I grew up listening to classical music, though I didn't know it at the time. The Lone Ranger theme was really "The William Tell Overture" and on Flash Gordon, the background music was "Les Preludes" by List. Alfred Hitchcock was accompanied by "Funeral March of a Marionette" and Ernie Kovacs was smoking cigars to a Haydn minuet.
Unfortunately, I can't play any musical instrument (Unless you count whistling). I never had the discipline and was always diverted in other directions.
My first deliberate listening of classical music happened by accident. My father came into possession of an old house in Whiting. Most of the valuable items were already picked through when I entered the house. The only thing left was a old beat-up set of Reader Digest classical LP recordings. Not wanting to waste them, I brought them to my Freshman dorm at Ball State. I was surprised because I could actually do homework while I listened to music. (This wasn't possible with the Beatles and Led Zepplin.) The classical music grew on me. Eventually, that set of scratchy records became un-listenable. I bought more records in the '60s and '70s, then cassettes in the '70s and early '80s. Finally, in 1988 I began rebuilding my vinal/cassette classical collection with CDs. To this day, there remain those 2 or 3 cassettes/records that I wish I could recapture on CD.
Listed below are my top 10 favorite classical composers. I can tell their are my favorites rather objectively. I just converted all of my CDs into MP3 files. It is easy to see which composers have the most minutes. I have included midi files for each of the composers. Hope you enjoy the tunes.
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Number 1.
19h 8m | Wolfgang A. Mozart -- So young! so Great!
This is the Bassoon Concerto / K191, the rondo.
This is the Turkish Dance:
This is the Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem.
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Number 2.
15h 47m | J.S. Bach -- So much to pick from!
This is the 2-part invention, part 4.
Sheep may safely graze
Sleepers Awake!
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Number 3.
11h 54m | Ludwig Von Beethoven
This is the last movement of his 5th Piano Concerto The Emperor
And the last movement of his 9th Symphony, Ode to Joy.
This the first movement of Beethovan's Moonlight Sonata |
Number 4.
7h 5m | Franz Josef Haydn
This is the last part of his guitar concerto |
Number 5.
4h 49m | P.I. Tchikovsky
This is the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker Suite
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Number 6.
4h 42m | G. F. Handel
This is the Pastoral from Messiah
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Number 7.
3h 16m | Johannes Brahms
This is Brahm's Lullaby:
And this the last movement of his First Piano Concerto. |
Number 8.
2h 59m | Anton Vivaldi -- Lot's of good stuff
This is Autumn from his Four Seasons
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Number 9.
2h 57m | Georg Philipp Telemann
This is sonata 3 / Vivace |
Number 10.
2h 26m | Franz Schubert
This is his trout theme |
