I’ve added two more lists to the classical music meta-lists.  This has added more than a dozen new pieces of music and three new-to-the-list composers:

• Henryk Wieniawski (Poland, 1835-1880)
• Umberto Giordano (Italy, 1867-1948)
• Henri Dutilleux (France, 1916-2013)
  

The links to the updated lists are here:
Best Classical Music – Ranked
Best Classical Music – Chronological
Best Classical Music – By Composer
Best Classical Music – By Type of Composition

The full meta-list contains 656 pieces of music (659 if you count Wagner’s Ring cycle as 4 instead of 1.)  That’s a lot of music.  For those who may be intimidated by such a large list, I’ve created a miniature version that contains fewer than 70 compositions (see below).  This list includes only those pieces of music on at least 10 of the original source lists.  It is an odd and fairly conservative list.  The Germans and Austrians dominate. Most of the music is symphonic, with a number of operas, but there is very little chamber music and only one piece of solo piano music.  The vast majority of the music comes from the Classical and Romantic periods (roughly 1750-1900), with nothing from the Renaissance and nothing from any composers born in the 20th Century.  There in no Chopin (!?!), no Liszt, no Shostakovich, and only one work by an American composer.  But it is an interesting list nonetheless, and contains some of the best known, most popular, and most highly-regarded pieces of classical music ever written.  I’ve organized it by composer, with the composers listed in chronological order by date of birth.  For composers with more than one piece on the list, I’ve listed the compositions in chronological order. Enjoy.

Best Classical Music: Works on 10 or More of the Original Source Lists

Antonio Vivaldi (Italy, 1678-1741)

• The Four Seasons (1725)

Johann Sebastian Bach (Germany, 1685-1750)

• Cello Suites (approx. 1717-1723)
• Brandenburg Concertos (1721)
• St. Matthew Passion (1727)
• Goldberg Variations (1741)
• Mass in B minor (1749)

George Frideric Handel (Germany, 1685-1759)

• The Water Music (1717)
• Messiah (1741)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Austria, 1756-1791)

• Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor (1785)
• Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major (1785)
• The Marriage of Figaro (1786)
• Serenade No. 13 in G major “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (1787)
• Symphony No. 40 in G minor (1788)
• Symphony No. 41 in C major “Jupiter” (1788)
• The Magic Flute (1791)
• Clarinet Concerto in A major (1791)
• Requiem (1792)

Ludwig van Beethoven (Germany, 1770-1827)

• Piano Sonata No. 14 in C# minor “Moonlight” (1801)
• Symphony No. 3 in Eb major “Eroica” (1804)
• Violin Concerto in D major (1806)
• Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808)
• Symphony No. 6 in F major “Pastoral” (1808)
• Symphony No. 7 in A major (1812)
• Symphony No. 9 in D minor “Choral” (1824)
• String Quartet No. 14 in C# minor (1826)

Gioachino Rossini (Italy, 1792-1868)

• The Barber of Seville (1816)

Franz Schubert (Austria, 1797-1828)

• Piano Quintet in A major “The Trout” (1819)
• Symphony No. 8 in B minor “Unfinished” (1822)
• String Quintet in C major (1828)

Hector Berlioz (France, 1803-1869)

• Symphonie Fantastique (1829)

Felix Mendelssohn (Germany, 1809-1847)

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Overture (1826)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Incidental Music (1842)

Robert Schumann (Germany, 1810-1856)

• Piano Concerto in A minor (1845)

Richard Wagner (Germany, 1813-1883)

• Der Ring des Nibelungen: 1. Das Rheingold (1854)
• Der Ring des Nibelungen: 2. Die Walküre (1856)
• Der Ring des Nibelungen: 3. Siegfried (1871)
• Der Ring des Nibelungen: 4. Götterdämmerung (1874)

Giuseppe Verdi (Italy, 1813-1901)

• La Traviata (1853)
• Requiem (1874)

Anton Bruckner (Austria, 1824-1896)

• Symphony No. 7 in E major (1881-1883, revised 1885)

Johannes Brahms (Germany, 1833-1897)

• A German Requiem (1865-1868)
• Violin Concerto in D major (1878)
• Symphony No. 3 in F major (1883)
• Symphony No. 4 in E minor (1884-1885)

Georges Bizet (France, 1838-1875)

• Carmen (1874)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russia, 1840-1893)

• Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb minor (1874-1875; revised 1879 and 1888)
• Swan Lake (1875-1876)
• Symphony No. 5 in E minor (1888)
• The Nutcracker (1892)
• Symphony No. 6 in B minor “Pathetique” (1893)

Antonín Dvořák (Czech Republic, 1841-1904)

• Symphony No. 9 in E minor “From the New World” (1893)
• Cello Concerto in B minor (1894-1895)

Edvard Grieg (Norway, 1843-1907)

• Piano Concerto in A minor (1868)
• Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (1888)
• Peer Gynt Suite No. 2 (1891)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Russia, 1844-1908)

• Scheherazade (1888)

Edward Elgar (UK, 1857-1934)

• Cello Concerto in E minor (1919) (on 10 lists)

Gustav Mahler (Czech Republic, 1860-1911)

• Symphony No. 5 in C# minor (1901-1902)
• Symphony No. 9 in D major (1910)

Claude Debussy (France, 1862-1918)

• Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894)
• La Mer (1903-1905)

Richard Strauss (Germany, 1864-1949)

• Also Sprach Zarathustra (1896)

Sergei Rachmaninoff (Russia, 1873-1943)

• Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor (1900-1901)

Béla Bartók (Hungary, 1881-1945)

• String Quartet No. 4 in C major (1927)
• Concerto for Orchestra (1943)

Igor Stravinsky (Russia, 1882-1971)

• The Rite of Spring (1913)

George Gershwin (US, 1898-1937)

• Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

 

I’ve updated my meta-lists of best classical music by adding several more lists to the mix and expanding the main page to include all works on three or more of the original source lists.  I’ve also added a new page with the list organized by the type of composition. Click on the links below to go directly to the classical music meta-lists:

The Best Classical Music of All Time: Ranked
The Best Classical Music of All Time: Chronological
The Best Classical Music of All Time: By Composer
The Best Classical Music of All Time: By Type of Composition

I was originally going to introduce the new and updated lists with a serious post about the definition of classical music, going into how it really should be referred to as Western art music, because “classical” technically only refers to music (much of it in sonata form) produced during the period of 1750-1828 or so (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, et al.).  But I decided against that.  Instead I decided to look at my listening history (which since 2008 or so has been tracked by the Last.fm website – they keep track of every time I listen to a song on the computer, iPod or iPhone) and find the 25 pieces of classical music I have listened to most frequently (either the entire piece or portions of it).  These don’t necessarily represent my preferences (although I like all the music here), since I usually have my playlist on “shuffle” mode, so the selection is somewhat random.  I am intrigued by the number of contemporary composers and the absence of big names like Mozart and Beethoven (even though I’ve got lots of their work in my collection).  Here’s the list of the 25 pieces of classical music I’ve listened to most frequently since 2008, arranged in chronological order by date of composition:

1. Anonymous: Chevalier, mult estes guariz (12^th Century)
2. Anonymous: La quinte estampie real (13^th Century)
3. Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 Cellos in G minor (c. 1720)
4. George Frideric Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 (1734)
5. George Frideric Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749)
6. Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (1749)
7. Christoph Willibald Gluck (arr. by Hector Berlioz): Orphée et Eurydice (1762, Berlioz version, 1859)
8. Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (1859)
9. Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77 (1878)
10. Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 (1883)
11. Claude Debussy: Mazurka (1890)
12. Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a (1892)
13. Claude Debussy: Children’s Corner (1908)
14. Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19 (1917)
15. Dmitri Shostakovich: Adagio (Elegy) for String Quartet (1931)
16. Charles Ives: They Are There! (1942)
17. John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1948)
18. Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 4 in D major (1949)
19. Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story (1957)
20. Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 7 in F# minor, Op. 108 (1960)
21. Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 15 in Eb major, Op. 144 (1974)
22. Iannis Xenaxis: Tetras for String Quartet (1983)
23. Christopher Rouse: Kabir Padavali (1998)
24. Arvo Pärt: Lamentate (2002)
25. Hans Abrahamsen: Let me tell you (2013)