# Most Listened To



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

For those of you who are able to access a list of how many times you've listened to a given track in your music libraries, I thought it might be interesting to hear what comes at the top of the list... There are certainly some surprises!

For me, the lucky first-place winner is Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, with Dvorak's _The Noon Witch_ (look at the username, look at the username!) in a close second. You might be intrigued to learn that my _first_ Brahms entry is No. 16 o) - the Deutsches Requiem.

However, I think there must be something messed up with iTunes, possibly something to do with updating :/ After all, _Die Schone Mullerin_ comes in 3rd (compared with Brahms at 16!) and I only bought that last week...


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## Boccherini (Mar 29, 2010)

*Blasphemy!*



Polednice said:


> For those of you who are able to access a list of how many times you've listened to a given track in your music libraries, I thought it might be interesting to hear what comes at the top of the list... There are certainly some surprises!
> 
> For me, the lucky first-place winner is Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, with Dvorak's _The Noon Witch_ (look at the username, look at the username!) in a close second. You might be intrigued to learn that my _first_ Brahms entry is No. 16 o) - the Deutsches Requiem.
> 
> However, I think there must be something messed up with iTunes, possibly something to do with updating :/ After all, _Die Schone Mullerin_ comes in 3rd (compared with Brahms at 16!) and I only bought that last week...


This is just plain wrong listening to music for the sake of that worthless list. Get rid of this as soon as possible. By doing it, you turn Music into something very cheap, superficial and inferior which is very bad. Moreover, by listening to a specific composition -- works only with the Romantic era and so forth -- over and over again, it becomes kitsch and un-listenable. However, I'm pretty sure it's harmless to do so with Baroque music (I listened to Bach's Cantata _"Wir Müssen durch viel Trübsal" BWV 146_ billions of times and every time I listen it I enjoy like it was the first time).

I must confess, I can't listen to your avatar's Violin Concerto anymore. maybe next year or so I'll be recuperated.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Boccherini said:


> This is just plain wrong listening to music for the sake of that worthless list.


I have to say that I think that comment is uncalled for.

I mainly listen to CDs, so I don't know the exact number of times, but I'm sure my top two would be *Also sprach Zarathrustra* and *Sheherazade*.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Last FM, which I use from the very beginning of my classical adventure tells that most listened tracks are: Brahms PC No. 1, Mahler's Resurrection, Rach 3, Sibelius Symphony No. 2, Grieg's PC, Shostakovich 5th, and Ravel PC.

With Brahms on clearly 1st position of all.

But it's not very actual list, most of "top pieces" were listened regular when I was newbie and didn't have much to listen to. 

Now I rarely listen to the same work more than two times in a week,


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I never look at the list, I never use the list, it doesn't inform my listening... I just stumbled upon it the other day and found it surprising. It seems terribly difficult to talk about something light-hearted around here sometimes!


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I haven't made the least effort to keep such a record of my listening habits. Off the top of my head, however, I would guess that the works I have listened to most include:

Bach- Well Tempered Clavier
Mozart- Requiem/Great Mass in C-minor
Beethoven- 9th Symphony
Schubert- Winterreise

The rest would be but random guesses.


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## KaerbEmEvig (Dec 15, 2009)

Boccherini said:


> I must confess, I can't listen to your avatar's Violin Concerto anymore. maybe next year or so I'll be recuperated.


I've made a topic on this - first you fixate on a piece and after some time you can't stand it.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Polednice said:


> It seems terribly difficult to talk about something light-hearted around here sometimes!


Real classical music cognoscenti take it_ seriously_. Not until you can post a note for note analysis of the structure of Cage's 4'33" will you gain any credibility now after that remark. 

I have three listening methods, the most common being as ambiance while I'm doing something else. I have the player on shuffle for that. Everything should get an equal chance.

Another method is more focused. I will sit down and try to fathom a piece not well known to me, usually with liner notes or Allmusic annotations at hand so I can know what I'm supposed to be hearing. This has the added benefit of keeping me awake during the piece - which gets a little harder as I get older.

The third method is more in line with playlist statistics-- just picking something I want to hear and enjoying it. I reserve my very favorite pieces (Beethoven's 9th Symphony and Vaughan-Williams' Tallis Fantasia) for special occasions, so I doubt they would be near the top. I would bet that Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and Beethoven's Violin Concerto (piano concerto arr.) would be top two.

This is a guess. I could be wrong.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

I have no idea since I prefer listening on compact disc.. I'm pretty sure Tchaikovsky's 6th is my most-listened to symphony, however. 
I think the beethoven sonatas (John O'Conor set) are probably my most-listened to overall, since I've had them for about 10 years now..


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I have collected about 2000 Classical CD's over the years, and for many years I tracked which ones I played. Number one was Gorecki's Symphony 3, followed by Mahler's song cycles (Fischer Dieskau).


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Strangely enough it's Orff's Der Mond top of my play count - though that's only my PC-based collection of course.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

> Now I rarely listen to the same work more than two times in a week


yes...this is quite common in music for extroverts. You can only put up with it for so long before it gets really exhausting. Especially the symphonies lovers - that must be really exhausting listening to all those crashing cymbals and towering swirling collapses of monumental orchestrated effort, day in day in 

Myaskovsky's string quartets and cello sonatas feature tops of my list. Maybe because I travel alot, it's not unusual to listen to his complete string quartet cycle within a day - several times a week. And the cello sonatas - because there is such a rich variety of performers - from Rostropovich; Tarasova; Mork; Yohodi (sp? Hohani? Huhani? Hahani, Hohani? Houdini?), several times a week too.

Recently listening to Shostakovich's string quartet no. VIII - by about 6 different string quartet performers on the same mini-disc!


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## Falstaft (Mar 27, 2010)

Great thread Polendice. (and I don't think Bocherinni is being serious).

Unfortunately for me, my iTunes is currently so unstable, what with my constant readjustment of music folders and refreshing the library, that I no longer have a reliable Play Count list. In the past, I can say with little doubt that the _Siegfried Act III Vorspiel_dominated (it's one of those pieces I need to stop and listen to if it's on shuffle). That was followed, IIRC, by a great little unreleased cue from Williams' Jurassic Park score entitled_ Raptors in the Shed_

Currently, the highest number of plays on my days old list is for a movement from Frank Martin's _In Terra Pax:Troisieme Partie: No. 10 'Notre Pere, Qui Es Aux Cieux': Adagio_. Actually, if anyone knows this piece, and this segment in particular (it's uncharacteristic of the whork as a whole), could you *please* think of other music similar to it? I can't get enough, clearly.

My ipod is also constantly shifting its library, though I'm a bit surprised and puzzled to find the first dance from Roussel's _Bacchus et Ariadne_ at the top of the list!


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## JAKE WYB (May 28, 2009)

probably one or two of the beetoven piano sonatas becuase i use them to get to sleep and I alway fall asleep before they finished so i listen to them over and over before actually hearing them through - pathetique or the waldstein prob the most

In terms of playing a lot becuase of my fondmesss for the music or trying to study it more...

*Sibelius symphony 7 & tapiola* - contain all i need to know about music never tire of them and they never lose their capacity to reveal new doses of devine inspiration when i need it most


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

> Currently, the highest number of plays on my days old list is for a movement from Frank Martin's In Terra Pax:Troisieme Partie: No. 10 'Notre Pere, Qui Es Aux Cieux': Adagio. Actually, if anyone knows this piece, and this segment in particular (it's uncharacteristic of the whork as a whole), could you please think of other music similar to it? I can't get enough, clearly.


Martin is quite an amazing composer.

I know so little about him but having discovered his harpsichord concerto - I'm yearning to listen to more of his stuff.

When it comes to chorale music, the most listened to stuff I have, is probably very conventional ~ Palestrina's Missa and Rachmaninov's Vespers as well as Szymanowski's Stabat Mater. If I had a better recording of Taneyev's "At the Reading of a Psalm", that would probably figure too, but there is so much whooping cough going on in the background of the live recording on the Russian Disc recording..


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I mostly listen to cd & analogue radio (I'm clearly a dinosaur!). But the things that would be at the top of my list depends on which live concerts I am going to in the near future. I like to actually know at least one of the pieces that will be played in a concert. So I listen to these pieces many times, in order to get to know them better. I'd say around 75% would be chamber works from 1800 to about 1945. I rarely go to concerts where I don't know at least one of the pieces. In recent & coming months, these pieces have been/are:

Schubert - Piano Trio No. 1
Mendelssohn - Piano Trio No. 2
Granados - Piano Trio Op. 50
Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique; Te Deum
Arvo Part - Berliner Messe
Piazzolla - various tangos
Brahms - Violin Concerto; Clarinet Quintet
Beethoven - Septet; Clarient Trio (transcription of Piano Trio No. 4); "Kreutzer" Violin Sonata
Schumann - Cello Concerto
Janacek - String Quaret No. 1
Berg - String Quartet
Mozart - Clarinet Quintet
Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Bruckner - Mass in E minor
Barber - Knoxville Summer 1915
Handel - Messiah (for November, but I start early - actually a friend's got this on cd, I don't own it)
etc. etc...


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring tops the list.


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## Boccherini (Mar 29, 2010)

Falstaft said:


> (and I don't think Bocherinni is being serious).


I certainly am.

In the past (before the 19th century) people got in touch with music mostly by playing/singing it for themselve. In most cases, a person wasn't a 'Listener', all the more so not a 'consumer'. He created the music from himself. Of course there was always a sort of separation between players/singers and the people who have been assembled all around to listen, that's how the definition between 'performer' and 'listener' has been created, after all, and was peaked in the 19th century. In the 20th century we, with our obssesion, could 'record' and 'buy' music, freeze the moment and consume concerts reproductions, no _living_ music anymore. Thus, from something you make and being made by, music turned to (seemingly) superficial consumer goods (in addition to all artistic achievements that turned, alas, to "culture consumption").
I would suggest you all to lessen your pickled food. If you listen, listen carefully and that would,hopefully, be your creative part.

Now, don't get me wrong, me also has numerous recordings, but I try hard not to turn music to background whispers.


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## Jigsawwizard (May 16, 2010)

How are you such an idiot?


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## Boccherini (Mar 29, 2010)

Jigsawwizard said:


> How are you such an idiot?


Sometimes I wonder where would it be the place where imbecility won't be so consumable.


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## Earthling (May 21, 2010)

Bach's *Cello Suites 5 & 6* (Jian Wang) are, unsurprisingly, the ones that seem to get the most play on my laptop. I tend to always keep at least one recording of the cello suites on hand (I've got six so far).

Most other music files I keep stored on DVD-ROMs and swap them out from time to time. But I was surprised Finzi's *Eclogue for piano and strings* was high on the list-- I just recently discovered Finzi last week though.


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## Boccherini (Mar 29, 2010)

Earthling said:


> But I was surprised Finzi's *Eclogue for piano and strings* was high on the list-- I just recently discovered Finzi last week though.


I've just listened to his Cello Concerto Op.40 which was pretty enjoyable, very dramatic, reminded me the one by Elgar which I also liked; A fine composer, indeed, amongst his fellows of his period: Holst, Vaughan Williams and Bliss.

EDIT: I've just noticed that his son (Christopher Finzi) married to Hilary du Pré (sister of Jacqueline). I wonder who was the lucky one .


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