Best Classical Music

What is your favorite Classical music out there? I am a beginner to the genre, but so far I am really loving it.

I personally enjoy Copland and Bach, but not for any specif reason (other than I like their style of music). It’s good stuff. :wink:

Beethoven and Bach. I used to have a [very] short MIDI of one of Beethoven’s stuff, and probably still have it. Eh.

Claude DeBussy.

The best guys to start on with are: Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Tchaikovsky.

If you happen to like Beethoven the most, then consider me a brother.

It depends what you like:

Orchestral: Haydn, Mozart, Handel (my three favourites)

Choral: Vaughan Williams, Faure, Elgar

Opera: Verdi, Mozart, Tchaikovsky

Having said this, I have a real thing for Berlioz and Brahms as well as Stanford and Britten (all of whom wrote in the last 200 years)…

Perhaps the most beautiful piece of music of all time is Allegri’s Miserere mei, deus (the musical version of Psalm 51)

I like the late romantics/early modernists Debussy, Ives, Copland, Smetana, et al I find that their tonality and timbre is really interesting - it’s the last bit of “normal” organization before everything goes off the deep end with 12 tone and shit

May I suggest some works that are a little bit outside the usual 3 B’s stuff (Beethoven, Bach, Brahms)?

Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor
Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasilieras #s 1,3,5,9 and his Guitar Music (which you can usually find on one cd - the gtr music that is)
Charles Ives’ - First Symphony
Smetana - Die Moldau
Copland - well really all of Copland

For some really scary out of the way shit, see if you can find George Crumb’s Black Angels performed by the Kronos Quartet. it’s about the composer’s experience as a 1st LT in Vietnam

Also, although not currently considered classical music you might want to check out Duke Ellington and his inheritor Charles Mingus (who I think is a better composer)

enjoy