What's a piece of classical music that everyone knows but most people don't know they know?

HandwovenConsensus@lemm.ee to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 105 points –
108

The Nokia ringtone is a musical phrase from a piece of solo guitar music by Francisco Tárrega, called Gran Vals from 1902.

One time I was listening to classical music because I was in a mood. It was a Mozart piece. The piano player started playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. At first I was like, "if bro is such a genius, why did he rip off Twinkle, Twinkle, Litt- oh, he wrote it."

I'm pretty sure it was a common folk tune at the time. WA Mozart loved to do "variations on" stuff that people already knew and enjoyed. I don't believe he originated the tune

Wow I grew around classical music as my dad is huge into it and also loves Mozart, still TIL. Lol I probably should pay more attention to my dad.

Fur Elise.

Für. It's German, For Elise. She's not furry 😉

A lot of mobile keyboards will let you pick the umlaut version if you long-press a letter.

Always makes me think of the Commodore 64, but surely that isn’t why we know it these days?

It was the tone the buzzer played in a lot of apartment buildings around the 00s.

Night on Bald Mountain (Mussorgsky), The Planets (Holst), and Ride of the Valkyries (Wagner) are all pretty badass but often get used in movies, game trailers, even ads without being named.

EDIT: Everyone likes links, ja?

God, the planets inspired pretty much every goddamn sci fi soundtrack. Everyone gets the imperial march, but i'm talking right back before even Haskin's War of the Worlds and Journey to the centre of the earth, past SW and wrath of khan and into Foundation.

Canon in D, used constantly in modern music and people usually don't recognize it. If you don't believe me go listen to Maroon 5's Memories. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to though...

Written by Pachelbel. Aka Pachelbel's Canon

Yup came here to add this thanks

"La Donna è mobile" from Verdi's Rigoletto. Have you seen a pasta sauce commercial? Then you've heard this aria.

Another Verdi piece that comes up often is Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore

Also Sprach Zarathustra. (Thus Spake Zarathustra) very overused, but one of the greatest pieces of music in all of history.

Features heavily in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That movie has some other greats like Blue Danube Waltz by Strauss.

Everyone recognizes Erik Satie's Gymnopedie no 1.

I feel like it was just used all over the place, subtly, all our lives. People can rarely name it. Everyone knows it.

Here's a piano version as well

I was looking for someone to mention this. It’s used so often in movies and television. I’m not surprised that people are saying they’ve never heard it. It’s always just some background music played in a scene, it’s never the focal point.

Not everyone. Where am I supposed to have heard this before?

It's in Minecraft?

But it's been in indie films since forever, and big films too.

E.g. https://youtu.be/X5fhZomlWb4?si=TlY0RwrYJDcELL3i

This from the same musical trilogy, Queens Gambit.

So yeah, I've never actually played Minecraft before, it's a few generations after I would have been the prime age to play it.

Well then you're of a generation that heard it in films.

Royal Tenenbaums, man on a wire...

So it’s not quite the version you played and it seems to be from older films. If I’ve heard it, I don’t recognize it and wouldn’t be able to point it out but I also didn’t play Minecraft that much.

I've heard it in random YT videos since at least 2013. Down The Rabbit Hole used it as a background track.

Funny I was just thinking about that song. Satie's work is kind of wild, although I was just reading about him and when he wrote it, he was a nobody and generally, even after fame, I don't think he even played it himself so much as other people did because he already moved on. Dude even worked with Picasso once, who everyone seems to know.

Guy was a nut, though, highly recommend reading up on him.

Vivaldi's The Four Seasons has some pretty recognizable parts in it, such as the first Allegro for Spring, which is popular for fancy receptions, or the Allegro for Winter, which is a great theme for a descent into madness.

Also, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, a classic "something evil is about to go down" piece.

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William Tell Overture - An entire generation of people came up knowing a portion of the song as the Lone Ranger Theme.

Also, I suspect very few people know The Blue Danube by name, but almost everyone could hum the entire thing if prompted.

This was gonna be my addition and you beat me to it.

Pachelbel's Canon in D. Well, most people probably know it, but its melody is also hugely overused in pop, and turns up way more than most people realise. If you've got five minutes and haven't seen it already, go watch Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel Rant.

That's amazing. I feel for the cellists now. I started on Violin, but I wasn't big enough for a full sized violin till I was 9 or 10 years old. I was very happy to get rid of my 3/4 sized violin.

One, dude just played an instrument in the lower register. He fucked up. I quit trombone after a year in (small) part because what's the fun in setting the bass line?

Two, it seems like Canon was sort of "rediscovered" in the late 1960s and the people just absolutely fucking loved that chord progression and pop musicians and their producers were no exception.

On a personal level, I first ran across it as a kid when I found a MIDI file of it on my Tandy PC, which was known for having above average samples for the sequencer, and I thought it was lovely too.

IDK what is considered classical music, but the song that many people know as "Circus music" is actually an orchestral piece called Entry of the Gladiators composed for Czech military parades

If you know the slogan, “Come fly the friendly skies, you probably know Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin.

And it’s not classical, but the Wii store theme used to be a variation on Surfboard by Juan Garcia Esquivel

It is so cool hearing surfboard for the first time as I had no idea, until now, that the artist Daedalus sampled it in 2006 on his album: Daedalus Denies The Day's Demise I instantly recognized it!

If you didn't know, Denise The Day's Demise was inspired by Brazil. and specifically the concept of Saudade.

Saudade: "a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament."

It's like I found a lost memory!

Air on the G String. Although as I said in another comment Bach is technically baroque not classical.

I assume they meant Classical Music, in the broader sense, versus the Classical Period exemplified by composers like Mozart and Haydn. I was under the impression, as well, that the Classical period really referred to Greek and Roman times and the period you reference was the Neo-Classical. But I see it is referred to as Classical in at least a couple of articles on Wikipedia.

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"The Nutcracker" by Tchaikovsky

I swear, even I'm not sure if this is the actual name of the composition, but it sure is hilarious. As for the piece itself, it's good. I remember hearing it in "There is no Game".

The Nutcracker Suite is a whole ballet with a running time of an hour and a half. People are familiar with almost every part of it, though. Because it's a Christmas confection.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z71fhS2g0BA

I get it now.

Sorry I was too lazy to look up which part you were talking about. Interested, but lazy. Looks like it's the Sugar Plum Fairy, which is one of the main solos of the ballet as well.

Oh yeah, that was the name of a ballet.

Not gonna lie, the composition matches that dance style pretty well.

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Everybody should recognise Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Maybe Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (picturing Skinner composing it as always funny).

Most people probably know only a small fraction of the most popular classic songs and not the entire piece of music those popular sections are from. Four Seasons, Beethoven's 5th, the Moonlight Sonata, etc are all much longer than what is most commonly used in media.

In that vein, the score to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly counts among them. Everyone knows that one part, but not the rest of the song.

The Spring is also ALL of the air fresheners' ads background music.

1812 overture is quite popular.
William tell overture is the theme to the lone ranger.
Queen of night aria, from the magic flute.
Clair de lune by Debussy.
Probably 20 different works by Chopin.

Rhapsody in blue.

Bits and pieces of it have been used in all sorts of places. The story behind it is fascinating.

The TLDR, the guy putting on the concert asked Gershwin to write a jazz fusion piece, Gershwin declined. Then the guy put out promotional material anyway saying that Gershwin was premiering a new piece.

Some back and forth, and Gershwin wrote a masterpiece in less than 5 weeks.

is that considered classical?

1920s orchestral jazz fusion. I'd say it counts. Especially since it's classic jazz, not the more modern jazz that people are familiar with.

It hits all those classical notes and takes them a step further. It's also a true masterpiece. Which gives it even more leeway.

yeah this sent me down a wikipedia rabbit hole and I found that classical music has a classical period but like the period right before most people would definately think of classical. I think with my head I saw classical and thought old classical was what was meant. Like behtoven and bach and such.

Purists would tell you Bach is baroque, not classical, which while technically true doesn't really cover the modern use of the term classical music.

Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. I love 19th century Russian composers.

Edit: and 20th century. So intense!

Whatever the song is on Samsung washer/dryers now. Saw a clip of a German guy singing the actual song once and got a chuckle

Not classical but a piece of music everyone knows nut few can name is Green Onions by Booker T and the MGs: https://youtu.be/_bpS-cOBK6Q?feature=shared

"Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to the Universal Amphitheater. Well, here it is the late 1970's going on 1985. Y'know so much of the music we here today is pre-programmed electronic disco, we never get a chance to hear master blues men practicing their craft anymore. By the year 2006, the music known today as the blues will exist only in the classical records department of your local public library. So tonight, Ladies and Gentlemen, while we still can, let us welcome from Rock Island, Illinois, the blues band of Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues, The Blues Brothers!

Rachmaninov 2nd piano concerto, 2nd movement.

That song by Eric Carmen “all by myself” ripped it note for note

Kids YouTube channel Pinkfong has a cool video that highlights the use of classical music in kids rhymes and songs, that made me realise that it is no surprise many of these tunes are so catchy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIsyHeqpC1M

It is through one such music that I learnt about "An ode to Joy" and have been in love with the piece since.