Classical Music: Album, Track and Artist Charts

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Description of Classical

Beginning in the middle ages, royalty and the church commissioned music to be written with very high standards using refined instruments and complex arrangements. Though the patronage and rules have changed, classical music is still composed for similar instruments with the same standards. This genre generally includes Chamber Music, symphonies, Opera, and solo performances which stem from a western art music tradition, from Lully to Wagner to Bernstein.

Classical Key Tracks

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Play/Add	Track	Artist
	1. Invention No. 13 in A minor, BWV 784	Glenn Gould
	2. "Morgenlich leuchtend"	Placido Domingo
	3. Overture	Richard Wagner
	4. 12 Etudes, Op. 10: No. 12 in C minor, "Revolutionary"	Frederic Chopin
	5. Justorum Animae	William Byrd
	6. Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21: Part I, Mondestrunken	Jan DeGaetani
	7. Toccata (Symphony No. 5)	Charles-Marie Widor
	8. Folk Songs - Black is the Color	Luciano Berio
	9. II. Sunday Morning	London Symphony Orchestra
	10. III. Scherzo (Allegro Molto Vivace - L'istesso Tempo)	Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
	11. Passacaglia	Paul Hindemith
	12. Composition for Guitar	Milton Babbitt
	13. Spitfire Prelude and Fugue	Sir William Walton
	14. By the River	Frederick Delius

Subgenres

Classical Key Artists

Aaron Copland

A domineering figure of
twentieth century
American music who
explored folk themes,
bitonality, and genres fro...

Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi was most influential
for his development of the
concerto, a work for
orchestra that features a
solo instrument. Vivaldi se...

Arcangelo Corelli

The extremely popular
Corelli performed
throughout Europe and was
one of the most famous
musicians working out of...

Arnold Schoenberg

Schoenberg evolved
techniques for composing
music while avoiding a tonal
center or key signature.
Noisy for the uninitiated.

Bela Bartok

This composer of angular,
dissonant rhythms and
harmonies is a national
treasure in his native
Hungary. Bartok took Edis...

Claude Debussy

Debussy's impressionistic
soundscapes were a direct
reaction against popular,
heavy-handed German
romanticism. Although lab...

George Frideric Handel

Handel spent most of his life
in England, and was
well-loved by his fellow
country folk. Handel was
extremely popular in his...

Henry Purcell

After Purcell, England
produced no composers of
international reputation
until Benjamin Britten. His
style was distinctly Englis...

Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach's music is complex,
densely polyphonic with
running independent lines.
His 1750 death marks the
end of the Baroque era. A...

John Cage

Cage's avant-garde antics
brought the concept of
random chance into the
mainstream of serous art
music composition. Cage s...

Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven serves as the
bridge between the
Classical and Romantic
periods -- composers as
artisans v. composers as a...

Pierre Boulez

Also a renowned
conductor, Boulez'
progressive compositions
expanded serialism as
defined by Schoenberg.

Richard Wagner

Exclusively an operatic
composer, his works are
dramatic and long. The Ring
alone takes a week to
perform in its entirety. He...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Austrian born Mozart
mastered all the musical
forms of his day: opera,
symphony, concerto,
chamber, choral and pian...

Classical

Description of Classical

Classical Key Tracks

Classical Key Albums

Subgenres

Classical Key Artists

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