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A Personal Guide to Classical Music

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My List of Favorite Works and Performances

April 21, 2006

Since I have amassed a large number of CDs and records of classical music, people sometimes ask me for recommendations. It is a difficult task, especially given that people's tastes are diverse. To assist me in this, I have finally decided to compile a list of works that I consider to be the most valuable in my collection. Other people have created such lists, and many are worthwhile. Here, I will add my own, and hopefully a few people will find it useful.

Like many others, my list is organized by time period, from the oldest music available up to the modern day. I am generally reluctant to recommend particular performances since there are so many good ones out there, and people's tastes in performance style will vary. Such recommendations will generally be confined to early music and to certain works for which a particular performance especially grabbed my attention.

My organization by time period is my particular preference; others may disagree, especially on those composers who occupy the boundary between two time periods. For example, I place Beethoven in the Romantic period because he was one of the early innovators of the Romantic style, but many others would place him in the Classic period since his works represent the culmination of that style. Certainly, his later works belong to the Romantic, while his earlier works belong to the Classic, but to divide them up would only create confusion.

My taste in music is quite varied, so a good representative sample of many styles of classical music can be found on my list. Everything from lyrical, pleasant Renaissance songs to the tightly-structured, elegant music of Haydn and Mozart to the most difficult and inaccessible modern music can be found here.

A Note to Beginners

Getting into classical music can seem like a daunting task. I won't lie to you - it is. However, the rewards are well worth the effort. Hopefully, my list and my brief descriptions of the different styles of music will be helpful. I have made an effort to note a select few works that I believe are good starting points for your musical explorations. Most of the pieces I have noted as useful for beginners are the popular, well-known ones that should be easy to find, but I have thrown in a few obscure works here and there. Generally, these works should be relatively accessible and easy to appreciate, but I would be remiss in my duties if I did not recommend examples of the more difficult styles for those who would like to give them a try. I hope you enjoy your musical explorations, but be careful; you might end up a music nut like me!

Recommendations by Time Period

  • Middle Ages and Earlier, before 1400 - Gregorian chant, early polyphony, and folksy secular music
  • Renaissance, 1400-1620 - Complex polyphony, lyrical songs, and the first opera
  • Baroque, 1600-1760 - Everything from the elegant simplicity of the early Baroque to the complex counterpoint of Bach and his contemporaries
  • Classic, 1750-1820 - The tightly-structured and elegant music of Haydn, Mozart, and their lesser-known contemporaries
  • Romantic, 1800-1915 - Big orchestral works, intriguing chamber music, and the height of opera; from the early stirrings of Romanticism of Beethoven and Weber to the massive, emotionally charged music of Mahler and Wagner
  • Modern, 1890-1980 - Breakdown of the old ways and divergence of styles; everything from easy, whimsical music to jazz-influenced forms to difficult, but intriguing, twelve-tone serialism and crazy randomness
  • New Directions in Music, 1970-present - A continued divergence of styles; the return of tonality and the increasing influence of non-Western musical forms


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