“The Devil has the best tunes” brings in the diabolical, a favourite area of feeling for the romantics.Ĭonsolation is another special service classical music can provide for us, because its language is rooted in church music, even if it has long outgrown that context. “Fighting spirit” evokes the military strain that has been such a huge part of classical music. Here, “Does anybody need a lift?” means (mostly) music for ceremonials. Classical music is as mysterious as world music it’s just that the foreign country to which it gives us access is distant in time, not place.Īny classical “best of” has to pay attention to these vanished worlds of feeling, even if giving them a name is difficult. The situation has all but vanished, but the music remains like a message in a bottle from the past that, when uncorked, releases an enticing scent. Both activities inspired a mountain of music, some of which has survived and now lives in the concert hall. For every piece that evokes feelings we all recognise – and, for example, brings a tear to the listener’s eye – there are many others that spring from a social situation that has long since disappeared.Ĭonsider the feelings that go with taking part in a courtly ceremony, or with marching in a parade ground in a picturesque uniform. So even when the tunes or rhythms seem strange (hip-hop may sound pretty alien to a fan of dad rock), none of pop music is entirely out of reach.Ĭlassical music is a more complicated case, because so much of it is historically remote. Pop songs are about the now, and tend to concern us as individuals. ![]() Some of those moods will feel familiar, others will not. In the list that follows, we have tried to capture the variety of moods and feelings you can find in classical music, which encompasses just about everything in human experience. Sometimes it achieves that in a gently beautiful way, but more often it disturbs or excites us, and can even rub our nerves raw. In fact, so much of classical music is the very opposite of chillaxing – it inspires us to live more intensely, not less. They give the heinous impression that the classical tradition is nothing more than a repository of upmarket background music, beautiful sounds to help us “chillax”. But that would have meant packing this list with the kind of hoary old favourites that fill compilation albums – and those albums depress us. There is an easy way out: swap “best-known” for “best” and you have a far simpler task on your hands. Over the centuries, it has become so incredibly varied within itself – spanning everything from a two-minute medieval carol to a two-hour opera written last week – that the phrase “classical music” has almost lost its meaning. ![]() ![]() The sheer vastness of classical music, a tradition that is now at least half a millennium old, makes choosing the 100 best pieces an impossible task.
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