forever. Next, the 2nd and 3rd movements are reversed, the scherzo, then the rondo. After Beethoven, most composers kept them in that order (copycats!). The 2nd movement is a manic, often thundering scherzo that will likely be familiar to beginners. The 3rd movement is the most heavenly music I've ever heard, and incredibly, I couldn't even hear a tune in it at first, and would usually skip over that movement as "boring"! Then I started to hear a tune in just one section, and then soon realized that it's ALL TUNE! All the most heavenly tune. And that's just what I'm sure it's depicting, heaven. The 1st 8 notes, occuring in 4 rising pairs, are some of the most amazing in all of music, something like the opening of the Surprise Symphony, squeezed down to just a few seconds, going from extremely sad to blissfully happy. Notice now the 1st 2 notes are incredibly sad. Then the next 2 aren't quite so sad. Then the next 2 are in fact rather happy. And then the final 2 are positively ecstatic. He goes from despair to bliss in about 4 seconds. I'm sure this is Beethoven's way of saying, "Yes, we die (boo!) ... but then we go to heaven (yay!). Then the rest of the movement is pure bliss, like floating on cloud 9. Well, not quite all of it, because near the end, it gradually goes from blissful to increasingly excited, and finally culminates in a triumphant loud moment. The trouble is, the mood of bliss has been destroyed. He tries to go back to it, after a "now where was I?" moment where the music seems to search for its bearings, him getting carried away with himself and forgetting all about how the mood was supposed to be blissful. But once again, he soon gets carried away with himself. It's no use, the mood has been destroyed. Then the movement ends in an uncertain, somewhat somber mood. To me, this is Beethoven's way of saying that eternal bliss can exist only in heaven, but here on earth, it never lasts. The 4th movement starts with a recapitulation of all 4 movements (even the 4th, which hasn't happened yet!), short bits of the main theme of each movement, separated by some rather rude sounds. Then there's a brief sung introduction written by Beethoven, something like, "Oh friends, no more these sounds! Let us have gentle, beautiful sounds instead!", and then it goes into the poem "Ode to Joy" by Schiller, set to music. I don't think there was any political point to the poem, but Beethoven (one of those L-word people, remember), repeatedly lingers lovingly over the words "alle menchen werden broderen" ("all men become brothers" -- when they are joyful, that is), turning it into a call for universal brotherhood. Certain moments in the movement, especially near the end, reach a level of triumphant, serene, ecstatic bliss unsurpassed in all of music, Beethoven expressing his love for all of humanity.

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Bernstein:

Candide Overture - This short-but-sweet piece ends with the music that was used as the theme for the Dick Cavett Show, from the 1960s and '70s, that older people will probably recognize immediately.

West Side Story - This suite of music from the Broadway show opens with the secret whistle that the members of one of the street gang uses to communicate with each other, and those notes form the basis for the 1st movement. The song "There's a Place for Us" comes next, and more of this song becomes the gorgeous tragic end. Much of the suite is amazing, because it is such highly complex highly synchopated jazzy modern music, yet easily appreciated by people new to classical music.

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Bizet:

Carmen Suite - should all be familiar. Fiery, extremely melodic Spanish music from probably the most beloved opera.

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Borodin:

Polovetsian Dances - I don't know if they still play the commercial, but anyone in the US who used to watch late-night TV had to have heard the speech a thousand times. Picture a cultured, British accent, saying, "I'm sure you recognize this lovely melody, "A Stranger in Paradise". But did you know that it's from the Polovetsian Dance #2 by Borodin?" It was for recordings of classical pieces that people new to classical music would probably recognize. Other parts of the 4-movement piece are nice, and one part may also be vaguely familiar to many people, that sounds stormy and terrifying.

2nd Quartet - a very well-liked piece. The Broadway show "Kismet" was based on his music, and the song "Bawbles, Bangles and Beads" came from the 2nd movement, not that I'm all that crazy about it. I especially like the 1st movement, the way it just starts, with no preliminaries, and how it's so song-like, it just seems to demand words to it. Whether that was also made into a song for that show, I don't know. But most of all, I love the 3rd movement, which became famous in its own right as Borodin's Nocturne, one of my favorite pieces of music. Notice how it's constructed. First, there's the main theme, soft and beautiful. Then there's a 2nd theme, kind of jagged and ugly. Then the 2 themes combine together, the jagged theme stuck onto the end of the soft theme to make one long theme. Then there are countless repetitions of that theme for almost the whole rest of the movement, but in continually shifting keys, generally shifting more and more to minor keys and downward in pitch and slower in speed. At one point the theme is no longer repeated consecutively, but the next instance of it starting before the previous one has ended, causing that jagged theme to overlay the soft theme, the jagged theme sounding more dark and somber rather than jagged now that it's played more slowly. The effect is amazing. It just feels somehow like the gathering murky shades of darkness at dusk, like layer upon layer of darkness gradually piled on. An increasingly dark lethargic somberness takes over. But then the main soft theme comes back at the end, without the jagged part, and the movement ends with a short little sweet ending theme, shifting keys back upward to major and rising back upward in pitch. The effect somehow suggests that now that somber darkness has fallen, it has revealed a magnificent beautiful night sky filled with shimmering, jewel-like twinkling stars - not somber after all.

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Brahms:

There's something really special about his music, filled with some sort of strange exotic emotions and yearnings. The "emotional palette" he used to fill his music must have more colors than anyone else's. At times, especially in his emotionally stormy Violin Concerto, the music seems like a primal scream. Even at times during the brooding, ponderous 4th Symphony (which I especially love, even though I often can't even figure out just what emotions it is portraying), the music reaches about the highest emotional peak I think music could possibly reach (short of the musicians setting fire to their instruments, Jimi Hendrix-style, or attacking each other with them!), and those are my favorite parts. The 3rd movement of the 3rd Symphony has a similar ponderous dreamy otherworldly feel. It took me quite a while to appreciate his music, and hear the tunes in it, so I'm afraid that beginners won't like it, at least at first. But believe me, its all tune from start to finish.

My favorite of his is his 2nd Piano Concerto, another on my top 10 list, especially because of the 3rd movement. Amazingly, at first I liked it in exact reverse order of now! I liked the lively catchy 4th movement (it has 4, when concertos normally have 3), thought the lively 1st and 2nd were kind of nice, but usually skipped over the "boring" slow 3rd. Now, the 3rd is my favorite, while the 4th doesn't do much for me anymore. This concerto expresses Brahms' joie de vivre. (It could easily be called "What I Did on my Summer Vacation".) What he did, apparently, was mellow out in a hot tub in L.A. (or the 19th Century equivalent) in the 1st movement, right from the opening warm and sunny tune, that sets the tone for the whole warm and sunny concerto, then make love in the 2nd movement (with its wild uninhibited notes flying up and down the scale), have the most blissful night's sleep ever in the 3rd movement, and then be perfectly refreshed and full of exuberant energy the next day after that perfect night's sleep. The 3rd movement is like a lullabye, and contains all sorts of ingenious musical devices to portray someone sleeping. If this isn't a cure for insomnia, nothing is. It starts with a serene lethargic section by the orchestra. Then the piano comes in, and soon you're off into dreamworld, which becomes steadily more strange and exotic and far away from everyday cares, the music becoming louder and faster as some strange dream is going on. Then it gets quiet and slow again, and there's a most blissful serene section, the piano playing a dreamy yet dissonant 2-note theme, one note very low, the next very high. It's like it's dissonant because the composer is too asleep to notice that the notes don't go together! Then notice how it then gets reversed, first the high note, then the low, and again it's like the composer was too sleepy to notice. Then it gradually comes out of dreamworld to a slightly more awake state. Then there's a part getting near the end where the violin is playing a very lethargic descending series of notes, but abruptly jumps up a bit, only to resume sliding downward again. It's just like someone drifting off to sleep in an awkward position that makes them wake up with a start slightly, change position, and then blissfully drift back the rest of the way to sleep. Then the piano comes back at the very end in an ascending, trilling theme in order to end the movement -- but notice how, right in the middle of the ending notes, the ending comes to a temporary pause while that lethargic violin comes in again, and then the piano finally resumes ending the movement. He's portraying stopping what he's doing to give a luxuriant contented s-t-r-e-t-c-h before resuming waking up at the end, from a perfectly refreshing night's sleep -- amazing.

Academic Festival Overture - very boring except for the very end, with its well-known academic-sounding theme.

Hungarian Dance #5 - THE famous Hungarian dance, that should be extremely familiar.

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Bruch:

Scottish Fantasy - The 4th movement is really nice, with a theme that seems like an imitation of a chicken clucking, and evokes an image of a quaint family farm out of the 1800s, with chickens scurrying around. But by far my favorite part is the blissful ending notes, that only last about 5 or 10 seconds. They alone are worth the time listening to the piece.

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Chopin:

He is known almost exclusively for his piano music. So many of his pieces are extremely melodic, and usually either dreamy and wistful (especially his nocturnes) or rousing and grand (especially his polonaises). How could anyone not love his music? When his native Poland was conquered, he was exiled to France, and many of his pieces evoke his homesickness and longing to return to a seemingly idyllic childhood.

His most famous piece is probably the Fantaisie-Impromptu, from which they made the popular song "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows".

The opening to his Ballade #4 is wonderful, so dreamy and melodic. It was the main reason why I started my classical music project, to find out where that music came from. I would hear it on a TV commercial for a certain perfume around Christmastime every year, and would desperately want to know what it was so I could buy a recording and hear it anytime I wanted to. I even called it "The Mystery Piece". Then one day, lo and behold, a piece on the radio turned out to be it.

I love almost all of his nocturnes, but especially the 1st one (Op. 9 #1), and the well-known 2nd one, both of which especially evoke that wistful homesick feeling of wanting to go back to the security and comfort of childhood. Op. 15 #2 is somewhat well-known, and has an especially beautiful ending. It took a number of hearings to familiarize myself with his nocturnes, but now they are all like old friends. Most of them start out quiet and dreamy, get louder in the middle, often with a sudden outburst, and then quiet and dreamy again at the end. Op. 27 #1 isn't quiet and dreamy, for a change. There is a short introduction, first very serious-sounding, but then with a brief incredibly heavenly musical phrase, lasting just a few seconds, that is repeated at the end. The rest is a series of lively, graceful tunes. As if to make up for it, Op. 27 #2 is especially dreamy and gorgeous, without a middle louder part. Op. 32 #2 and Op. 55 #1 have especially plaintive and somber quiet beginnings.

The brief, emotionally powerful Prelude Op. 28 #21 is tragic and somber, like a funeral march.

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Copland:

The end of Appalachian Spring is well-known, and comes from a Shaker hymn. The rest of the piece is boring.

Fanfare for the Common Man should be extremely familiar, and is noble and glorious.

The dreamy, serene, wistful Our Town Suite is really a single movement with an a-b-a structure. I first heard it during a planetarium show as a kid, and didn't know what it was until I did my music project. It was perfect background music for showing the majesty of the night sky.

Quiet City is a modern, often dissonant piece that takes a lot of getting used to, but is quite interesting. It starts and ends with the same section of music, which is easiest to get used to, but there's a long section in the middle that drags a lot and is hardly musical at all. That beginning / ending section has an angular, jutting, awkward, quiet-yet-almost-violent sound. The piece is wonderfully evocative of the bleak, sterile, inhuman "modern" city architecture from the mid 1900s. You can just picture a video in your head showing the empty, deserted cement spaces of a quiet city at sunrise, before hardly anyone has woken up.

The Red Pony and Rodeo Suites are rather similar, wonderful background music Copland wrote for 2 movies, portraying the American West, and are quintessentially American. Both have raucous, fun fast parts, and gentle, gorgeous slow parts that evoke a feeling of humility, rationality, fairness and tolerance. Sadly, they evoke the time when my country at least had great ideals, despite its faults, before it started going completely insane.

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Debussy:

He is part of the Impressionist movement, and is known for his music that's almost never abstract, but that interprets something specific. And so we have the famous "Claire de Lune" (Moonlight), "Reverie" (Daydream, in plain English), the haunting "Girl with the Golden Hair" (sometimes translated as "Maid with the Flaxen Hair"), "En Bateau" (On the Boat), etc. Claire de Lune is very well-known. I especially love Reverie -- it has a castles-in-the-sky kind of a feel to it. He's also famous for his 3-movement piece "La Mer" (The Sea), really interesting, but not what I'd call easy listening. There are parts where the music sloshes up and down like waves rushing up the beach and then retreating.

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Delibes:

Sylvia Suite - As I said above, anyone who watched cartoons as a kid will instantly recognize this often comical music. Now you know where it came from.

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Dukas:

La Peri: Fanfare - a wonderful fanfare, as good as the much more well-known Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man".

The Sorcerer's Apprentice - as I said above, this scherzo was made famous by the Mickey Mouse segment in Disney's movie "Fantasia".

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Dvorak:

The New World Symphony - Probably my 3rd favorite piece of music, I can't see how anyone couldn't instantly love this crowd pleaser or get its gorgeous melodies out of their head for days after hearing it. Dvorak was Czech, and came to the United States and wrote this symphony of his impressions of the American West. The music sounds like the soundtrack to a western. In the most evocative parts of the 1st movement, the music seems to reverberate off of canyon walls, and at other times portrays quiet Indian villages. But the 2nd movement is my favorite. It opens with some expansive notes that evoke the wide open spaces of the prarie, a lone tree beside a lone farmhouse, and then the rumble of a thunderstorm off in the distance. Then comes the main, gorgeous serene theme, from which they made a popular song, "Goin' Home", and it keeps reappearing in the rondo. The movement then closes with the same notes as it began, and the rumble of thunder from off in the distance. The 3rd movement is a scherzo, fiery and loud in the 1st part, then quieting down to another theme that seems to evoke a tranquil Indian village. Then comes the 4th movement, with its thundering glorious main theme, followed by still more wonderful melodies, one after the other, one moment serene, the next manic.

He's almost a one-hit wonder, but he has a few other nice pieces that few people know. His Romance for Violin and Orchestra has such an autumnal feel to me, I picture autumn leaves blown about by the wind, dancing to the music. As usual I wonder if that's just me. He also has a Violin Concerto with a very nice, memorable theme in the 1st movement.

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Elgar:

The Pomp & Circumstance March #1 isn't just for graduations, it's also for just listening to. But the March #4 is equally as good, just as grand and stately, and maybe even better because it isn't well-known and hackneyed like #1.

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de Falla:

The sometimes-quirky suite from the ballet The 3-Cornered Hat opens with a singer only singing briefly then (and again somewhere in the middle), and the musicians themselves clapping and shouting "Ole!". At another point, the opening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony suddenly appears for a moment for no apparent reason, among other various odd things. But never mind that, because this piece is just one wonderful melodic Spanish dance after another -- you can't get more Spanish than that. I love Spanish music, so warm and sunny, yet tinged with sadness. This piece ought to be more well-known. Same with the fiery Spanish Dance #1 from La Vida Breve.

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Gershwin:

I think Rhapsody in Blue is considered the greatest piece written during the 20th Century. In a way, you could say that it represents the South vs. the North, back when the Civil War was still somewhat recent history. The 1st half of it, along with the reprise at the ending, is as Southern as you can get. It opens with the famous wailing ascending note on the clarinet, that imitates a baby crying. Partly, it's supposed to represent the birth of an entirely new form of music -- a marriage of The Blues and classical music. The 1st half of the piece is really the same series of tunes played over and over again, 4 times, each time played in different ways with different instruments so as to be not immediately recognizable as repetitions of the same series of themes, much of it based on that opening wail. Then the music almost comes to a halt, and the great Northern theme comes in, urbane and sophisticated, that obviously portrays life in Manhattan. The whole piece is just bursting with experimental musical ideas and seeming improvisation, like the performers are just making it up as they go along. For instance, there's one point soon after the Manhattan theme comes in that the piano plays the same note in manic, rapid succession 32 times, then again with a higher note. It takes a gutsy genius to do something like that and know they can keep it interesting. That Southern rural vs. Northern urban idea keeps coming up in his music.

An American in Paris starts with another wonderfully creative idea, of actually making a musical theme out of honking car horns. It tells the story of an American's impressions of Paris as he's walking around the city, having various experiences along the way. First, the insane traffic, and those honking car horns. Then, ducking down a quiet alleyway. At one point in the 2nd half, suddenly the orchestra bursts forth into another of his wonderful Southern themes, followed by a part where the guy goes into a bar where a Charleston is playing. That section of the piece perfectly evokes the balmy sunny feel of a Southern early spring day, the lush subtropical foliage, a Southern city filled with stately date palm trees and trees covered with Spanish moss. Then the honking car horns make a brief appearance during the ending.

The 1st movement of his Piano Concerto opens almost immediately, after some rather chaotic busy urban music that opens the piece, with what I think of as the Skid Row theme, some more amazingly evocative music, though certainly not pretty. I picture a dank, dirty, depressing run-down section of town, in a cold foggy drizzle at night, the weary dissonant music suggesting sleazy bars with flickering half-broken neon lights in the windows, and people who have lost all hope in life. Then the rest of the movement, aside from a reprise of the Skid Row theme, is fun honky-tonk music, so evocative of the South, giving the feeling of vaudeville shows or people rushing from place to place by train. The 2nd movement is obviously Southern and rural, and a long introduction that takes up maybe half the movement finally leads to the orchestra bursting forth with one of his most wonderful Southern themes of all. The manic 3rd movement's main theme seems to portray the rapid patter of high-speed machinery in a factory, perhaps sewing machines, and then some themes from the 1st movement repeat in the 3rd. >p> He has a few lesser-known pieces as well. Check out the bluesy 2nd Piano Prelude, another Southern theme, and the short 1st and 3rd as well. Promenade comes from some movie from his era, depicting wealthy people strolling down the avenue dressed in their finery, surely walking French poodles, trying to make an impression, and is rather humorous, with its snooty sound.

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Glass:

Phillip Glass is a current composer, with a distinctive sound, often easy for beginners to appreciate. His music involves repeating cells containing just about the same notes, but slowly varying as time goes on. The effect is often mesmerizing. He wrote the soundtracks to a trilogy of movies, Koyaanisqatsi (a constructed Hopi Indian word meaning "Life out of Balance", about life in our fast-paced technological world), Powaqatsi (about people in the Third World) and a 3rd "qatsi" movie about war (which I haven't seen). All 3 movies have no words, just pictures and music depicting their subjects. Koyaanisqatsi has loads of stunning imagery, often with sped-up motion. The music is much more effective along with the pictures, and I highly recommend seeing the movie, even though it depicts the typical stupid leftist anti-technological attitudes that I despise, that blame technology for its failure to improve life as promised, when they should be blaming conservatism. Unfortunately there is just about no way to see the movie, that I know of; it isn't in video stores. The title movement opens the movie, with someone with an almost impossibly deep voice singing "Koyaanisqatsi" over and over again, accompanied by somber organ music. At the end of the movie, a chorus softly and somberly sings 3 Hopi proverbs, followed by a repeat of the opening. The effect is like a modern version of a Gregorian chant, spiritual and reverent and somber. Just before that, the heart of the movie is a long movement called "The Grid", increasingly frantic, accompanied by increasingly frantic sped-up pictures of life in our fast-paced world. "Powaqatsi" had one movement I really love, which was also used repeatedly in the the Jim Carrey movie "The Truman Show".

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Glazunov:

"Seasons" is maybe 30 or 45 minutes long, and all boring except for one small part somewhere in the middle, that is really nice, but only about a minute long. I once heard just that part in a planetarium show, while depicting the sun-god Helios pulling the sun around in the sky in a golden chariot, and it sounds like background music for a chariot race in ancient Rome.

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Gounod:

His version of "Ave Maria" set to music is gorgeous. There's a better-known one by Schubert, which is played at the end of the movie "Fantasia", for instance, but I like this one better. The piano music playing in the background is the ethereal 1st Prelude from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. He took that piece and wrote his own music on top of it.

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Grieg:

His famous Piano Concerto is another on my top 10 list. Even beginners should have heard the well-known opening somewhere, in which a drumroll that starts off soft practically explodes in loudness over the course of 3 seconds, followed by the piano thundering as loud as a piano can possibly be played. That leads right into the main theme of the 1st movement, which is gorgeous, and was made into a popular song. The movement then ends with the same thundering opening notes repeated, this time as more extended ending notes. The gorgeous middle movement is dreamy, but occasionally bleak and stormy, like the weather of Grieg's native Norway. The last movement starts out as stormy as can be, like the orchestra throwing a temper tantrum, but then the mood changes completely, and the exquisitely gorgeous, ethereal main theme comes in quietly on the piano. Then, strangely, the movement seems to end, as the piano softly fades out. It then starts up all over again, even stormier than the first time, if that's possible. The main theme then comes in again, ending the concerto, only this time loud and triumphantly, and even more heavenly, from the full orchestra -- you never want it to end.

His 2 Peer Gynt Suites, each of 4 movements, also have some great parts. The gorgeous, serene 1st movement of the 1st suite, "Morning Mood", surely everyone must know, even if most people have no idea what it's from. Think of a famous classical piece depicting morning, and guaranteed this is it. He so perfectly captured the feeling of a still, golden, misty morning, the warm rays of the sun warding off the morning chill. The 2nd movement, "Aese's Death", is slow, elegantly simple, and deeply sad. The 3rd movement, "Anitra's Dance", has a strange far-away detatched wearisome feeling, like something from a dream. Whatever you do, don't play the steadily-accelerating and increasingly thundering "Hall of the Mountain King", the last movement, while driving, especially with the sound up high. You'll wind up going 900 mph by the time it's through, and the cacaphony will surely shatter your car windows! Of the 2nd suite, the 1st movement, "The Abduction of the Bride", is deeply sad and tragic and bleak, yet absolutely gorgeous. The 2nd movement, "Arabian Dance", is worth a mention, but not good enough to say that I like it, and the 3rd movement, "Peer Gynt's Homecoming", is boring. The last movement, "Solvejg's Song", is typical of Grieg's music, with gorgeous bleak and stormy parts, and a beautiful main melody.

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Grofe:

The Grand Canyon Suite - I only really love the opening movement, "Sunrise", that starts out with the quiet night sounds of crickets, then gradually becomes louder and livelier as dawn slowly breaks, the crickets slowly replaced by birds singing gorgeous songs at sunrise, the air so cool and fresh and crisp in the desert at dawn. But the ending gets loud and is disappointing, like he couldn't think of a good way to end it. The famous 2nd movement is "On the Trail", that's also quite nice, that depicts the clip-clop of the donkeys' hooves as people decend into the canyon. The other movements are no good, except the movement "Thunderstorm" has its interesting moments.

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Handel:

Arrival of the Queen of Sheeba - Lively, stately and grand, my PBS station used this as its theme for a long time.

Royal Fireworks Music - a suite of music to accompany fireworks honoring the king of England. The long opening movement is stately and grand, and probably somewhat familiar to beginners. It has a very British sound to it. The 4th movement is similar.

Water Music - another, very long suite of music, often thought of as 2 or 3 separate suites, written to accompany the king on his boat rides. One movement (the menuet in D) is by far the best known, probably familiar to beginners, and is again stately and grand and very British-sounding. Another (the air in F) is my favorite. I commented about Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto that my favorite album is Walter Carlos' famous album of electronic music "Switched-on Bach". Okay, so I lied a bit. His later album "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer" (the title a takeoff of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier"), which expanded into other Baroque music, is about a tie. (Except that by then, he changed his name to Wendy Carlos, because she had a sex-change operation.) I especially love the alternatingly velvety voice-like and shimmering electronic version of that favorite movement from this piece, which was on that album.

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Haydn:

The 1st and last movements of his famous Trumpet Concerto are as exuberant and bursting with joy as can be, and should be very familiar.

Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, but as of his time, the Classical Era, a symphony wasn't the monumental work we associate with Beethoven and others of the Romantic Era, but a less substantial piece of 20 or 30 minutes. Of all those symphonies, I think they're all boring except for #88, which is far better than the rest, the music immediately catchy. Yet even for this one, it has lost some of its initial charm for me.

The Serenade from his Quartet Op. 3 #5 is very well-known, but music experts are sure he didn't write it, only borrowed it from another composer.

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Holst:

"The Planets": Jupiter is my favorite, especially one really majestic section. Mars of course sounds warlike, and may be familiar to people. Venus of course also sounds appropriate, for the goddess of love. The other movements are more sound effects than music.

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Honneger:

The lovely Pastorale D'Ete (Summer Pastorale) has a swampy, steamy sound that's like being in the Everglades in August. You can just sense the humidity, the heat, the bugs, the birds twittering. Fortunately, the music is a lot better than actually being there.

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Khatcaturian:

In addition to the famous Sabre Dance, the Gayne Suite (often spelled Gayane) has nice slow music that was used in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" during the part showing the tedium of the trip to Jupiter, at the beginning of the segment about that trip.

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Liszt:

In my humble opinion the most overrated composer. His Hungarian Rhapsodies are based on folk tunes, and his Transcendental Etudes are just transcriptions of Paganini pieces. That leaves 2 gorgeous pieces that, as far as I know, he wrote the tunes for, Consolation #3, and Liebestraum #3.

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Mahler:

Some people like his 1st Symphony, especially the slow movement that is Frere Jacques played slowly and in a minor key so that it has been turned into a funeral march. What I like is his 4th Symphony, especially the lively, melodic 1st and 4th movements. The 4th movement is vocal, a song sung by a single singer.

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Massenet

Thais: Meditation - A gorgeous dreamy romantic interlude from an opera, not to be missed.

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Mendelssohn:

He loved traveling, in a time when it was far from easy to travel and few people did, and a number of his pieces were about his travels, including his 4th Symphony ("Italian"). The 1st movement sounds about as Italian as you can get, and will probably be familiar. The rest of the symphony is okay, nothing special. It doesn't even sound Italian.

Another place he traveled to was Scotland, and in the Hebrides Islands, he visited a famous cave that must be magnificent, called Fingal's Cave. His Hebrides Overture (also called Fingal's Cave) captures the grandeur of it. Don't ask me why it took me a while to hear the melodies in this magnificent piece. It just sounded like background music at first.

Then there's the wonderful Midsummer Night's Dream Overture. I love the quiet yet busy section that opens the Overture, and keeps recurring. That combination of very quiet yet very fast music somehow has an air of mystery to it, like little creepy things running around in the middle of the night. Then the gorgeous main theme bursts forth, at times majestic, as then, later played more quietly and serenely, like a lullabye. The Overture is also the 1st movement of a suite of what's called "incidental music" to the play, additional music. The 2nd movement is a very nice scherzo, also known somewhat as a piece in its own right, the "Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream". The rest of the suite is nothing special, with one big exception: the wonderful serene, melodic 6th movement. The 8th and last movement of that suite is really REALLY famous, but so hackneyed that I doubt anyone would want to listen to it as music -- it's the Wedding March.

Baby boomers and older people should recognize the 1st movement from his Violin Concerto from comedian Jack Benny always trying to play it (badly!). The 2nd movement is the sweetest music ever. Notice how there isn't really a break between the movements, his way of trying to make the concerto more of a unified whole.

I like his Octet very much, and did right from the start, but have a strong feeling that few people would, since it's chamber music. The 1st movement, which I like most, it's hard to say what emotion it's portraying, perhaps obstinacy. It has a weird main theme that jumps far up and down the musical scale. The whole piece has an edgy, nervous feel to it, even in the 2nd movement, despite the parts where the music becomes sweet and relaxed at times.

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Mozart:

He wrote mountains of music, most of it pleasant, but with no memorable tunes, at least to my ears. Still, even the portion of them that I like is a tremendous pile of music. But I found that no other composer did I have to keep listening to the pieces over and over again till the tunes suddenly jumped out at me, and I couldn't believe I'd never heard them before. Now, they are so familiar. I have the feeling that if I listened to his pieces more times, more of them would have made my list. So be forewarned that many of the pieces I listed may seem boring at first, and eventually, it might seem like I didn't list pieces that I should have.

2nd Piano Concerto - this isn't even a famous piece, but the middle movement is incredibly gorgeous. It's typical of Mozart, with a melody so simple and child-like, it's like a children's tune. I think, "That's so SIMPLE, even I could have written it!!!!" The only 2 problems with that theory are: 1) I didn't, and 2) Mozart did. Not only that, but considering that he wrote 27 piano concertos, he must have written that one when he was practically still in the womb. No wonder the movie "Amadeus" showed rival composer Salieri seething with jealousy.

The magnificent, very dark 1st movement of Piano Concerto #20 is uncharacteristic of Mozart, since most of his music is very light. The 2nd movement, like a perfect musical gem, was in the closing credits of "Amadeus", and during the movie too. Piano Concerto #24 is similar; the 1st movement is also very dark and troubled, followed by a middle movement that couldn't be more opposite.

The gorgeous middle movement of Piano Concerto #21 is very famous, and made even more so by some movie called "Elvira Madigan" that played it throughout the movie, so now that concerto is even known by the movie name. The middle movements of all the concertos I've listed, #2, 17, 20, 21, 24 and 27, are all gorgeous.

"Divertimento" means roughly "fun", or "diversion", and that's just what the one I listed is, very light and fun. But I'd heard it a number of times before it hit me how melodic it is.

Anyone who saw the last episode of the TV series M*A*S*H would be familiar with the 1st movement of the Clarinet Quintet. That was the piece that the snobbish character from Boston who loved Mozart taught to a band or roving Korean musicians, and then they got killed, ruining the character's enjoyment of music forever after.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music, in English) is Mozart's most famous piece. If it isn't familiar, you've probably been living in a cave somewhere.

The 1st movements of the 25th and 40th symphonies are so great, even if the rest of those pieces aren't. The one from the 25th somehow sounds like something from ancient Rome, while the one from the 40th sounds troubled and dark.

As for the Jupiter Symphony, #41, his last, there was one Woody Allen movie, "Manhattan", where he says that the 2nd movement of that symphony is one of his top 10 reasons for living. I wouldn't quite go that far, but it's really nice, especially one brief recurring heavenly tune.

The Flute Quartet #4 took me a number of hearings to appreciate. The middle movement is gorgeous, and has a recurring heavenly tune that Mozart just seems to toss off nonchalantly, as if to say, "Oh, THAT tune? What's the big deal, I have a million more like it." Pure genius! The other 1st and last movements are very nice as well, fun and happy and tuneful. Every time I heard it, I heard the tunes more than the last, until now, I can't believe I didn't recognize them immediately.

Piano Sonata #11 - The 1st movement is a set of variations on a tune. The tune is excellent and well-known, and I love it, but more he varies it, the less I like it, so I only really like the beginning of the movement. The 3rd movement is very famous, a piece known in its own right, the Allegretto Alla Turka, or "Turkish March".

The Fantasia K. 396 is an amazing piece, probably the most sophisticated thing Mozart wrote, at least in my opinion, though I'm no expert. It seems to transcend Mozart's musical style, for it is even a little jazzy or bluesy, with complex, synchopated melodies.

The Piano Sonata #18 isn't actually a single piece, but 2 separate pieces later stuck together because they function well as a sonata. The 1st 2 movements are the Allegretto and Andante, K. 533, and the 3rd movement is the Rondo K. 494. Technically, Mozart only wrote 17 piano sonatas. And to be even more confusing, this is really the same piece as the Flute Quartet #4, same music, just played by different instruments.

The Rondo K. 382 should be familiar, and was in such movies as "Hopscotch" with Walter Matthau (who was a big Mozart fan), and was the theme of the TV series "Murder, She Wrote",

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Mussorgsky:

Night on Bald Mountain was another piece in the movie "Fantasia". It wonderfully evokes a feeling of sheer terror, but then ends on a beautiful peaceful note after the terror ends. The movie depicted Satan calling all the ghosts up from their graves in cemeteries each night and torturing them, until dawn breaks.

Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite of 15 movements that depicts the impressions of someone wandering around an art exhibition. First, they enter the grand main entrance hall, and the music starts with a grand fanfare, one of the most memorable themes in all of music, called Promenade, which used to be the theme used by my PBS station. Then the rest of the movements depict a series of 10 paintings that the visitor encounters, initially interspersed with 4 reprises of the initial fanfare in various guises, as the visitor passes through the main hall again to get to other rooms of paintings. Toward the end of the piece the Promenade theme is no longer interspersed between the paintings, but appears within a few of those movements in still different guises, dreamy and somber. Then the piece ends as grandly as it began, with a different theme, depicting a painting of the Great Gate of Kiev. I loved the opening theme even before I knew what it was from, but it took many hearings before I appreciated all the rest of the movements, even the last movement. Now, I can't imagine how I couldn't have loved it all.

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Offenbach: Gaite Parisienne (Gay Parisian) from Orpheus in the Underworld ends with the famous Can-Can Dance, and has 2 other well-known themes before that.

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Pachelbel:

His famous Canon is a glorious, uplifting example of elegant simplicity. It starts with a simple theme that's almost a descending musical scale, 6 notes descending, then rising 2. Then it's all increasingly complex, intricate variations on that initial theme, like a snowflake forming its magnificent intricate designs as it grows out of its initial simple hexagonal nucleus. Finally, the initial theme virtually buried under layers of intricate embellishments, the piece comes to a satisfying, simple, glorious conclusion, like gazing at the completed snowflake, that makes you feel great to be alive.

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Poulenc:

The middle movement of his Concerto for 2 Pianos is very dreamy and kind of somber, and has a decent theme. It's one of those pieces that I'm sure I know what it's depicting, but I have no idea how I can be so sure: Paris in the rain.

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Prokofiev:

His Classical Symphony (#1) is just wonderful, so happy and light. He deliberately wrote a symphony in the style of the Classical era, yet taking some Modern era liberties you'd never have heard at the time of Mozart -- the comical, awkward main tune in the 1st movement, the chirping main tune in the 4th movement, which, if you'll notice, comes back in the 2nd half of the movement played upside-down, the highest notes now lowest and vice-versa. The comically awkward, graceless 3rd movement is called a gavotte, a dance just like a minuet, only with 4 beats per measure instead of 3. Comically awkward music was Prokifiev's specialty.

The Lieutenant Kije Suite is the soundtrack from a satirical Russian army movie from the 1930s. The story, I heard, is that "kije" means "etc." in Russian, and when a higher-up orders a platoon to make up a list of the soldiers in it, but they don't have time to finish, they end the list with "etc." When the higher-up asks who this Etcetera guy is, they can't very well correct him, so they make up the entire life story of this fictitious Lieutenant Etcetera. The movements depict his birth (after a brief opening fanfare), meeting his true love, his wedding, a sleigh ride, and his death. The last movement, the music just gets repetitive and not worth listening to. The sleigh ride is the best part, wonderfully exuberant and manic.

The Love for 3 Oranges March is typically comically awkward.

His most well-known piece is Peter and the Wolf. The main theme is very nice, but nothing else.

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Rachmininoff:

He was pretty much a "one-hit wonder", with his 2nd Piano Concerto, one of my top 10 pieces, the epitome of gorgeous melodic romantic music. The 2nd movement is my favorite. The 3rd movement was made into the popular song "Full Moon and Empty Arms".

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Ravel:
Bolero is well-known, and was made even more well-known by the movie "10". It's extremely repetitive, yet the gradually increasing emotional intensity of it keeps it interesting, until it reaches a peak of intensity at the end.

The Daphnis and Chloe Suite is excellent, but parts of it I got right away, while other parts took hearing it more times. It opens with the best part, possibly depicting the breaking of dawn, in which the music gradually expands and brightens gloriously

His "Introduction and Allegro" has an exceedingly strange sound, using the harp a lot -- I love it, especially since that is my favorite instrument. It sounds to me like the background music to a nature documentary, filled with bees rushing from flower to flower, flowing streams and waterfalls, fluttering butterflies at one point, a shimmering spider web at another.

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Respighi:

The beginning half of The Fountains of Rome is somewhat uninteresting, and sounds like the soundtrack to a Disney cartoon, with sound effects that you might hear as all sorts of magical things are going on. But it's worth listening through it to get to the 2nd half, which is really nice. First it becomes loud and grand, like the impression of a cacaphony of church bells ringing all at once, then quiets down again and becomes beautiful and dreamy. Rather than sounding like it's depicting anything to do with Rome, it even has a recurring theme in that dreamy part that sounds like out of the U.S. South, like one of the Southern themes that Gershwin would have written.

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Rimski-Korsakov:

Sheherazade is not only one of my top 10 pieces, but probably my 2nd-favorite piece, right after The Lark Ascending. I defy anyone to listen to it and not have all the tunes running around in their head for days afterwards. It is so melodic, it's just ridiculous. After the brief loud introductory notes, and then snippets of the themes of the 2 main characters to follow, I love the part right after that, that lasts a minute or 2, of just the same theme repeated over and over again, in a series of rising keys. It's like the music is transporting you back in time ... back in time ... back to the time of 1001 Arabian Nights, and saying, "Let me tell you a story..." The thrilling, building, then decisive ending of the 2nd movement is one of the best parts. The 4 movements have titles, by the way: "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship", "The Story of the Kalandar Prince", "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" and "Festival at Baghdad -- The Sea". The 4th movement has 2 completely different sections. The 1st is just a recapitulation of the various themes you've heard before, that make them even more catchy. That leads back to the sea and Sinbad's ship. There's obviously a huge storm with enormous waves, that capsize the ship by bashing it into a rocky coast, a certain moment depicting the collision with the huge rock jutting up from the sea. That's followed by the ship slowly sinking to the ocean depths. That's followed by a spine-chilling ending, with a violin playing an almost continuous super-high note, almost in the dog whistle range, while the orchestra plays tragic somber low notes. To me, that violin depicts Sinbad's soul clinging to the last bit of life, after he's gone down with his ship, hanging by a thread, occasionally giving a last little bit of struggle to stay alive, before finally letting go.

The Tsar Sultan Suite is also really nice. All movements except the 3rd start out with the same brief introductory fanfare. Parts of the dramatic, stormy 2nd movement were background music in Carl Sagan's miniseries "Cosmos". The 3rd movement is the famous "Flight of the Bumblebee". The 4th movement culminates in a gorgeous triumphant theme.

The 1st movement of the Snow Maiden Suite is really nice, and sounds like it's depicting a sleigh ride, and it also uses bird call -like sounds in a wonderful way. The 2nd movement is a step down, though still lively and rather nice, but the rest of the suite is boring.

Don't miss hearing "Song of India", that has an exotic, far-away, wistful feeling, and such a lovely melody.

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Rodrigo:

This is really 20th Century music, but seems like still part of the late Romantic era, including that it's obviously the music of a certain country, this time Spain. Both pieces have the typical warm, sunny feeling, yet tinged with sadness, that's typical of Spanish music. It's hard to believe the 2 pieces I listed of Rodrigo aren't better-known, they are both so catchy and melodic.

I first heard a beautiful sad haunting French song called "Aranguez, Mon Amour", about an entire Spanish town, Aranguez, that was machine-gunned down during the Spanish Civil War, and how all that's left of it now is a monument, surrounded by red roses, the red symbolizing the blood from the massacre. Then when doing my classical music project, I noticed that piece called Concierto de Aranguez, and thought to myself, "I bet that song comes from there." Sure enough, it does, from the 2nd movement, which is really the heart of the piece. The 1st and 3rd movements presumably depict the happy life before the massacre, and how life goes on after it.

The Fantasia para un Gentilhombre Suite (Fantasy for a Gentleman) is one gorgeous Spanish dance after another.

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Rossini:

The William Tell Overture - Most people only know the famous ending 4th section of it, which depicts people galloping on horseback. Too bad! The very serious somber opening section is gorgeous, followed by a storm, better than Beethoven did it in his 6th Symphony, followed by a bird singing a gorgeous song after the storm, and then finally those famous galloping horses.

The other 3 overtures I listed are quintessentially Italian.

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Saint-Seans:

There's only one word to describe his 3rd Symphony, that everyone uses: majestic. This piece just misses being in my top 10 list, somewhere around 11th or 12th favorite. It's called the Organ Symphony because no one ever put a church organ in a symphony before. It doesn't come in till the ethereal 2nd movement, my favorite. Appropriately enough, I first heard it as background music in a planetarium show, and only later found out what it was from. It just sounds like music to stargaze by, and seems to express the majesty of the cosmos.

The 1st movement of his 2nd Piano Concerto is one of my all-time favorites -- and yet I've played it for a number of people, and to my astonishment, not one of them has liked it! It is moody and sad and yet romantic, full of emotional outbursts, and very melodic. There's only one thing it could possibly be about: unrequited love. Somehow it feels like a chill wind through someone's soul. The rest of the concerto is fairly nice too, but a step far down from the 1st movement.

Saint-Seans wrote Carnival of the Animals as musical accompaniment to Ogden Nash's set of comical poems about various animals, and it is usually performed with someone reading each poem, followed by each piece of music. By far the best is The Swan, always a great musical subject (Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Sibelius' Swan of Tuomela). The fossil part is rather funny -- we're of course supposed to imagine someone playing the dinosaur bones like a xylophone. The aquarium part is nice too, rather dreamy. Much of the rest of the piece is more sound effects than music.

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Sarasate:

Zigeunerwiesen (Gypsy Voices) - quintessential eastern European music from the late Romantic Era, very melodic, but a bit too schmaltzy and over-emotional. Picture a fancy romantic restaurant where vionlinists go from table to table, and odds are this is that kind of music.

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Satie:

A usually quirky modern composer. His quiet introspective Gymnopede #1 is one of those pieces you hear in the background of movies and don't know what it is, or even stop to wonder. For instance, it was played in the very opening and ending of the movie "My Dinner with Andre". I also like the dreamy Gnossienne #1, which highlights the idea of 2 notes played in extremely rapid succession, so fast that they're almost heard as one. That is probably the most obscure piece I've listed.

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Schubert:

His Unfinished Symphony (#8) is right up there as another on my top 10 list. Probably most people assume it's unfinished because he died in the middle of writing it, but not so! In fact, he went on to finish another symphony after that one. There are many theories for why he didn't finish it, but for anyone listening to it, it should be obvious why. He wrote something so magnificent, it was really beyond his normal abilities, and he couldn't think of a way to finish it that was worthy of the rest of it. (He even started on a 3rd movement, and I heard someone's version of it, fleshed-out, and it was nothing special.) I don't even like any of his other symphonies except the 5th, which is very nice, some of the happiest music ever, but can't compare in talent to the 8th. "Unfinished" starts out with some very gloomy quiet low notes for about 10 seconds. Then for about a minute, my favorite part opens the symphony. At first the music is quiet yet rather rapid, an unusual combination that evokes a feeling of mystery, as in Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream Overture. In this case, it evokes the feeling of somewhere cool and misty and dim and mysterious and primeval -- a cool misty primeval forest. But then the music scales the heights to a thundering climax -- magnificent craggy peaks, partly shrouded in the clouds, towering over the primeval forest. Once, I was watching some TV show about nature, and they played that opening, along with pictures -- and they were EXACTLY WHAT I ALWAYS PICTURED!!!! The towering craggy peaks in the clouds, the misty forest -- it was all there! So apparently, the images the music evokes are universal. And yet there are really no mountains, or forests, or mist, anywhere in that music. All it is is nothing but a bunch of notes! Every time I hear that opening, I am awestruck that mere notes can evoke such specific imagery, and that Schubert found just the notes to do so. The rest of the movement is a study in contrasts, serene one moment, terrifying the next, with that opening little section reappearing numerous times as a bridge between them. The serene part is the famous tune from that symphony, which first appears right after that introduction. I'm sure the movement portrays walking through a forest, feeling terrified one moment of being lost and having no idea how to get out, or of fearsome creatures leaping out from behind the dense foliage at any moment (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), but then at other times, when that opening part recurs, the grandeur of it all, and at still other times, when the main theme appears, coming upon a tranquil clearing with colorful wildflowers and butterflies, the warm sunshine piercing the chill of the rest of the dense forest. Then that movement ends as gloomily as it began, and closes with 4 thundering decisive notes amid dramatic silence -- my next-most favorite part. The 2nd movement is also a study in contrasts, only predominantly serene, with the terrifying moments in the minority. It ends beautifully on one of those serene moments.

Schubert's Nocturne is very nice, but rather repetitive.

He wrote 8 Piano Impromptus, most of which are rather nice, but Op. 90 #3 is far better than the rest, the most blissful music ever.

I first heard the best parts from some of his piano sonatas during a music appreciation class in college, and loved them instantly.

His quartet #15 was featured promenantly in Woody Allen's movie "Crimes and Misdemeanors", with its dark, troubled, malevolent sound.

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Shostakovitch:

I really love his 2nd Piano Concerto. The 1st movement is kind of comical and deliberately awkward and graceless and mechanical-sounding. It just sounds like the Industrial Age -- you picture people riveting the girders of skyscrapers together, or something. Despite its dissonance, I loved it the 1st time I heard it, in fact, loved it because of its comical graceless dissonance. But then you're in for a REAL surprise for the 2nd movement. It's deliberately the exact opposite -- romantic and quiet and quite beautiful, and rather melancholy, though it took a few hearings to recognize the beautiful melodies. Then the 3rd movement is back to very much like the 1st, though nowhere near as well done.

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Sibelius:

There are only 2 good pieces of his, "Finlandia" (which is in fact the Finnish national anthem, and I've also heard in a commercial for a brand of cheese of the same name), which wonderfully depicts that bleak and stormy yet beautiful far northern country, and "The Swan of Tuomela", from a larger 4-movement piece called the "4 Legends of the Kalevala".

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Smetana:

His Bartered Bride Overture is really nice - lively and melodic, with an Oriental kind of sound at times.

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Strauss, Johann:

Blue Danube Waltz - one of the most famous pieces, of course. Many people may know it from the part in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" after the ape-man throws a bone into the air, and it becaomes a space shuttle doing a graceful ballet as it rendezvous with a space station.

Die Fledermaus Overture and Tales from the Vienna Woods are 2 pieces with a similar, quintessentially Austrian sound, even the parts that aren't waltzes, and both are gorgeous and extremely melodic. Tales from the Vienna Woods is just one great waltz after another, after a long serious-sounding introduction.

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Strauss, Richard:

No relation to Johann Strauss, and a completely different musical style, of the Modern Era, rather than Austrian Waltzes.

The super-famous super-spectacular opening fanfare from "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (Also Sprach Zarathustra in German) became so popular from the opening segment of the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", the part with the ape-men. It is played twice during that segment, at the very beginning of the movie when the title comes on, and when the ape-man realizes that he can use a bone as a weapon, and at the very end of the movie as well, the part with the embryo floating in space. After that movie, it was used in countless TV commercials, to the point of almost becoming hackneyed. But that 1 minute of music is so intensely magnificent, it couldn't become hackneyed if I heard it played in a continuous loop from now till the end of eternity. The rest of "Zarathustra", hardly anyone knows. It is about a tie for the most difficult piece to listen to that I've listed. I was always so curious what the rest of the piece was like before I finally heard it. I first listened to it with great trepidation, afraid the rest of it would be a huge disappointment compared to the opening. The opening is so great, how could the rest not be disappointing? And I WAS disappointed. But now that I'm used to the piece, I no longer am. The whole thing is just wonderful, even if the opening is still the best part. After the opening, it starts out extremely quiet. But then it builds over the course of several minutes until it reaches a state of pure emotional ecstacy -- not disappointing so far. But the rest of it is extremely uneven, at times very accessible even to a 1st-time listener, but at other times, long, slow, quiet, seemingly boring, even very creepy in parts. It was only when I finally noticed that in those slow creepy parts, the very same melodies are playing as in the best parts, only a very low-pitched, stretched-out version of those melodies, that I finally understood the whole piece, and Richard Strauss's musical innovation. There are just a small set of melodies in the piece, but they're played over and over again, in all sorts of almost unrecognizable incarnations, and thrown in at apparently random times, with those creepy, muddy sections where 2 or more melodies are playing at the same time, seemingly unaware of each other. But once you recognize the various melodies, what sounds at first like chaotic noise suddenly separates out into multiple separate melodies all playing at once, and it all makes perfect sense. The piece is supposed to depict the "3 Stages of Man", from the Dawn of Man (the famous opening), to a science-fictiony-sounding ending that depicts some future super-man that reaches some new level of existence. Quite like the ideas behind the movie "2001". It is loosely based on the most famous book by Nietsche, of the same title, which in turn was loosely based on the central character in the ancient Persian Zoroastrian religion.

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Stravinsky:

Le Sacre Du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) - I just said above that "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is a tie for the most difficult piece to listen to that I've listed, and "Rite of Spring" is the one it is tied with. It is another innovative modern piece, but with a very different sort of innovation: synchopation taken to its ultimate limits. While the well-known opening notes sound like conventional music, with a recognizable tune, they hook you into listening to the rest of the piece, in which the pitch of the notes is a distant second in importance to their constantly-shifting beat. The more times you listen to this piece, the more of it makes musical sense, as it stretches the boundaries of what seems like music and not mere noise, until eventually, it all makes sense. This was another piece featured in the movie "Fantasia", the part showing the birth of the earth and the history of life up to the end of the dinosaurs. The violent, pounding, shifting rhythyms went along perfectly with violent, pounding, shifting geological upheavals of the infant earth.

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Tchaikovsky:

One of the top few composers, and my 2nd favorite. I still remember going to a park concert when I was young and hearing his 5th Symphony for the 1st time, and being totally awed by it -- definitely in my top 10 list. It starts out incredibly somber, with a funeral march -like opening, and somehow never entirely shakes off that somber feeling, even when it seems to be upbeat, as in the rest of the 1st movement. Then after some incredibly somber yet magnificent introductory notes, the gorgeous romantic 2nd movement is one of the top moments in all of music. They made a popular song out of it, "Moon Love". Yet somehow, even there, that somberness is never far away -- like a rather gray, bleak sunset in the depths of winter. Suddenly near the end of the 2nd movement, that opening theme from the 1st movement reappears out of the blue, this time loudly and violently, angrily interrupting the music for a minute before it goes back to what it was doing before. In fact it appears in all 4 movements. That is an innovation of Tchaikovsky's, to more unify the different movements of the symphony by having at least something in common about all of them. That opening theme is tacked on to the end of the 3rd movement, again in a different guise, back to more subdued and sad this time. Finally in the 2nd half of the 4th movement, that opening theme comes up again, this time totally transformed again, loudly and triumphantly ending the symphony.

The 6th Symphony, "Pathetique", really gave Tchaikovsky the reputation of writing melancholy music, even though actually, only a few of his pieces are that way. It starts out suicidally sad, but then goes into another gorgeous romantic theme, similar to the 2nd movement of the 5th symphony. It also can't shake off that somberness, even in between several additional suicidal outbursts. If you're playing this while driving, be forewarned that there's a moment when Tchaikovsky practically gives the audience a heart attack, that could make a driver jump and have an accident. The music quiets down and practically falls asleep at one point, only to suddenly come in as loud as can be to wake the audience up again. Then the 2nd movement is highly unusual. Can you figure out what's so unusual about it? I'll give you 5 guesses. Okay, 5 seconds to go, and then your time is up. If you don't get it, you owe me $5. (Hmmm, the number 5 keeps cropping up a lot, doesn't it?) Skip over the part between the asterisks if you don't want to know yet.

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It has 5 beats per measure. Music virtually always has either 3 or 4 beats per measure. The only other exceptions I know of are the jazz piece "Take 5" by Dave Bruebeck and the rock song "Living in the Past" by the group Jethro Tull.

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The 3rd movement has a very serious, no-nonsense sound, like it could be used for the theme to a news show, and I think it once was. The 4th movement is even sadder than the opening, if that's possible. You get the feeling Tchaikovsky was sobbing uncontrollably while he wrote it, and wonder how he managed to keep his tears from making the ink run off the pages. When I played this symphony for one of my friends, he asked how listening to such sad music doesn't make me depressed. I replied that just the opposite, listening to such gorgeous sad music makes me happy, because it's so gorgeous. But it took many hearings till I could hear the tunes all through that movement; at first only the very opening notes sounded like a recognizable tune.

His 4th Symphony, I now really like, but it took some time to get to like it. There's a lovely lilting little quiet melody that appears a couple of times in the 1st movement, and the 2nd movement is another such melody. The beginning and end of the 3rd movement, a scherzo, is quite unusual, played entirely pizzicato.

His 1st Piano Concerto starts out with the famous theme that was made into the popular song "Tonight We Love". Only trouble was, when I first bought a recording of this piece, so I could hear that gorgeous theme, I was bitterly disappointed, because it only lasts for the first couple of minutes, then never appears again, not even in the rest of that 1st movement! That movement has the highly-unusual structure: a-b-c-d-e..., just a succession of different themes, never repeating. I still can't believe Tchaikovsky would have taken such a magnificent theme and just tossed it away after a couple of minutes without giving us more chances to hear it. The rest of the movement is actually rather nice, but still.... So be forewarned, so you're not disappointed the way I was. The 2nd movement is my favorite, with a beautiful soft childlike melody. I picture a slow-motion film of a little girl, dressed in pink ribbons and bows, playing in a field of daisies.

His Violin Concerto is nicknamed "Unplayable", and you'll see why. There are sections of the 1st movement so complicated and fast that it was literally years before there was any violinist on earth who was able to play them! The development section in the middle of the 1st movement is especially obvious here. The music just stops, and the lone violin screeches out what may seem at first to be little more than noise, bits and pieces of the themes of the movement, stuck back together in a mangled sort of way. I often used to skip over the whole 5-minute section until I got used to it, and now I actually like it, because I appreciate the point of it. And when the regular music returns, it sounds that much sweeter. I love the 2nd movement the most. To me it sounds like a night in the Black Forest, the full moon peeking out of the clouds like in a Wolf Man or Dracula movie, the chill in the air, and with all the wonderful musical interpretations of crickets and other sounds of the night. That leads right into the 3rd movement -- there's another sudden loud note to wake up the audience that could cause a traffic accident while driving, or even a heart attack!

I can't very well fail to mention the Nutcracker Suite, one of the most well-known classical works, played especially at Christmastime because the ballet's story takes place then. It is certainly a great introduction to classical music. But it is also the only piece that has become truly hackneyed for me, that I can't bear to listen to anymore. There is also a suite of incidental music to The Nutcracker, sometimes called the 2nd Nutcracker Suite, as opposed to THE Nutcracker Suite that everyone knows. That piece is anything but hackneyed for me, especially the amazing 1st movement. If that doesn't show how ingenious Tchaikovsky was, what does? He turned a simple downward musical scale into a tune! Every other composer on earth must have been having fits, thinking, "But that's so OBVIOUS!!!! Now why didn't **I** think of that?!?!" Besides, that movement happens to be absolutely gorgeous (I hate to keep overusing that word).

Nothing could be more gorgeous than the opening movement of the Swan Lake Suite, simply called "Scene. Moderato", and the next 3 movements are also beautiful to gorgeous, "Waltz: Dance of the Swans", "Allegro moderato" and "Pas d'action. Andante". Swans are always a great classical music subject -- the First Rule of Classical Music is: If it's about swans, guaranteed it's great. The Sleeping Beauty Suite isn't about swans, so of course it isn't as great. The only gorgeous parts are the 2nd and 5th (last) movements, "Adagio. Pas d'action" and "Waltz", and the rest is rather boring.

The Romeo and Juliet Overture is considered his finest piece. The romantic theme is extremely famous. There are 2 main themes that keep alternating, that famous part depicting the happy parts of the story, of the lovers in love, and the other, violent-sounding part depicting the feud between the 2 families that finally does the lovers in. My favorite part is the dreamy wistful ending, after the final violent outburst that depicts them both dying. I picture a sped-up movie of the sky with clouds rolling by, depicting the endless passage of time after the lovers have died.

Everyone knows the famous ending to the 1812 Overture, which actually has cannons firing as part of the score, but as with Rossini's William Tell Overture, most people don't know the beautiful quiet somber way it opens. Since it is about a war between France and Russia, the score even contains the French and Russian national anthems after that opening.

Next, his chamber music. As for his 1st Quartet, I love the way it just STARTS, with no preliminaries. Same with Souvenir of Florence. Movements become known by the directions the composer gives for how they should be played, and the 2nd movement, Andante Cantabile (played in a walking-paced singable way) became a piece known in its own right. I also have a recording of the Andante Cantabile played with a full orchestra, and in this case I think the fuller sound of an orchestra works better for that music than just a quartet.

Souvenir of Florence is actually a septet. This piece especially, first I thought it was just okay, even after hearing it maybe 5 times, but then one day I happened to turn in on it on the radio, somewhere in the middle of the 1st movement, without knowing what it was, and thought, "That's absolutely gorgeous, and I know I've heard it before, but what on earth is it?!?!" I couldn't wait till the end when the announcer finally identified it, and I was astonished because I could never hear all the tunes in it before. I love how warm and sunny it is, just like Italy, especially the 1st movement. The 2nd movement is my favorite. I'm sure it must be another piece about swans, not that I've ever heard that it is.

His Trio is another gorgeous mostly melancholy piece, though with parts that are anything but melancholy, and with melodies that I could hear right away, so this was an immediate favorite of mine even though it isn't well-known. It ends by gradually trailing off in a funeral march -like theme, the sad opening melody of the piece reappearing.

There's also a piece called Serenade Melancolique, which, despite the name, doesn't sound all that melancholy to me, with a beautiful main tune.

There's a piece called The Seasons, with just 1 movement that I really like, June. It has 12 movements, one for each month. So how come it isn't called "The Months"?? Don't ask me.

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Vaughan-Williams:

The Lark Ascending - This is probably my all-time favorite piece of music, perhaps because of all of my favorites, this is the only one that isn't well-known, and I like to root for the underdog. It definitely should be well-known. If Vaughan-Williams hadn't written this, SOMEONE would have had to, for it expresses a feeling that someone somewhere just had to express. It is an inspirational piece that evokes an image of sunbeams shining through the somber gray clouds, and a lone bird gracefully soaring through the sky, triumphantly. (I have a computer-art picture I created that is on my art webpage, that is my attempt to express the feeling this piece evokes, not completely to my satisfaction, but here is a thumbnail version of it that I think works just as well as the larger version:)

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Tallis Fantasia) is also a great piece, though not as immediately catchy as Lark Ascending. It took me a few hearings to fully appreciate it. It's like something out of the legend of King Arthur -- you feel like you're in Sherwood Forest, and have just come upon a clearing and see a majestic castle with a fair maiden beyond the trees. Like The Lark Ascending, it evokes a feeling like no other classical music I know of: noble, mythical, and long ago and far, far away.

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Vivaldi:

"The Four Seasons" is his most well-known piece, 4 concertos for the different seasons. Vivaldi wrote a poem for each season, and the music represents what's going on in the poems. Therefore, unlike most classical music, there's no need to interpret what the music represents, because he told exactly what it represents. "Spring" begins with a glorious cacaphony of bird songs in the 1st movement. The middle slow movement is beautiful, and the 3rd movement is as gorgeous as the 1st movement. "Summer" has a lethargic feel, from the heat. "Autumn" depicts a hunt in one movement. I don't like those concertos quite as much as "Spring" and "Winter". The 1st movement of "Winter" is my favorite part, with the slashing sound to the music that represents the biting winds. The magnificent, decisive way the movement ends is my favorite part of all. The 2nd movement is also wonderful. It depicts the warm, mellow feeling of sitting by the fire in the comfort of one's home, while outside, in contrast, a cold rain is falling. The warm, mellow tune of the cello plays, while at the same time, the pizzicato notes of the violins in the background portray the drip, drip, drip of the cold rain outside. Then the last movement isn't as great. Is starts with the music sliding up and down the scale, portraying people slipping and sliding on the ice. The movement consists of a series of different little sections, most of them wonderfully bleak. So to sum up, the parts I love the most are "Spring" movements 1 and 3, and "Winter" movements 1 and 2.

Vivaldi is known for his concertos; he wrote several hundred of them, and little else. Virtually all of them are boring, but the few that aren't, including the 4 that make up "The Four Seasons", are great.

The 2nd movement of his Guitar Concerto is exquisitely gorgeous, warm and mellow and melodic. It used to be in a beer commercial on TV a few decades ago, so many people, especially older ones, should find it extremely familiar. Back then, concertos were commonly transcribed for other instruments, and there is a mandolin concerto that's just a transcription of this one. It sounds better on the guitar. If it's a mandolin concerto in D, it's really the guitar concerto.

However, he wrote a Mandolin Concerto, in C, that is a completely different piece. The middle movement is rather nice, but both the 1st and 3rd movements are just wonderful, lively and fun and as happy tunes as can be. Both of those movements were played in Carl Sagan's PBS miniseries "Cosmos".

The 1st and 3rd movements of the Concerto for 2 Trumpets are glorious and bursting with joy, similar to Haydn's Trumpet Concerto. They might be familiar to people from PBS station breaks and such. I was once in a car stuck in a traffic jam on a cold rainy miserable day, played this piece, and discovered that it is especially glorious in a car, the way the trumpets reverberate around in the small space. It was one of the peak musical moments of my life! I thought to myself, "I have to be the happiest person in this whole traffic jam!"

Finally, the 1st movement of the Concerto for 4 Violins is glorious, with a hard-driving odd almost-one-note melody that gives a feeling of obstinacy or determination. The middle movement is just a few notes that the musicians are supposed to improvise around, as in Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto. The 3rd movement has a similar feel as the 1st, but not as catchy. The 1st and maybe even 3rd movements are sometimes played in the background of things, so might be vaguely familiar.

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Wagner:

I doubt there's any composer whose music is so instantly accessible, even to people who don't like classical music. It is so dramatic, it sounds like movie soundtracks, except that it's extremely melodic, unlike most background music. Everything I've listed is instrumental parts of his various operas, for he wrote little else. I'll start with his best pieces first.

The famous Ride of the Valkyries is glorious, otherworldly and dreamy. Usually, dreamy music is quiet, but it's anything but in this case. Surely everyone has heard this music somewhere.

The famous Prelude and Liebestodt ends the opera Tristan und Isolde. The Prelude is a long slow part that took me a long time to like, but now I really like it. It's part of a long slow build-up till the end of the Liebestodt, so have patience while listening to it, because the Liebestodt is one of the most incredible pieces of music ever, especially the ending, and it's worth the wait. "Liebestodt" means "love-death", and it depicts someone dying from too much love, a bizarre idea. This piece is by far the most erotic music ever written, that depicts love-making quite literally, even down to the moment when the music pauses in the middle of its slow build-up to "take a breather". The whole ending section is heavenly, and it finally builds up to a magnificent blissful all-too-brief climax, with a brief wind-down at the end, some of the bliss remaining. Actually, in the opera, this is just the background music. The singers are singing over this music, and, typical of Wagner, the singing doesn't follow what the orchestra is doing at all.

The opening to Tannhauser is dreamy and otherworldly. The whole piece has a structure like this: a-A-a-B-a-A. The "a" part is quiet, almost a lullabye. The "A" part is the same theme except played loudly and triumphantly. Then there's a totally different "B" part in the middle, which is called the Venusberg Music. There seem to be 2 versions of this piece, with or without the Venusberg music, but I've never heard the version without it and don't know how it's structured. The piece has a subtly strange sound, that gives it its otherworldly feeling, because of the innovation that Wagner was known for, of music that never stays in the same key, but constantly shifts, leaving the listener with the feeling of having no firm ground to stand on. It depicts a man who's been abducted into a sort of heaven-like place by the goddess Venus (who's fallen in love with him), into some strange limbo-like life after death (that's the long "B" part). But he grows restless and bored with being there eternally and demands to leave, and in the triumphant end (the last "A" part), returns to the world of the living. That middle, Venusberg section, I don't like anywhere near as much as I love the (almost) identical beginning and ending section.

The Flying Dutchman Overture (Die Fliegendehollander in German) evokes a stormy sea so wonderfully.

Siegfried's Funeral Music is extremely dramatic, and culminates in a similar incredible blissful ending as in the Liebestodt. It depicts someone committing suicide by burning himself alive, at the end of the opera -- even more bizarre an idea than the Liebestodt, since the music makes it seem like a wonderful experience.

The Lohengrin Prelude and Rienzi Overture are short but sweet, rousing and extremely melodic, and possibly familiar to many people.

The Faust Overture has a rather sick, twisted, really malevolent sound through most of it. It took me a few hearings to fully appreciate it. It is very dramatic.

Siegfried Idyll is a long piece, and there's a long middle part that's rather boring, but the rest of it is nice, and there's one recurring part I love, that makes listening to it worthwhile.

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Weber:

Invitation to the Dance begins and ends with a quiet part, before and after a party, but it's like suddenly walking from the dark still outdoors at night into the brightly-lit room where a gala dance party is going on, and then it's one beautiful waltz after another.

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Wieniawski:

Scherzo-Tarantella is a fun manic virtuoso eastern European violin piece, which depicts the dance of death people supposedly do when they've been bitten by a tarantula. People who used to watch Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show may remember a young violinist, Eugene Fodor, who played this piece on it a number of times.

His other 2 pieces listed here, the Violin Concerto and the Polonaise, have some nice tunes, if you can stand the over-emotional schmaltzy eastern European music.

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