Five or six years old I located a handful of classical records in my parents record collection. Very basic collections/compilations of the "greats" and their greatest hits:). It was far from the worst introduction to about 600 years of unfamiliar sounds. I noticed this music somehow filled the living room space in a very differnt way than the rock & pop music I'd heard up til then. So rich and densely thick. The melodies sort of came and went in waves. But it wasn't until my late teens I started seriously digging deeper, using the local library + buying tons of second hand records, practically for free, while trying to locate the composers, compositions, recordings, sounds, ensembles, eras etc... that spoke to me the most. I must have heard thousands of both household names and forgotten dead men (and a few women) of eras past by now. Still a happy amateur, like most of us I suppose. I don't play any instrument, don't know anything about music theory, can't read music etc... so it's all based on emotional response - or perhaps an intellectual response I can't put into words.

It's hard to explain why 90% of what I've tried has left me cold - while these have all created spine tingling music that touches my soul and overwhelms me. Alternatively the music's just beautiful beyond words, and pleases me or comforts me. Sometimes all at once.

I split the ones who've stuck with me (there's plenty more composers I know and love a couple of works by) into a first, second, and third group of "favorites". I'd like to know what composers you like and enjoy the most as well. Maybe we'll some kind of discussion going. Or we may share a few reccomendations.

10 (my "desert island" batch of composers:) 

Dmitri Shostakovich

Gustav Mahler

+10

+10

Morton Feldman

Sergej Prokofjev

Erik Satie

Arnold Schoenberg

Arcangelo Corelli

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Big 20th century classical fan, Schoenberg a favorite.

Thanks!

I've heard works or at least parts by them all that I enjoy (and also works that I've failed to connect with). Sometimes I may simply have listened to the wrong stuff. Many of those on my list I been lukewarm to at first, because I introduced myself to their most celebrated works - which are often simply their most agreeable compositions. Similar to how Miles Davis didn't click with me because of Kind of Blue. 

So I'm open to suggestions. But operas will not do the trick I'm afraid - apart from the odd aria etc..., it's not for me. I've tried multiple times over the years and seen/heard many of the classics, in Opera houses and at home.

Gabriel Fauré

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Jean Sibelius

Benjamin Britten

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Ryuichi Sakamoto

John Adams

Thomas Tallis

Giacommo Pucchini

Orlande de Lassus

Olivier de Messiaen

Claudio Monteverdi

Maurice Ravel

Josquin de Prez

Jacques Offenbach

Hard choice, since music is MAJOR in all I do, including film reviews.

Some choices ... and I wanted to add more film folks ... but decided not to.

Maurice Jarre

... just for starters ... I do wish we could get CD's of Zhao Jiping's soundtracks or music. He's special.

... for seconds ... I wanted to add Carl Stalling ... since the orchestration of effects to many of the Chuck-a-Muck guy is insane, amazing, and something that without the cartoon, is the most challenging music EVER ... it's so out there that it is really difficult to create any imagery for it in your head, as it throws you around so fast! This is so "progressive" that few, if any of us, could ever consider even hearing it ... but having a CD of it, is a really neat, and far out experience!

They were all on my "extended" list. Gabriel Fauré and Henryk Górecki could have been there too, had I not forgotten them. (+ Leoš Janáček, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Béla Bartók were also on my list:)

Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius & (I know this will be controversial) Vaughan-Williams

I also enjoy Schumann, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Nielsen, Chopin & Elgar from time to time...

I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the term "classical" applied to many 20th century composers; the way I learnt it it covers mainly the period of Mozart and Beethoven, but I see that it's mostly used to refer to all Western "art music" - but then where to draw the line between avantgarde experimental and last 50 years "classical"?

Anyway, emotionally I was always more attracted to music from say about 1890 to the present than the "classical" or even romantic period.

Favourites from the more modern period are

Ligeti, Stravinskij, Debussy, Messiaen, Reich, Stockhausen, Ives, Prokofiev, Penderecki, Bartok, Nancarrow, Varese, Cage, Wim Mertens, Pärt, Shostakovich. I can go on listing many important modern composers such as Schoenberg, Hindemith, Boulez, Nono, Berio, Lotuslawski, but I think I put them slightly below the first group when it comes to my personal enjoyment. 

Some older ones who have some works that give me joy:

Johann Sebastian Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Satie, Liszt, Mahler, Rachmaninov (many of them already with one foot in modernity, often I have more respect for the older music than really loving it)

If they count, I'd certainly list some avantgarde electronic and experimental composers and/or improvisors in the top group such as Eliane Radigue, Alvin Curran, Phill Niblock, AMM, Ikue Mori, Toshimaru Nakamura, Otomu Yoshihide 

Drew lists Piazzolla which certainly should be on my list, too, if he counts.

By the way am I right that Eliane Radigue and Ikue Mori are the first women listed here?

I LOVE Ralph V-W: would've put him on my list by was aiming to cover composers that weren't on Rollon's original list.

Great to hear Drew. You don't find too many Brits who rate him as highly as his music is quintessentially English. I think his 9 Symphonies represent the pinnacle of his artistic achievement; all quite different and in their own ways, put down markers in time for the first half of the twentieth century.

That's fair enough and I didn't mean to criticise it. I am however curious where you put the line between "modern classical" and "avantgarde".

Philip Glass is the only classical composer who's ever been on my Chopin Liszt. 

It's very long time ago, I've listened to some Classical music, except from some Chinese and Japanese. 

...and except from Paco de Lucia plays Manuel de Falla - if that counts as "Classical". 

To be honest, 

Rounding out my top fifteen-   

I have some good thoughts about most of these composers, and I can wonder what I would think of their music today. 

throw in a few Strauss tone poems and I'm right there with you... 

                  A Window on the World of Philip Glass (selected works, excluding concertos, operas, soundtracks & symphonies)

Many good ones, although my favourite is Eine Alpensinfonie, especially the climax with the clash of symbols, where the mist separates and their majesty is in full view.... makes the hairs stand up on the back on my neck!

I also love the classic Karajan (he was in his element with the Late Romantics) recording of Tod und Verklarung, Metamorphosen and Vier letzte lieder with Gundula Janowitz... art at it's very best!

(he wasn't on my original list, btw)

Both are masterpieces of course, but they couldn't be more different. Both were written by composers contemplating their mortality with Bruckner, a deeply religious man going for the triumphant blaze of brass as he approaches the gates of the next realm, whereas Mahler, ever more doubtful about what the future holds, creates this deep, brooding, multi-layered masterpiece of textures...

Maybe I do get it. I guess as I don't live in a former colonial empire myself, "Englishness" isn't something negative or problematic. It has it's appeal, just like any other flavor or color. Sibelius, Grieg, Dvořák and many more drew inspiration from their own folklore*... even Bartok did. Coming from younger, less powerful nations in search of an identity, it probably makes the sensitive listener less uncomfortable. But I won't blame the artist for the zeitgeist of the era in which they operated. If I did, that would imply that I think I'm better than them just because I happen to live a 100-200 years later. Anyway, I'm just rambling.

*+ of course Wagner and practically all of the Russians...

Yes, you've essentially hit the nail here, so to speak. Although throughout the 19th century, the English had a terrible superiority complex, contributing much toward many aspects of artistic expression, we were mocked by the Prussians/ Germans as being the 'Land without Music' and the certainly had a point.

Our principal composer from the mid-late 19th C was Hubert Parry, respected in his time, but whose output was that of a poor man's Brahms and has mostly been forgotten now. Arguably our greatest composer, the one whose compositions earned international respect yet introduced a certain 'Englishness' to our musical canon was of course Edward Elgar, whose symphonies and choral works stand up with the best from the period.

It wasn't until the 1890's however, that two young men realised that the various folk tunes which had been passed down from generation to generation amongst agricultural workers, fishermen and within rural communities were gradually being lost as the populations increasingly became literate and moved to the towns for work. They set about travelling the countryside with wax cylinders in an attempt to write down and record the songs which were sung, before incorporating them in their own works, so that they could be preserved for posterity. They were RVW and Gustav Holst, whose works are quintessentially parts of the English canon; RVW's symphonies in particular chronicle our world from the Edwardian era through to the greyness of the early 1950's... to the English, they are priceless and influenced Arnold Bax, Howells & Gurney, to name a few.

^That's all very interesting. You "always" had Henry Purcell though (+ also Dowland and Byrd). Who is among my favorite baroque composers. I don't know, maybe he (or they) were largely forgotten or not considered as great - or relevant.

-All this make me want to revisit Vaughan Williams. I'm only familiar with a couple of his most known works (The Lark Ascending, Symphony no. 5 and a few more). It didn't leave the strongest impression on me in my early 20's, but I've changed since then. Reading up on him now he certainly sound like my cup of tea. And any collector of folkmusic/songs is a "friend of mine".

FIRSTS 10:

PODIUM:

1) Mozart

2) Bach

3) Beethoven

These three are unreachable.

Then, from lyric opera:

4) Wagner

5) Verdi

Even these two are unreachable (in their specific field)

Then, the ranking is more subjective.

In my case:

6) Berlioz

7) Mahler

8) Stravinskij

9) Schoenberg

10) Vivaldi

+ 10:

1) Debussy

2) Cage

3) Bartok

4) Haydn

5) Brahms

6) Haendel

7) Chopin

8) Schubert

9) Ravel

10) Puccini

+ 10:

1) Chaikosvskij

2) Webern 

3) Schumann

4) Shostakovich

5) Liszt

6) Gluck

7) Musorgskij

8) Berg

9) Strauss

10) Rossini.

Thanks for replying. I didn't mean to disregard Henry Purcell, but he died in the 1690's in his mid thirties; indeed there was a 20 year gap before Handel arrived with George I. Purcell's choral and vocal music in particular, be it sacred or secular, was indeed beautiful and highly regarded throughout Europe, however he was the last of a line, before a 150 year near silence descended (Thomas Arne excepting, I suppose).

You are right about Dunstable, Dowland, Taverner, Sheppard, Tallis & Byrd of course; before and during the reformation, our music was as prominent as anyone's (excepting the Italian states of course).

With RVW, much of the folk music are prominent in his songs, besides some of his shorter orchestral compositions. If anyone is new to RVW, I'd suggest starting with some of his more immediate stuff, such as Fantasia on Greensleeves, Lark Ascending, Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus & Flos Campi.

For folk orientation, I'd suggest Norfolk Rhapsody, In The Fen Country, On Wenlock Edge song cycle and his chamber cycle, Six studies in English folk song.

For his symphonies, you were probably right to start with No.5, which is most peoples way in... maybe then try his No.2 'London'.  If you are interested in specific recordings, I'm happy to make some solid suggestions.

There's a family legend that we are descendents of Robert Schumann because (secured historical fact) he played four-handed piano with my greatgreatgreat(...)grandmother some nine months before the next in the line was born, and her husband is said to have been travelling at the time.

And I don't list him... shame!

Ahi ahi, Bobby Schumann!

I haven't really been able to warm up to most classical music from before the late Romantic period with the exception of Bach; his music to me represents the height of what composers could accomplish within the rigid tonal and structural systems that were in place during his life, but I personally find music more interesting once composers began wrestling themselves free from those systems during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ravel, Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartók, Schoenberg, Liszt and Satie are my favourite "mainstream" composers from that era, but I also like some of the composers inspired by the futurist movement like Varèse, Antheil, Mosolov and Ornstein; way ahead of their time, all of them.

The second half of the 20th century has to be my favourite period of Western classical music. Ligeti is all my all-time favourite composer and a huge personal influence; other favourites include Xenakis, Schnittke, Schaeffer, Lachenmann, Stockhausen, Nancarrow, Penderecki, and of course the minimalists (Adams, Reich and Riley particularly; Glass's music is mostly fine but always kinda struck me as pedestrian compared to his peers).

Btw, you're favorite from the modern period is interesting and sort of impressive. I've heard works I enjoyed my most of the ones you list. But as I get older I find myself less willing to invest the time and effort the music of Berio, Nono, Ligeti... and a few more demands. I guess I never really enjoyed them to begin with. But I was certainly interested and willing to listen to what they had to offer.

Yeah, probably something is wrong with me because most people tend to say that getting into newer "classical" music is hard work and the older stuff (maybe including Stravinsky, Prokofiev and the like) appeals to most people more easily, emotionally. I was always different in that respect, Ligeti's music was love at first listen and came pretty early to me, although I've got to say that the first classical (modern) music that really clicked with me was Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps, which I think has more qualities that appeal to a larger set of people. My grandfather played some Stockhausen to me when I was 16 or so and that was indeed too early, but from the age of 19 or so much of the avantgarde went smoothly for me, much better than any Mozart or Verdi ever.

Kaija Saariaho sadly passed away a few days ago. 

Offhand? Here's 12...

Vivaldi

Mozart 

Beethoven

Handel

Stravinsky

Rachmaninoff

Grieg

Satie

Tchaikovsky

Gershwin

Copland

Surely deserving of a mention is Sir Michael Tippett (think his son Keith played on ITWOP?). There was a BBC prgramme dedicated to him that was broadcast on Thursday evening. Apparently he composed notoriously dificult stuff for piano. He wasn't a good pianist himself and someone theorised that was the reason because anyone any good would not have done it!!

Hiram wrote: Kaija Saariaho sadly passed away a few days ago.

Yes, sad. I read about it the other day. That's one of my favorite works from her, btw.

mellotronwave wrote: I like to see Jordi Saval ( a spanish musician specialized in Renaissance music from Italy, Spain France , ...) and his musicians, I recommend the Fronteveaux abbey concerts... available through U-tube)

I've seen Jordi Savall/Hespèrion XXI live, twice actually. Magical.

RIP Kaija Saariaho. I heard of her name, but I don't think I ever heard her music before. The above piece tells me that I have to correct that.

My preferences regarding classical music are firmly grounded in the 20th century (and beyond):

- Igor Stravinsky

- Dmitri Shostakovitch

(I could also mention Prokoviev, but he's a bit behind these two...)

- Arnold Schoenberg

- Olivier Messiaen

- Hanns Eisler

- Pierre Boulez

- Iannis Xenakis

- Henryk Górecki

- Arvo Pärt

- Luc Ferrari

- Steve Reich

- Louis Andriessen

- Michael Nyman

- Mauricio Kagel

From the 19th century I do like Mahler and some of Wagner. Everything before appeals much less to me (with some exceptions, of course, but Mozart is not one of them).

I think this is a perfect place to start.

Those Six Japanese Gardens are there, and this ghostly composition. The whole CD is enchanting and strange and strangely enchanting.

Hi,

I'm in trouble ... 

The only Elgar I have is Ken Russell's ... and what an excellent film that is.

As for Holst, I stick to Tomita.

Dvorak, I remember mostly from the wonderful short in "Allegro Non Troppo", a wonderful Italian cartoon that was kinda making fun of "Fantasia", but it's material was more for us, grown-ups" than it was for the "kids" as "Fantasia" was, although I think that WD probably wanted to work the music more than the film showed with its references to the appreciation of classical music, which, from a child perspective is ... kinda silly ... you watch it for the fun and the smiles, not the music, although some of us will end up remembering it. I never forgot Dukas and Stravinsky after "Fantasia". BUT, I was 15 when I first saw it, and was familiar with the music at home from the large classical library of music dad had (over 2K LP's at the time).

All in all, I wish that America respected its composers a lot more ... but in 500 short years, we don't really have any "huge" composers ... like so many European countries. 

Hi,

Agreed, though I wish they had a more appreciated talent as so many other composers listed here ... maybe after 50/100 years?

Among the Americans the only one in my own list, Morton Feldman is my favorite. Admittedly I haven't heard very much by either Ives, Gerswhin, Bernstein or Copland.

... The little I got by these three less known composers is all wonderful:

Lou Harrison

Henry Cowell

 I also really like some of Wendy Carlos' work. Steve Reich and Philip Glass are both typically hit or miss with me. I don't feel the need to own a lot of albums by any of them (but I have a few by both). Same goes for the occasionally wonderful John Cage.

Steve Reich is "huge" to me (Philip Glass the minimal music version for the masses...), as is John Cage (not sure he got mentioned yet in this thread).

Another American composer that deserves mention would be Scott Joplin, I guess (I love his Treemonisha opera, but I'm much less into ragtime...).

 Not seen the film. My one not very interesting fact about Elgar is that he composed the world's first football chant (for his club Wolverhampton Wanderers). The world really needed that!

I love that album as well although the violence of Mars is still best represented by an orchestra (or ELP's 1986 version) imo

moshkito wrote: Dvorak, I remember mostly from the wonderful short in "Allegro Non Troppo", a wonderful Italian cartoon that was kinda making fun of "Fantasia", but it's material was more for us, grown-ups" than it was for the "kids" as "Fantasia" was, although I think that WD probably wanted to work the music more than the film showed with its references to the appreciation of classical music, which, from a child perspective is ... kinda silly ... you watch it for the fun and the smiles, not the music, although some of us will end up remembering it. I never forgot Dukas and Stravinsky after "Fantasia". BUT, I was 15 when I first saw it, and was familiar with the music at home from the large classical library of music dad had (over 2K LP's at the time). All in all, I wish that America respected its composers a lot more ... but in 500 short years, we don't really have any "huge" composers ... like so many European countries.

Of course Dvorak was not American but moved there and spent time teaching there, and at that time he composed Symphony For The New World.

I was going to mention Copeland but I only know him via ELP's Fanfare For The Common Man. To be fair America has a rich blues and jazz legacy which Europe never really had and also the best composers of musicals with the likes of Sondheim, Gershwin, Leiber, Stoller etc, perhaps not to be sniffed at!

Ernst von Dohnanyi

Erich Korngold

Bohuslav Martinu

Franz Schubert

Jean Sibelius

Heitor Villa-Lobos

A few original choices in this small selection of favorites. Never heard of the first one, only know the second by name and ashamed to say that I've never investigated Martinů beyond  the one album I got by Bohuslav Martinů featuring Polní mše (Field Mass) - which absolutely floored me. It's had me in tears and I might not have listened to it in a decade. Maybe that's why. 

Dumb comparison, but I'll say it anyway. The young Peter Hammill always struck me as a late romantic era sort of artist who just happened to reach his twenties in the early 1970's. Grand, deep, existential, full of  weltschmerz and pure emotion. Martinů, who was a self taught composer didn't really fit among the modernists  a few decades earlier (yet his music makes perfect sense for 1939), and I think they are somewhat connected/related with their out of time musical creations.

I listen to this much like I listen to A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers*:

*and I listen to Pawn Hearts... like I listen to the last works of Mahler, Brahms, Strauss...

I've always seemed to liked the Russian late romantic composers and American early modern classical composers - Tchaikovsky and Risky-Korsokov come to mind for the former and Gershwin for the most part for the latter. I also just recently started discovering Debussy's work and I like it, too.

Strictly speaking, classical music is music of the classicist era (circa 1750 to 1820), but in the sense that the term is normally used, there's a lot to choose from. I'm very impressed by these, for various reasons:

Johann Sebastian Bach (baroque)

Ludwig van Beethoven (late classicism, early romanticism)

Alban Berg (20. Century)

Hector Berlioz (romanticism)

John Cage (post-1945)

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (post-1945)

Charles Ives (early 20. Century)

Francesco Landini (Italian trecento - 1300-years)

Peter Lange-Müller (late romanticism, early 20. Century)

György Ligeti (post-1945)

Claudio Monteverdi (late renaissance, early baroque)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (classicism)

Carl Nielsen (early 20. Century)

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (renaissance)

Maurice Ravel (impressionism)

Camille Saint-Saëns (romanticism)

Franz Schubert (early romanticism)

Dmitry Shostakovich (20. Century)

Arnold Schönberg (20. Century)

Richard Wagner (romanticism)

This is how the term is most commonly used, anyway. However, I remember watching a TV production with Leonard Bernstein where he discusses this topic, and he, too, claimed that strictly speaking classical music refers to European classical era music, but that in daily speech it means Western art music from the Middle Ages to the present - in lack of a better term.

The Danish National Encyclopedia (edition from 1998) writes as follows:

^^ Ah jeez no. Some more nitpicking: Anders was wrong in stating that "Strictly speaking, classical music is music of the classicist era (circa 1750 to 1820)". Because it's only one era among many in the history of western classical music, and is still not correct. So why should I pretend it is?

Hi,

I was gonna say, that America is better known for its jazz and blues, than its classical music, by saying this with a funny twisting of the wording.

But America, was/is a young country and their time will come in music, maybe, once the commercial controls change some ... right now, most companies will not bother recording classical music because it doesn't sell, enough to even buy an orchestra a couple of lunches and dinners!