Classical Music.

Don1- Yes, I do love that symphony too, but I don't think that it is one of the "greats".

Favorite symphonies, outside of the ones already mentioned:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 (my favorite of the nine)
Ives: Symphony Nos. 2 and 3
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2
Henze: Symphony No. 1
Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms (when I'm willing to overlook the ugly politics behind the piece)
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9 (when I'm willing to overlook the tragic politics behind the piece)


Don't forget about chamber music too... there are tons of gems in that category that don't always get the same glamor treatment as the big, mighty Romantic symphonies.

I would also encourage you to explore music of the last 50 years or so, if only because I like to do what I can to defend a repertoire that is known to turn people away on principle. Much music of the 20th (and now 21st) century is known for being difficult, but much of it is also harmless despite getting summarily lumped under the category "avant-garde." Some of my favorites in this respect:

Pierre Boulez: Le Marteau sans maître
Lukas Foss: Renaissance Concerto
Alfred Schnittke: Viola Concerto
Meredith Monk: Facing North
Tan Dun: Snow in June, Ghost Opera
Sofia Gubaidulina: Canticle of the Sun
Steve Reich: Proverb
Kaija Saariaho: Jardin secret, I and II



And of course there was music before the 1740s as well... Hildegarde, Dunstable, Josquin, Gesualdo, Palestrina, Frescobaldi, etc.

No?

Yeah, maybe you are right. "Before Elvis there was nothing." (John Lennon)

Don1, you may want to check out Vivaldi also. He has composed hundreds and hundreds of musical works. I find his music much lighter than piano music. His most famous piece is "The Four Seasons".

As for piano, I only listen to Beethoven. He is my hero.

I've been listening to the four seasons since I was a toddler which is half a century ago, if you like that I would direct you to William Boyce

Thanks Don1. I wikipediaed Boyce, he looks quite interesting, and deaf too like Beethoven. I am going to try to find some music from him.

I'm sorry if in my ignorance I mis-usde the word "classic", or "Classic"!
Anyway, thank you everyone for your advice and knowledge, whew! I learnt a lot in this thread! I will now immerse myself in the music!

Thanks for the thread, Quincy . . . and i hope you'll enjoy your musical exploration.

Don't worry about it. Music scholars are still trying to decide whether it's time to retire the term "classical music" and call it something else, though no one's sure what that something else should be. "Concert music," "art music," and "Western art music" are some frequently proposed alternatives, though each one has its problems too. It's probably a futile task... if we can live with the misnomers "Gregorian chant" and "English horn," we can probably live with "classical music" too.

Whats the difference between Sonata, symphony, prelude, baroque and all other terms in, errr..., non-modern music?

'Sonata,' 'symphony' and 'prelude' all refer to musical forms, whereas 'Baroque' (as well as the terms 'Renaissance,' 'Classical' and 'Romantic') refers to a musical period.

The word 'symphony' can refer also to a symphony orchestra, or a symphony orchestra concert, as in "Let's go to the symphony tonight."

Wikipedia has some pretty good entries for all of these different terms.

I regard Schubert's Ave Maria as the most beautiful song ever written. Walt Disney made a film using classical music called Fantasia. In it he had Beethoven's 6th Symphony. The ending of the film was a morphing of Moussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Schubert's Ave Maria.


Ave Maria

(Franz Shubert)



Ave Maria
Gratia plena
Maria, gratia plena
Maria, gratia plena
Ave, ave dominus
Dominus tecum
Benedicta tu in mulieribus
Et benedictus
Et benedictus fructus ventris
Ventris tuae, Jesus.
Ave Maria


Ave Maria
Mater Dei
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Ora pro nobis
Ora, ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in hora mortis
Et in hora mortis nostrae
Et in hora mortis nostrae
Et in hora mortis nostrae
Ave Maria


Fantasia (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Produced by Walt Disney
Starring Deems Taylor
Leopold Stokowski
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Walt Disney (voice)
Distributed by Walt Disney Productions
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Release date(s) November 13, 1940 (roadshow)
January 6, 1942 (wide)
Running time 124 minutes (original 1940 version, 2000 restoration)
81 min. (1942 edit)
115 min. (all versions, 1942 - 1990)
Language English
Budget $2,280,000 (est.)
Followed by Fantasia 2000 (1999)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile
Fantasia is a 1940 motion picture produced by Walt Disney. The third film in the Disney animated features canon, it is an experiment in animation and music. The soundtrack of the film consists of eight pieces of classical music, seven of which were recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. A Los Angeles studio orchestra provided the music for the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment. Originally, the Philadelphia Orchestra was slated to be filmed in the introduction and interstitial segments, but ultimately was not engaged due to union and budgetary considerations. Animated artwork of varying degrees of abstraction or literalism is used to illustrate or accompany the concert in various ways. The film also includes live-action segments featuring Stokowski, the orchestra, and American composer and music critic Deems Taylor, who serves as the host for the film. Besides its avant-garde qualities, Fantasia was notable for being the first major film released in stereophonic sound, using a process dubbed "Fantasound".

Fantasia was first released November 13, 1940 in the United States, and failed to generate a large commercial audience, which left Walt Disney in financial straits.[1][2] Critical reception was mixed, but most critics praised the film for its animation, and soundtrack?-however, after a myriad of re-releases in theatres, most notably in the 1969, the film managed to gain attention from audiences, and received large profits receipts and box offices. After attaining popularity, the film was released in 1982, with a newly recorded digital soundtrack, conducted not by Stokowski, but by Irwin Kostal. The public was less than enthusiastic about hearing the soundtrack performed by another conductor and orchestra, and by 1990, this edition was scrapped in favor of a full restoration of the original 1940 soundtrack.

Fantasia was originally released by Walt Disney Productions (without then-distributor RKO Radio Pictures) as a two-hours-plus roadshow film with booked engagements, Fantasia was eventually picked up by RKO for release in 1941 and edited drastically in 1942, being left with only 81 minutes of running time. Future re-releases restored various amounts of the deleted footage, with the most common version being the 1946 re-release edit, which ran two hours. The original version of Fantasia was never released again after 1941, and although some of the original audio elements no longer exist, a 2000 DVD release version attempted to restore as much of the original version of the film as possible. Along with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) ?- it is the only Disney film to be listed on 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, a list conducted by the American Film Institute, and was preserved as being "culturally, and historically" significant by the United States Library of Congress, on the list of the National Film Registry, which lists films that exert a major influence in varied ways.