We have been looking for a good list of the best music ever composed but without much success. So, as professional musicians, we announce our own, in order of their composition era. There are many pieces that we include on our "Great Pieces of Music in History," but these, we feel, are the greatEST. Please feel free to offer your reactions or suggestions to this list.
THE 10 GREATEST PIECES IN
MUSIC HISTORY
Johann Sebastian Bach, Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2
Johann Sebastian Bach, Art of the Fugue
George Frederic Handel, Messiah
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Requiem
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 "Choral"
Giuseppe Verdi, Requiem
Claude Debussy, La Mer
Sergei Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No. 2
Igor Stravinsky, Rite of Spring
Dimitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5
This is an invitation, issued by Drue, to take a few minutes and listen to these wonderful works of music that you may not be as familiar with in your everyday listening.
Let me do a little bit of explaining why we included these pieces and what- pray tell- were our stipulations for choosing these venerable works over others that might be as deserving as those listed. This little list of ten took FOREVER to think of and compile with any degree of certainty. Think about it, there are HUNDREDS of years of music history that we know of and hundreds more that we don't. Of all this history, to choose the top 10 pieces- well, its a miracle it even happened.
We wanted to include pieces that has a scope or breadth of exploration in its composition. Johannes Brahms describes the first item on our list, Bach's Chaconne, as follows:
"On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
This is the kind of description that we might wish to ascribe to any of the pieces on this list. One might think that this list is being exclusive of the rest of the world's ethnic styles. But the music of European origin has, especially within the last century, become favored among many nations.
BONUS:
Recommended Recordings.
Chaconne - Jascha Heifetz
Art of the Fugue - Grigory Sokolov
Messiah - Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra
Requiem (Mozart) - Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra
Symphony No. 9 - John Eliot Gardiner, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Requiem (Verdi) - Claudio Abbado, Berliner Philharmoniker
La Mer -
Piano Concerto No. 2 - Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic, Gary Graffman (piano)
Rite of Spring - Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic
Symphony No. 5 - Mariss Jansons, Vienna Philharmonic
2 comments:
So, you know you are asking for trouble with an invitation like this, right? :)
My first reaction is that the whole premise for inclusion on your list (that quote by Brahms) is too entrenched in pathos. Your list of recommended recordings suggests this even more...My second reaction is that your list seems to suggest that complexity=quality (generally speaking, of course). My third reaction is that this list is too inclusive of orchestral music, at the expense of other genres–almost as if to say that the orchestra is superior to all other possibilities.
Of course it doesn't do much good to sit around and criticize when I haven't a "better" list to offer. I'll take a crack at it, but it might take me a while.
PS: I mean these criticisms in the most respectful way possible. :)
What?!!
No Yanni ??
No Raffi??
Are you serious? There are many many itsy bitsy spiders coming your way, and the bus does have wheels going round and round for you.
Be afraid, be vary affraid.
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