# When you listen to 'popular classics'...



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

When you do listen to works that are so famous you may have heard them in a t.v. commercial as a kid, or your elementary school teachers told you a bit about them, or they were an arrangement in a kids piano book you studied...: which works do you find yourself listening to? Or perhaps a better question: which works of this sort have you listened to recently and how did you feel about them?

I listened to the William Tell Overture, The Barber of Seville Overture, and Ride of the Valkyries this morning. I also listened to Gounod's Funeral March of Marionette, a few days ago. I loved every one of those pieces and it was nice to hear them fresh. Sometimes it's nice to remove the expectation of development and just dive into a shorter rhapsodic work with great melodies and some loose development. Or just to hear something with a danceable melody.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

As I listen often at random it can become a kind of homecoming when a warhorse / chestnut like the William Tell Overture comes up. 

Recently I heard the old Musette in D from the Anna Magdelena Notebook many novice piano students are familiar with. When played by an expressive professional it can bring new life into the tired old ditty. So it's not just a homecoming. It can be like coming home to a newly rejuvenated loved one. I doubt I'll have this experience with Fur Elise or Dvorak's 9th ever again however.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I remember friends of my parents had a recording by Waldo de Los Rios , kind of jams Last goes, horrible
I wan to hear the real thing, popular or not


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

The other day I listened to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture. A number of my favorite sections in it are never featured alongside that one sound byte that finds itself everywhere.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

If it wasn't for "popular classics" I wouldn't have started listening to any classical music at all. I can't think of a single piece of music that's lost much of its freshness since I first heard it 25 or 30 years ago.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I agree with Nereffid. I enjoy hearing Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, The William Tell Overture, and Pachelbel's Canon as much as ever.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

In agreement too. Although I may not listen to these pop favorites much any more, if it weren't for them I might not be listening to classical music at all.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

KenOC said:


> In agreement too. Although I may not listen to these pop favorites much any more, if it weren't for them I might not be listening to classical music at all.


Now I'm curious to know how many of you were initially exposed to WCM this way...

My grandmother played LP's for me when I came to visit, and asked me what I thought of each piece. What I can dimly remember is that Beethoven's Emperor Concerto was one of the first pieces I was exposed to, and I guess that's a warhorse but it certainly isn't a commercial sound-byte like the music the thread is referring to. It really was marvelous having a church organist for a grandmother.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I wasn't necessarily referring to "commercial soundbyte music", but the thread encompasses pieces that contain those parts. The Emperor Concerto(the finale in particular) definitely has a 'greatest hits disc'(from a collection of composers maybe, not just Beethoven's) reputation to it. But I would listen to the entire Barber of Seville Overture for example, and get much more out of it than the commercial soundbytes excerpts when randomly featured on t.v.

One of my first exposures to classical music where I was selecting what I heard and not just having a tape played for me or being at some sporadic concert, was with an electric keyboard and the preprogrammed midi pieces. My grandmother got a more extensive keyboard at one point when I came to visit, and I heard many petite piano/harpsichord pieces that have stuck with me to this day. And I would listen to the radio and listen carefully for what the announcers said. It typically played baroque music or more compact romantic music, as a result lots of Handel, Telemann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, etc.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

For me it was my father, playing the Emperor Concerto and the Pastoral on the living room "console" on Saturday mornings. I would hear them through my bedroom wall as I slowly woke up. They were stacks of 78s, dropping one by one (with luck) onto the spinning platter.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Watching the Lone Ranger TV Series every week on American TV as a kid, the Rossini William Tell Overture was drilled into my head.

Also there was another TV western series that used some infectious classical music as its theme music which I later found out was from Dvorak's New World Symphony.

The hopelessly outdated "Flash Gordon" starring Buster Crabbe used heroic-sounding music from Liszt's Les Preludes.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

I think popular classics got many of us here into some very serious listening and in many cases an obsession of classical music. When I was growing up we had a marvellous radio programme called, Your Hundred Best Tunes, devised and introduced by a great broadcaster called Alan Keith. Alan's programme which was on Radio 2 on a Sunday evening was a starting point for many a classical music lover, and consisted of many old warhorses mixed in with drawing room ballads and sacred music, all with an illuminating introduction by Alan, given in his trademark sonorous tones. Many years later I switched on the radio and turned the dial - there thirty years later was my childhood radio programme, still hosted by Alan Keith who was now well over eighty years old. From then on I religiously listened to every Your Hundred Best Tunes up to the time its founder and devoted keeper died well in his nineties It was taken over by another broadcaster but was never the same, and I couldn't face not listening to Alan Keith's voice which seemed to have musically guided me through boyhood to manhood.

I think the point of the above is to say without that mix of popular classics chosen by that old broadcaster music would never have become the life-force for me it is today, and music more than anything else can sustain you through the worst and best times. As to the music itself, who couldn't get a thrill out of hearing Herold's Zamper, or Suppe's Light Cavalry overtures, or the opening of Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto or the closing moments of the 1812 overture. I believe the reason these pieces are known as popular classic is that there are superbly written and full of memorable tunes and every bit as great as their more serious counterparts. Though nowdays I play these pieces rarely but if I hear for instance, Ketelbey's, Bells Across the Meadows, I still know that this was one of the reasons for my passion for music today.


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## agoukass (Dec 1, 2008)

My father is a professional violinist. My earliest memory of a popular classical piece is when he was practicing Dvorak's "Carnival" Overture. I do remember that I was a big fan of Wagner's "Tannhauser" Overture and Tchaikovsky's Fourth, when I was very little. My parents used to play those for me on the turn table all day. I still love Wagner and Dvorak, but I haven't listened to Tchaikovsky's Fourth in years.


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## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

I just listened to Vivaldi's _Four Seasons_ today. Some movements are a bit samey, but I enjoy it. And Winter is still the best concerto of the four.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

It's so lovely to read about Tchaikovsky's 'Romeo & Juliet' and Ketelby's 'Bells Across the Meadows' in this thread. Such beautiful music that has paved the way for so many listeners to far weightier and serious works. I think it's testament to to quality (and in some cases innovation) of the popular classics that they continue to give so much pleasure.


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## Überstürzter Neumann (Jan 1, 2014)

The Peer Gynt-suites, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Water Music, Nutcracker-suite and many more. I still listen to those great pieces with pleasure, after all they were my entrance to the world of classical music and they are fine works.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I find that I never tire of popular ones from the 18th century or so.

I love Ravel's _Bolero_!


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

Right.. now I suddenly want Bach's Badinerie playing on repeat.

I liked Tchaikovsky's ballet music Nutcracker, Sleeping beauty, swan lake and Bach's Badinerie of course, my earliest memories of this music is as a toddler maybe 4yrs old. My mother says that whenever Tchaikovsky's nutckracker or swan lake was on I'd do a 'freezing' baby act and it was difficult to make me to 'unfreeze' from listening and join reality, probably something mundane like eating pureed baby food. The first cd I bought when I moved to another city to university was Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker; most of my music I'd left at home. And I attended Nutcracker's production this year. 
Still love all of them

Ah, I don't believe it, I still have to buy swan lake

*Extra Late Note:* And of course, Prokofiev's Capuleti and Montecchi scene form Romeo & Juliet; no matter how many dodgy programmes and adverts hijack this piece, I like it beyond belief anyway.


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