Some Of My Favorite Classical Pieces (With Sound)

To hear what a piece sounds like, just click on its title. But you will need to have a browser with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) capabilty. (It came already part of my Internet Explorer program). The waiting time before a file starts playing should not be much more than a minute and is usually less. You can go about your computing business pretty much as usual while a file is playing.

This list is under construction and probably will be for several days.

1. This piece is 25 minutes long. If you're the sort of person who hates to have music keep playing itself over and over in your mind whether you will it to or not, you'd probably better avoid this one. I find it mesmerising and extremely tenacious.

2. This piece is 6 minutes long. I'm not quite sure what it is about this seemingly light piece that gets to me. Joyful, it also makes me misty.

3. This piece is 55 minutes long. This work was commissioned as lullaby music - can you believe it? It will only put you to sleep if you are unable to recognise a marvellously exciting work of genius.

4. This piece is 21 minutes and 53 seconds long. [Whether we can attribute this timing to the composer, the performer, or sheer coincidence, I don't know.] To my mind, this is the greatest of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Awesome, it floors me every single time I listen to it. If I were put on the spot and forced to choose my most favorite classical work, I would probably name this one. And I'm happy to say that this is a particularly good MIDI version - it almost sounds like a real piano.

5. This piece is 13 minutes long. This concerto superbly exemplifies the musical form, technically called 'counterpoint', of which Bach was the supreme master. Put simply, in counterpoint there are two (sometimes three) strands of melody occurring in parallel and complementing each other.

6. This piece is 15 minutes long. What this is is the overture to Wagner's opera, intended to be played by full orchestra, but transcribed by Franz Liszt for piano (Liszt did a lot of transcribing - he re-wrote for piano all nine of Beethoven's symphonies, believe it or don't). I think you'll agree that the keyboard effects achieved here deserve to be called spectacular. They show what a madman on the piano Liszt must have been.

7. This piece is 8 1/2 minutes long. For those who love music and are interested in astronomy [yes, alright, or astrology], it's wonderful that a great musical work was written for the planets. Jupiter's my favorite, but the whole suite is well worth getting to know. And this file is a very creditable rendering of this orchestral work.

8. This piece is 12 minutes long. You'll either hate or love this one, maybe hate then love -if you give it a chance. There's a left theme, a right theme, and a droning middle theme. At first you might find it repetative and boring, but stick with it and you'll find some wonderful things happening. For example, several times the middle theme falls silent; the second time this happens you'll find, unbelievably, that you can still hear it even though it's not there.

9. This piece is 5 minutes long. Claire De Lune is one of the greatest short works of the Impressionistic period in music. Its popularity is evidenced by the number of different versions of it at the classical midi sites. This particular version is perhaps a tad too slow in tempo, but it's the best I've found.

10. This piece is 6 1/2 minutes long. I urge you to listen to this one several times and let it grow on you (if it doesn't grab you right away), because this is just awesome music; it literallly thrills me: I sit and tremble as I listen to it. Not a bad MIDI file this, but the piece needs to be heard played on a real church organ - which I haven't, but I've heard a recording and even that was enough to rock my world. (This file is linked from The Chateau Ferret Music Room.)

11. This piece is 3 minutes long. A melody that is among the most beautiful in all of classical music.