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By coincidence (or, well, not really…he seems to be one of the go-to guys for Bach), I ran into the name, Glenn Gould last night when trying to find a good recording of the Goldberg (not Jonah) Variations. Glenn Gould was the only name that showed up on Apple Music for this. And this rather forceful (wish you could see him…he has to be a Kraut but I’m not sure) lecturer also mentioned Gould.

So I’m eating my spinach. I listened to a bit of the Goldberg Variations last night. But then I had to find some relief and listened to Yo-Yo Ma’s Six Evolutions via Apple Music. (I’m listening to it right now.)

You get the complexity (and all the other big words) of Bach without the harshness. Still, I will get back to the Goldberg Variations as well as a double helping of Brussels sprouts with his 24 sets of preludes and fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Nearly everyone has heard the masterful Prelude and Fugue No 1 in this series:

There is nothing so heavenly as a classical orchestra conducted by a skilled conductor. If a million years from now all that is left of humanity is our classical music, than I would say we have made a gift to the universe. The examples are many but I offer a few:

Mendelssohn 5th symphony "The Reformation"
Mendelssohn 3th symphony "The Scottish"
Mahler 1st symohony
Schubert 8th symphony "unfinished" 
Schubert 9th symphony "Great"
Beethoven 3rd 
Beethoven 5th
Beethoven 7th
Beethoven 9th "choral"
Mozart 41
Hyden 97
Mozart Don Giovanni
Dvorak 5 "From the New World"
Brahms 1st
Brahms Hungarian Dances
Bach Fugues on organ
Saint Seines organ symphony

That's just a few from my playlist, but I think you get the idea

Nothing by Tchaikovsky?
IMHO Tchaikovsky is overrated. 1812 is very suitable for fireworks on the 4th of July and most of the rest is mildly interesting, but his major failing is that every theme, even minor ones, he always repeats. 

I like Tchaikovsky, probably as much as anything because so much of his music is familiar.  Elizabeth is a big fan of Mozart.  Unfortunately, only a modest amount of his work made it onto our MP3 files -- and that would be irrelevant for her anyway because we live in separate nursing homes.  Grant McCormick (who lives in yet another but has sought to move to this one) is a devoted Bach fan.  Since he created and updates our music collection, the result is that Bach is well represented.

Mr. Kung, one of the joys of Apple Music is the various playlists they construct (and will present to you as they track your tastes). They have various playlists of classical music that work like the great recommendations of you and Artler. You get a sampling of some good things. And if you hear a track that you particularly like, you can go right to that album and add it more permanently to your list of favorite albums. It might be a hodge-podge approach but it does generally work and gives you some variety.

I’m very sure the first classic album I ever purchased (and I was a teenager at the time) was the 1812 Overture. I can’t disagree with anything Artler said because I frankly haven’t listened to much Tchaikovsky beyond that. But it’s a good one for the fireworks and cannons.

As with Elizabeth, I am a fan of Mozart. For better or for worse, he had (for his time…and our time) a much more pop sensibility to much of his music. You could hum a few bars of Mozart but might be hard-pressed to do that with most of Bach’s stuff. (A very notable exception below.)

Bach is like the marriage of mathematics and art. And sometimes that marriage (to my simple palate) seems to come apart and I hear someone banging on the keys as fast as they can to impress rather than creating beautiful musics. Yes, from watching this one lecturer I mentioned, I have learned there are rhythms and themes within rhythms and themes. And there is absolutely no doubt as to why his works (such as The Well-Tempered Clavier) have been used as training books for learning the piano. If you can do these, you can do anything.

And, of course, Mozart was greatly influenced by J. C. Bach…as well as J. S. Bach. (And taught by Joseph Haydn.) These things are to some extent a matter of taste. I find Beethoven to be a bit heavy. Like I said, my tastes have no doubt been formed by all the trashy (although often catchy) 60’s music and beyond.

I was thinking the other day what a shame it was that Lennon and McCartney didn’t do at least one classical music album with George Martin, using their own original compositions, of course. Instead of “Band on the Run” or “Imagine,” imagine if they had added something truly beautiful and perhaps even semi-permanent to the world of music. People will be tapping their foot to the following long after the last copy of “Hey Jude” has fallen into dust.

I figure, if it hasn't been heard in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, it can't be any good. Not sure it that applies to the above song or not.