Top 50 "Classical" Works - Currently: Scorpion 47-48, Splent Addenda

[Pragmaticcircus]

2. George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH2PH0auTUU

This was the piece that got me into classical music. I was about 7, and I heard the theme on the international forecast on the weather channel (brought to them by United Airlines, hence why they played it)... it was like a really synthy version that I liked, and then I heard the slow section play and enjoyed it. My dad had a record of it and let me play it and I was immediately hooked.

While this piece wasn't the first piece to combine classical and jazz per se, this was the first piece in that regard to have any sort of success. It was a huge hit after being heard in NYC. In fact, the opening gliss of the clarinet was added at rehearsal after the clarinetist did it as a joke, but Gershwin loved it. He also wrote it in a hurry... apparently he was approached by Paul Whiteman to do it, and initially declined because of time constraints... then read in a newspaper that he was doing it and then heard from Whiteman that another jazz composer was going to steal the idea if he didn't do it, so he ended up writing the music (sans the piano part, which was improvised by Gershwin at the initial performance) in about 5 weeks time.

I studied this piece earlier this year, very interesting indeed!!!!....,

[Elite]

If your #1 is Maurice Duruflé's Requiem Opus 9 I will love you.

[Kilgore Trout]

Splent said that most people had heard number 1, so it's probably not it. In the same kind of style, Fauré's Requiem is much more famous.

While it's probably a choral work, I would not take a guess.

[Lucien]

I don't know choral works, as a string player, so I'd be surprised if #1 was a choral work 

[Elite]

Splent said that most people had heard number 1, so it's probably not it. In the same kind of style, Fauré's Requiem is much more famous.

While it's probably a choral work, I would not take a guess.

Verdi's Messa da Requiem then?

I have a thing for Masses.

[Kilgore Trout]

I don't know choral works, as a string player, so I'd be surprised if #1 was a choral work 

You know, it's not because you are a string player that you're forced to listen only to music that involve strings...

[Elite]

I'm a guitarist, I don't like most classical music because most of contains instruments I don't play

[RoeDent]

I'm guessing it will be an early/Baroque choral work. One of Bach's Passions, maybe?

[Kilgore Trout]

I'm guessing it will be an early/Baroque choral work. One of Bach's Passions, maybe?

The logical choice would be his mass in B minor or either one of the passions, but I don't think they're "user friendly" enough.

 

[splent]

I'm guessing it will be an early/Baroque choral work. One of Bach's Passions, maybe?

The logical choice would be his mass in B minor or either one of the passions, but I don't think they're "user friendly" enough.

 

Right era, wrong composer

[Big Hath]

Handel's Messiah

[nicmos]

Gotta catch up after Thanksgiving.  Beethoven 9, yeah.  Rhapsody in Blue, what a great piece.  Love the andante.

[splent]

Handel's Messiah

Maybe...

[Kilgore Trout]

Handel's Messiah

This, obviously. I forgot about this one.

[7deg_inner_happiness]

Handel's Messiah

This, obviously. I forgot about this one.

Gets my vote, too! 

[splent]

Before I post #1, I'm going to add that following this I will be posting a few pieces I completely forgot about that should have been in my top 50, or at least the honorable mentions, including the piece I replaced with Ives.

1. George Frederic Handel - Messiah (1741)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTMJVvld9ok (yes this is the whole thing)

His most popular work today (though greeted with only warm reception when it premiered) is my favorite. I've performed this many times, and I never get bored, save during the Alto aria "He Was Despised" because it's so slow and so long... but even then it maintains my interest. I love it.

Handel wrote this over the course of about a month, although the legend surrounding its composition is debated (that he saw the heavens before him when writing the Hallelujah chorus)... he just had a huge burst of creative energy (he wrote Samson over the course of the following month, which I've also performed and which I also thoroughly enjoy). Anyways, the king standing during the Hallelujah chorus is also not known, although the practice was in place while Handel was alive. He premiered it in Dublin to help raise money for charity. It was not as well recieved in London, and he was constantly editing the piece, adding arias and taking them away, adding instrumentation, etc. By the mid 1750s the piece was around what we normally hear today.

[Big Hath]

it's a magnificent work.  I've also been part of several productions of this, specifically the "Behold, I tell you a mystery/The trumpet shall sound" air for bass.

[Scorpion]

I've never gotten the love for this one. It's good, but it's nothing that I tend to gravitate toward for some reason. It's been a while since I last heard though and I will be seeing it on New Year's Eve, so maybe that will change my mind, after all that has happened before.

Whenever you're done splent, I'll be starting my list, is that alright with you?

[Big Hath]

I will say, as splent alluded to for one section, there are parts of Handel's Messiah that REALLY drag for me.  But the other parts more than make up for them, imo.

[splent]

And He Shall Purify.... I could listen to that on repeat for hours...

[splent]

I've never gotten the love for this one. It's good, but it's nothing that I tend to gravitate toward for some reason. It's been a while since I last heard though and I will be seeing it on New Year's Eve, so maybe that will change my mind, after all that has happened before.

Whenever you're done splent, I'll be starting my list, is that alright with you?

Go ahead whenever you are ready. I look forward to it.

[Scorpion]

Alright, so I'm going to do my Top 50 list. splent, could you please change the thread title? Thanks.

Before we get started, a few words about my list. As I have already said, the focus will lie strongly on choral music - looking over my list, only six pieces are completely or mostly instrumental. The others are either orchestra and choir, choir a cappella or solo voice. This, I would say, is mainly due to the fact that I myself sing in a choir and therefore find it a lot easier to connect to vocal music, even though most of the music we sing (and, indeed, most of the music on this list) is sacral music and I, myself, am not a religious person at all. Not sure why that is, but anyway.

Let's get started!

50. Heinrich Schütz - Selig sind die Toten (1648)

engl.: Blessed Are the Dead

Schütz has never been one of my absolute favourites, even though our conductor is a huge fan of the guy and we have yet to sing a concert without at least one motet written by Schütz. Maybe it's because he's from our city and the music school of which our choir is a part of is named after him, I don't know.

Anyway, while I never loved most of his work, there are clear exceptions and this is one of them. Like most of his work, "Selig sind die Toten" features many interweaving melodies and lots of contrasts, but what seems formulaic in other works of his seems effortless and natural. The melodies here are especially strong and the contrasts between the "Sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit" and the more energetic "Und ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach" that immediately follows make this one of the most interesting Schütz pieces that I know, both to sing and to listen to.

49. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy - Herr Gott, du bist unsere Zuflucht (1877)

engl.: Lord God, Thou are our refuge

Mendelssohn has always been one of my favourite composers, and basically everything that he has ever written is amazing, but I will limit to myself to three of his works, and this is the first. As with many things written by Mendelssohn, what really makes this amazing is the simplicity in its composition and how, despite that simplicity, the resulting piece is something that seems far more than the sum of its parts. Especially the softer parts ("Bist du Gott...") stand out for their majestic alto melodies and keen use of harmonics in a way that seems totally obvious and yet keeps you engaged and interested, again both as a performer and a listener.

[Kilgore Trout]

Wouldn't it be better to make à distinct thread ?

[Scorpion]

Why do you think so? What's the problem continuing this one?

48. Johann Sebastian Bach - Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf (1729)

engl.: The Spirit Helps Us In Our Weakness

While most of what Bach wrote for choir is a bitch to sing - and this is no exception, I've been told - it's undeniable that the end result is most definitely a joy to experience as a listener. While I like most Bach motets a fair amount, this one stands out among the others for how catchy and well-used its main motif is throughout the piece. It was also the first Bach motet that I heard, so maybe that factors into me preferring this one.

"Der Geist hilft unsrer Schwachheit auf" has got pretty much everything that you would expect from Bach, so if you don't like Bach, this won't change your mind, but if you do, then you will find this motet to be abundant with elegant melodies and a great use of two choirs that interplay in a way that one choir could never really do.

47. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Ave Verum Corpus (1791)

engl.: Hail, True Body

I've never really enjoyed Mozart as much as I feel I probably should, but, as with Schütz, he does have plenty of amazing pieces, and this is most definitely one of them. What makes this motet so amazing is that, unlike with many other motets, the orchestra is just as important as the choir(I know there are there versions with organ, but they aren't nearly as good imo) and it's really the union of the two that makes this such a magical piece, especially the short violin lead parts that form great transitions between the sung sections.

The choir passages are equally amazing, with the short moments of solo soprano at the end of each stanza that everything develops towards being the obvious standouts - the rest is very subdued, but closer listens reveal that it is just as interesting, and that this was most definitely the work of a genius composer.

[Kilgore Trout]

Why do you think so? What's the problem continuing this one?

Splent's list will kinda disappears once the thread will get big. It doesn't really matters, but each of the top 50 albums have its own thread, so why not do the same thing with these classical lists?

[Scorpion]

There's been quite a few of this type of threads that one person takes over after someone is done - what has been done there traditionally is that the first post is continuously edited to show who has posted a list or is planning to do so in the future, and which page of the thread each list starts. I think that that worked quite well.

[splent]

My choir is working on #48. Hope we can pull it off.

[splent]

Addendum 1: Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings (1936)

https://youtu.be/CcflwUYYoXk

How could I have forgotten this one?!? Just tugs at your chest... I love it. Some may think it's a little melodramatic (particularly when used in satirical tv shows like South Park...) but so good.

[Scorpion]

46. Hugo Distler - Selig sind die Toten (1933)

engl.: Blessed Are the Dead

Based in the same text that Schütz's "Selig sind die Toten", which appeared at number 50, this is nevertheless a wholly different piece. Much of what makes Distler's style so characteristic is on full display here, with a keen sense for intriguing harmonics and melodies that nevertheless always gel together beautifully and feel wholly natural instead of constructed is the key here.

I think the reason that I prefer this to Schütz's version (though the difference in quality is minimal) is that this feels less formulaic and a lot more organic, and ultimately this is what I love so much about most of Distler's music and about this piece in particular.

45. Gregorio Allegri - Miserere Mei, Deus (around 1630)

engl.: Have Mercy on Me, God

Oh man, this piece. If legend is to be believed, Mozart heard it during a service and then wrote it down later from memory, so that it could be published, because direct publication was strictly forbidden. I don't know how much of that is true, but if it is, then I will always be grateful to Mozart for this, because this is truly beautiful. It's a pretty simple composition, nothing elaborate, but through its constant vocal repetition, interspersed with soaring melodies, it gains a truly ethereal quality to it that few pieces can match. And while it is pretty long, I find that while listening to it, time just seems to fly by, making it feel significantly shorter than its 15 minutes. Definitely a piece that I would recommend to everyone, not in the least because very few people seem to know it from my experience, and that's kind of a travesty.

[Scorpion]

Sorry for the long delay, I had tons of stuff to do at the beginning of December and then I kind of... forgot that this existed. Won't happen again. 

44. Sergei Rachmaninoff - Isle of the Dead (1908)



The painting "Isle of the Dead" by Arnold Böcklin that inspired Rachmininoff to write his symphonic poem of the same name.

What fascinates me most in this piece is the mesemerising quality of its main motif and how it develops. Starting out calm and serene, it grows ever more powerful and forceful as more and more instruments enter. The build-up in this piece is great and I love how it repeatedly grows more imposing and intense, only to collapse back in on itself and for the development to start anew. Even though that description may give the impression that this is repetitive, it is really not - at least, not in the negative sense. Rather, this piece uses repetition and development in such a way that, even though the number of motifs used throughout at few, the listener is kept engaged for the entire twenty minutes that this piece lasts, and that's why it's one of my favourite works for orchestra.

43. Anton Bruckner - Locus iste (1869)

Bruckner is, once again, a composer where I'm pretty picky about what of his stuff I like and what I don't. Much of his work for choir, for my taste, neglects memorable melodies in favour of interesting modulations ("Vexilla regis" and "Christus factus est" are the two that come to mind immediately), which, while interesting to analyse from a theoretical point of view, don't do much for me when actually listening to the music.

With "Locus iste", however, Bruckner hits the sweet spot between simple and memorable vocal lines yet still injecting enough of his trademark treatment of harmony to make it unmistakeably Brucker and that keeps it from becoming monotonous and derivative. Especially the middle section ("Irreprehensibilis est") is astounding both how well the melodies sound together and yet at how complex and interesting the harmonies behind them actually are. If you are not familiar with Bruckner, this is an excellent starting point, at least concerning his choir music and motets.

[Train of Naught]

I can't really comment on classical music, not my thing, but there's two #47's and two #46's, that can't be right right?

[splent]

Locus is one of my favorites.

[Kilgore Trout]

Is this thread dead?