Recently ABC Classic FM (the national classical broadcaster) ran again its “favourite 100 pieces” poll, which invited listeners from all over the country to submit their 10 favourite works to build up the most popular works, nationwide across Australia. They’re currently playing the top 100 pieces progressively over a number of days, having just played # 76 (it was highlights from Act I of Mozart’s Don Giovanni; progress can be monitored at
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/classic100/ or
http://twitter.com/abcclassic ).
Having put in my 10 favourite suggestions, I thought I might as well list them here, in two divisions of those in the top 5 category, and those just outside that high mark.
The top 5:
BRUMEL - Earthquake Mass (Missa Et ecce terrae motus)
MOZART - Mass in C minor, KV427 'Great'
BERLIOZ - Benvenuto Cellini
MAHLER - Symphony No. 8 in E flat major, 'Symphony of a Thousand'
HAVERGAL BRIAN - Symphony No. 1, 'Gothic'
The Brumel mass is a wonderfully luminous twelve-part setting, a one-off unique achievement of tonality, completely unlike anything written in the entire generation either side of it (and yes, Perlnerd, that includes everything Josquin ever wrote). It was hard to choose a single Mozart work, but the Mass (while incomplete) is such a well-thought out and expertly constructed, expressive work and shows off most, if not all, of Mozart’s many-sided genius. The first two tableaux of Berlioz’s Cellini surpass anything else in his œuvre for brilliance and vitality, even if his Troyens is the greater work; maybe not great opera, but then as a well-known broadcaster has said, opera isn’t music. The first movement of Mahler 8 is perhaps the most successful attempt at the world-embracing, choral–orchestral–sonata movement hybrid work of the largest scale and range. And the Te Deum of the Gothic is paradoxically an unconvincing solution to the basic idea of Beethoven’s archetypal Choral symphony, precisely because it unleashes a universe of music while trying to simultaneously control it; its greatness is not so much in failing to do so, but in the uncompromising nature of the attempt.
The next 5:
BACH, J.S. - Mass in B minor, BWV232
BEETHOVEN - Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123
SCHUBERT - Symphony No. 9 in C major, D944, 'The Great'
MENDELSSOHN - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 21 & Op. 61
HOLST - The Planets, Op. 32
It goes to show the historical domination of sacred music from church patronage of musicians, that two more masses went into the selection. The B minor mass was almost entirely compiled out of movements borrowed from Bach’s church cantatas, and it reflects the quality when you select “the best of the best”. With Beethoven and Schubert I could have instead chosen one of Beethoven’s symphonies (probably the A major 7th for choice, though the 8th in F is my personal favourite) and Schubert’s masses (there is no surpassing the A flat major), but went with two large, late, monumental works; and I notice the Schubert is the only purely instrumental work here (and the only one to feature in the ABC’s top 100 countdown, so far, at # 85). The choice of the Mendelssohn overture and incidental music are personal favourites, but they are a high point in Mendelssohn’s copious œuvre for being a particularly apt musical response to the play, the fifteen year gap between the composition of the two parts of the work making as little difference as the similar amount of time which it took Bach to piece together the four sections of his mass. And the Holst is another personal choice which I couldn’t leave out, even if my favourite movements from the suite have often changed in magnitude (as the planets observably do in the night skies).
PML
) and several of his amazing organ pieces.