So a couple months ago I started listening to classical music. I'd listened to it before, I'd always liked Claude Debussy and Sergei Prokofiev, but my knowledge was limited to pretty much JUST THEM. I think that classical music was something that I took for granted; I recognized a lot of it but didn't know its name or composer or anything about it. I decided recently that I wanted to educate myself on classical music and I've found that I really enjoy a lot of it. I think my problem with classical music, or the reason I didn't really listen to it much before, was that I associated it with boring and stuffy baroque chamber music, which I'm discovering a lot of it is not, and that that's pretty much all they play on classical radio stations. I also feel like a lot of classical music (particularly from the classical and baroque periods (I feel kind of weird calling all of this music classical when it's pretty different, but I'm not sure what to call it)) has been played so much and become so much a piece of our culture that it's lost a lot of its meaning and impact. I am completely indifferent to a lot of it.

I'm still kind of learning about the distinctions between the romantic and classical and baroque periods, but so far, a lot of the music that I enjoy most is from the romantic period, which is the 19th and 20th centuries. A few of my favorites so far are Saint-Saens, Grieg, Borodin, and Dvorak, although I've liked almost everything I've listened to in-depth so far. I've heard a few pieces by Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Smetana, and a few others that I liked and I plan on listening to more of when I get the time and finish listening to everything else. Definitely give me some suggestions on what I should listen to next.

I really want to share a lot of the music I've listened to recently with you, so I uploaded a compilation album I made with a few of my favorite songs in it. It's kind of large and I know a lot of you probably have the same associations with classical music that I do, but I genuinely think the album I've made is very good and that you'll like it. In fact, you'll probably recognize most of the songs in it; I don't think there's anything particularly obscure in it. So anyway, here's a link to the album if you want it. Check it out. I seriously think you'll like it. Here are a few of the songs that are on it.

Borodin - Polovtsian Dances
Dvorak - Op. 46 No. 7
Ravel - Pavane
Grieg - Solveig's Song

So yeah, throw out some recommendations or talk about the composers you like.

Can I still call classical music that was composed during my lifetime classical? I don't really have another word for it despite the historical implications of the word classical. Most of the classical stuff I like is pretty recent, although I can't say I really listen to that much of it anyway. I have a few recordings on my computer that I still haven't listened to because I feel like I need to sit down and focus all of my attention on listening to get through them.

When I think "okay, I feel like listening to some classical music" there are three composers that come to mind. The first is John Psathas. He's probably my favourite. I first encountered him as a guest lecturer in a "History of New Zealand Music" paper I took for general education requirements at university (this is the extent of my musical education, heh). He talked to us in a reasonable amount of depth (it was a two or three hour lecture) about why he decided to become a composer, his composition process, development as a composer  etc. It was probably one of the more interesting lectures I have attended.  I really liked the music he played us so I went and bought his album 'View from Olympus' almost immediately. I do not regret this. Here are a couple of clips of his music:
Bacchic
View From Olympus
The second is Nikolai Kapustin, who seems to compose entirely for the piano. Apparently he takes Jazz idioms and puts them into formal classical structures. I don't fully understand what that means but I like the end result. Maybe it's more jazz than classical.
Impromptu Op. 66 No 2
Prelude, op. 53, no. 11
Last is much more well known. Holst's The Planets is sampled / quoted in a lot of places but I really like listening to it. Everyone has probably already heard it about it but I think it's really cool.
Mars

But yeah, I really don't know shit about classical and would like to listen to more of it. I'll download your album now.

im a big fan of Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and Chopin. i like a lot of beethovens stuff too but i think everyone does

i also like a lot of nobuo uematsu's shit. tbh it's probably the main reason i can still play a lot of the final fantasy games.

prokofiev?? i haven't checked out the link yet so i don't know if it's on there. he's 20th century composer though so i don't know if that counts
i really like this piece. i had to listen to it like 50 times two years ago when i was in orchestra, but i liked it every time.

edit: oh ok i see sergei prokofiev and alexander nevsky have a piece in this pack. cool stuff

Back when I used to listen to Thrash Metal I was a big fan of classical music. I didn't listen to it at all but I liked to think I'd like it if I were to ever listen to it (like all metal fans, after all metal has more in common with classical then any other genre.....)

 Then when I was in my first job one of my co-workers used to listen to Classic FM all the time and I found the music to be really pompous and irrelevant so I went through a period of kind of hating classical music.  Then I started getting into Post-Rock and stuff and I think I found classical music to be a little more bearable because of it's similarities to post-rock. Then because of my love of post-rock (and mainly because I'm an idiot) I got a violin. Now I'm in sort of a stage where I'm beginning to have to listen to more classical music in order to start appreciating stuff on the violin a bit more.

T I'm not really sure where to go from here though since it's not like you have composers who had like ALBUMS or anything they just had like A BUNCH OF SONGS, so finding composers I like is hard because I'd rather listen to a whole bunch of stuff in one go rather than just DANCE OF THE CHODES CONCERTO by one guy followed by ANAL GORE GUZZLING in E MINOR by another guy because that just doesn't stick with me.

I call it gramp music

if you like tchaikovsky this is one of his most exciting and beautiful pieces:


was also written in five days for a concert to benefit wounded russian soldiers

I also really love philip glass, i dont keep up with modern composers very much but i love the guy, as well as his collaborations






I also really love this movement from a piece called "quartet for the end of time" by oivier messiaen:

thanks guys. I only ever listened to like bach, beethoven and vivaldi. I know who most of these guys are but I never listened to them.

I call it gramp music

that's big band

nobody disses duke ellington on my watch *flexes*

Then when I was in my first job one of my co-workers used to listen to Classic FM all the time and I found the music to be really pompous and irrelevant so I went through a period of kind of hating classical music.

I never disliked classical music but I agree that a lot of the stuff they play on the radio feels really pompous and stuffy. I don't know how it is in Britain, but over here the majority of what they play is from the 17th and 18th centuries, like Vivaldi, Haydn, and Handel, and it's just so boring. I can sort of understand the appeal but I just don't like it. I feel like the music completely changed in the 19th and 20th centuries and the only thing it has in common is the instruments it uses.

Thanks for all the suggestions everybody. I've already downloaded a lot of the stuff you all have suggested so it's good to know I'm ON THE RIGHT TRACK or whatever, but some of it is new to me and I'm going to have to check it out in more depth.

classic fm here is boring as well. It's for old ladies to listen to whilst eating jam. Hmm pastoral...

the fact that you went for romanticism and 19th-20th century pieces means YOU'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK

nobody disses duke ellington on my watch *flexes*

wasn't a dis shit rules. I will make a thread eventually if no one else does

it is a type of old people music in america tho

I'm not really sure where to go from here though since it's not like you have composers who had like ALBUMS or anything they just had like A BUNCH OF SONGS

Actually modern guys probably have albums right? Also going back to OLD DEAD GUYS isn't there stuff like THE 4 SEASONS or THE PLANETS or whatever. Surely there's more stuff like that, in terms of packaging I mean.

Albums are for the kurt cobain kids, the real shit comes in SUITES man. Only thing realer than a suite is a mixtape nigga

Vivaldi, Haydn, and Handel, and it's just so boring.

Call me boring, but those are three of my favorite classical composers. I also love me some Gustav Holst; his two military suites are always great to listen to. John Philip Sousa is, without a doubt, the March King, and I love him for that.

tl;dr.

i am learning to play a few pieces by romantic french composers, Debussy, Satie, Milhaud and so on. It's for my A Level performance.

wish me luck there fukin solid

Actually modern guys probably have albums right? Also going back to OLD DEAD GUYS isn't there stuff like THE 4 SEASONS or THE PLANETS or whatever. Surely there's more stuff like that, in terms of packaging I mean.

Symphonys and concertos usually have the length of around 40 mins so I guess thats what you're after?