I’ve been asked to write up a listening list – the important works of classical music, the ones to be familiar with if you want to know great music. Rather than choosing pieces on the basis of "historical significance," which would have me listing serial works and other garbage such as Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (not that the victims don’t deserve remembrance), I’m going to list them on the basis of excellence.
For anybody who wants to write to me and claim that there is no such thing as objective excellence in music, please read this before emailing me.
That being said, here’s a list of the greatest music in Western history. I don’t know anything about other ethnic musical forms, but – and I’m sure I’ll hear about this – I do know that most other ethnic musical forms are basically folk idioms, and haven’t been subjected to the analysis and development Western music has. However much it deprives me, and having heard a lot of these other musics, I’m not terribly interested in analyzing them for now. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong, but the writing shows that the Chinese invented gunpowder and were the first to pipe natural gas into homes (as a result of developing administration over salt mining); Babylonians developed civil codes; and Western Europe developed great music.
First, the greatest composer so far was Beethoven. Listen to anything you can find of his. His most important works are symphonies and string quartets. Start with one or all of symphonies 3, 5, and 7; then go to one or two string quartets in the Opus 60–90 range. Then no more Beethoven for now.
Then, Brahms – symphonies 1 and/or 4, and any of the string quartets. After that, late Mozart symphonies and piano concertos. Then, Bach, whom many consider the second-greatest composer. I’m not sure. I’d rank them as Beethoven first; then Mozart, Bach, perhaps Wagner together; then Brahms and Bartok, a few isolated Stravinsky works, perhaps Handel, Haydn, Debussy, and maybe Schubert all sort of together, but not necessarily exactly; then the rest is less significant, though some of it is fascinating, such as Charles Ives’s Unanswered Question. I’m sure I’ve left somebody out, but Beethoven is alone.
For Bach, try a few bits of the clavier music and organ music, and the St. John’s Passion. You’ll notice, after listening to Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart, all of whom wrote Classical music (though some will want to put all of Brahms, and perhaps late Beethoven, into the Romantic period), that the very Baroque Bach is very different, but still written in the same tonal language. I recognize the Bach as virtuosic, literate, compelling, and far more clever than anything I’ll ever write; but I’ll never get the same charge out of it as I get from the architectural forms that came along after the Baroque period.
Then, into the 20th century: For Bartok, Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion; Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste; and Concerto for Orchestra are spectacular. Then Stravinsky: Symphony in C, Symphony in Three Movements, and Symphony of Psalms.
If you’ve listened to at least one or two works from each of the composers mentioned above, and by "listened to" I mean several listenings so that you’re familiar with each work you’ve covered, you’re ready for late Beethoven. Almost. First, listen to Bartok’s string quartets; listen several times to the ones you really like.
Beethoven’s late piano sonatas, late string quartets, and the 9th Symphony are your stopping point. Once you’ve become familiar with that symphony, and one or two of the late quartets, you’ve listened to the greatest music mankind has. Anything else – Debussy, Samuel Barber, Charles Ives, Schubert, whatever – you will be able to recognize as good or great, but not approaching the profundity of Bach or Mozart, much less Beethoven.
Why is Beethoven so great? His musical ideas – themes and motives – were not only fecund in the abstract, allowing 60-minute symphonic elaborations, but in his particular treatments they were suggestive and compelling. There are a thousand ways to write the opening four notes of the 5th Symphony, but Beethoven found the best way. Then he grew tiny motives into expansive, gorgeous melodies.
Most importantly, and whether he did this consciously no one can know, the surface of all of his music was always consistent with, even in service of, unifying principles that can be discovered by analyzing the music just under the surface. Additionally, the expansions he made to the classical forms he inherited were consistent with, perhaps even owing to, the underlying principles.
Beethoven has many eccentric moments in his music. In one of the late piano sonatas, in a sonata-allegro form, the exposition moves from C major to G major – nothing surprising there. After the exposition ends mildly with a cadence on G, the development begins with an emphatic pounce on an E major chord: very eccentric and startling in the context. (Play a C-major triad, then a G-major triad, several times, on a piano; then an E-major triad, to get the effect.) I haven’t analyzed the piece, indeed I can’t remember which one it is, but I can guarantee that analysis would show that underlying relationships explain the gesture, even mandate it. He did the same sort of thing with rhythm and meter in his later works – the 2nd movement of the 9th symphony, if you try to beat it out in 4/4 or 3/4 time, will constantly force you into changing your conducting pattern.
Then, of course, Beethoven was great at the level of the entire movement and work: Start your listening with that 3rd Symphony, and you’ll have the idea upon the first listening: Something profound just happened, even if you don’t know exactly what it was.
The last movement of the 9th symphony falls a little short of this on its own; perhaps it was because it wasn’t completely abstract (being organized partly around the vocal music), or because the musical ideas just got too big for the orchestra and chorus late in the 24-minute movement. No matter; we know by this point that all the notes he wrote were the right ones (and in a manner not available to the serialists, for whom all the notes were "correct"), and many of the moments and sections in the first 16 minutes of the movement are the most sublime in the history of…ever.
If Beethoven had written a piano sonata with a note in it too high or too low for the piano even to play, it would still be the right note.
That Beethoven is the proper beginning and end of developing familiarization with great music doesn’t cast any pall on the other great composers. They’ll all knock your socks off, emotionally and intellectually. Anything you listen to from the links above will only get better with time and with repeated listenings. This is not true of lesser music.
The Bible says God’s understanding is not isomorphic to our own. I have always maintained that for God, two plus two is still equal to four. There are some things we just know to be true, once we’ve studied a little. Listen to these works several times. You have to listen carefully all the way through – it doesn’t matter if you know what you’re listening for, but it does matter that you pay attention and go from the beginning to the end. Then, you’ll be able to separate great music from the rest.