Preface
Introduction
The Starting Point
In compiling a list of this kind, I had one rule: the music
comes first. I have always resisted the idea of expecting
music to feed or prompt an emotional state, so I tried to ask
the question the other way round. Why do I want to listen
to a particular work at any given moment? What is the
imperative? Beethoven's
"Hammerklavier" Sonata was the
name of the first piece I wrote down. Soon I had a couple of
hundred absolute dead certainties and a mild sense of panic.
The categories came later, a broad and flexible way of
ordering choices. Numerous works can appear under several
headings. I realise this. So will the reader.
To help narrow the field, I laid down a few guidelines:
no operas, as they have their own narrative already (though
one or two overtures have crept in). No song cycles for the
same reason, though they too slip in surreptitiously. Rather
than omit the entire, rich treasury of Lieder, I have dropped
a song into most sections, a change of pace and scale.
No one needs musical knowledge to read this book.
There are pointers for those who want to dig deeper. All
the music is easy to sample online so you can hear and read
together, apart, before, after. Suggested recordings appear
at the end.
These are my own preferences, so let's not talk about balance.
They range from the well known to the unfamiliar.
x
They are, with exceptions where the choice is part of a bigger
enterprise, complete works for any forces. Early and Renaissance
composers
wrote much of their work for the church;
broadly speaking this, mainly, is what has survived. I would
have liked to include more from this period, but not everyone
(I'm told) wants a long list of masses. Baroque, too,
would have been easier had I allowed myself a few Handel
operas or more Bach (see below). I steered away from an
overdose of symphonies — they too warrant separate attention
— though broke that rule too. With contemporary composers
I imposed a limit: only those born before 1940 (with
one short-lived exception in Claude Vivier). I could as happily
limit myself to include only those born after that date.
Another list, another book.
Many works, their composers, their lovers, their stories,
spill across each other. If this were online, the text would be
pitted with embedded links. I have left those overlaps to the
readers, without annotation, so they can adopt that quaint
old habit of stumbling across connections for themselves.
The Omissions
No selection such as this can be "right". Omissions will be
shouted down, eccentric inclusions pilloried. No Dvořák, no
Prokofiev, no Philip Glass—though they all get mentioned
in dispatches, and in the index. Lists of best-known masterpieces
are easy to find elsewhere, if that's what you are after.
Online playlists deal with every mood and need (music to
cry, sleep, hoover, eat to).
Many of the greatest works in the canon defy this sort of
categorisation. "These are the Alps. What is there to say about
them," as Basil Bunting characterised Ezra Pound's Cantos.
The symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms,
Schumann, Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius, Shostakovich, as a
start, should be in every library. A few are here. Johann
Sebastian Bach is a continent apart. Could music lovers
survive without the B minor Mass, the St Matthew Passion,
the St John Passion, the cantatas, the motets, the Goldberg
Variations, the Musical Offering, the organ chorale preludes,
the French and English keyboard suites, the sonatas and
partitas for solo violin and the suites for solo cello, the
Brandenburg Concertos.
If there is an emphasis on chamber and piano music, it
reflects my interests, as well as a preference for smaller
works for private listening. We cannot all get to concert
halls but, given the chance, they surely remain the best
places to hear big symphonies or to meet new repertoire
for the first time. Some of this music has taken a long time
to work its way into my bloodstream. There's no equivalent
to speed-reading (or speed-dating for that matter) with the
great works of the repertoire.
A short overview at the end of each section indicates some
other works you might have expected to find but haven't — or
that, after much heated debate with myself, fell into oblivion.
These round-ups are intended not only to save my skin but
to suggest further exploration. Pictures offer an accompanying
dialogue, some literal in reference, others evocative. The
book is offered in the hope of sharing music that, together
with those great summits mentioned above, sustains me. It
is a compendium but the lid is open. Throw out and renew as
you like. If you feel moved to count, you will find that there
are in fact over a hundred. My justification is that by the
time you have crossed out the ones that do not speak to you,
you might still secure the nominated century. This is today's
list. Yesterday's or tomorrow's? Another matter entirely.
