Building a classical music collection can be both daunting and mystifying.  Big symphonies and operas can sometimes seem quite foreign and difficult to approach and understand, and are quite lengthy and difficult to keep track of.  So, how should you start listening to classical music if you find these pieces to be too much?  Well, that’s the myth that we are here to bust, and look at some alternatives.

Bust-a-Myth: All classical music is large and complicated

There are many different types, styles, and forms of classical music, and not all of them are as complicated as people have been lead to believe.  In fact, it should be noted that the symphony didn’t emerge until the Classical Period, while the Opera emerged in the Renaisance period according to the list of musical forms.  However, as you will note from the list of musical forms, there are a lot of other forms to explore.

Today, I would like to suggest a few pieces of classical music, which you can find online free.

Grieg Lyric Pieces

Edvard Grieg is best known for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Morning Mood and In The Hall of the Mountain King.  However, as I mentioned in another article (see: January Classical Listening: Part One) he wrote a large (10 Books) collection of very melodic paino pieces known collectively as the Lyric Pieces.  These pieces range from soft, almost ballad like pieces, to well muscled fun pieces.  The first recording I heard of some of the pieces was a CD by Emil Gilels.  It was such an enjoyable CD that it didn’t leave my player for close to a month, and returned to the player for quite a few months after.  Even now, I tend to visit some of these pieces every month or two, many years after first discovering them.

Chris Breemer has recorded all 10 books of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, and made them available for download for free. Here’s a selection of the pieces based on the track order of the Emil Gilel’s recording mentioned above:

1. Arietta Op. 12 No. 1
2. Cradle Song Op. 38 No. 1
3. Butterfly Op. 43 No. 1
4. Solitary Wanderer Op. 43 No. 2
5. Album-leaf Op. 47 No. 2
6. Melody Op. 47 No. 3
7. Norwegian Dance Op. 47 No. 4
8. Nocturn Op. 54 No. 4
9. Scherzo Op. 54 No. 5
10. Homesickness Op. 57 No. 6
11. Brooklet Op. 62 No. 4
12. Homeward Op. 62 No. 6
13. Ballad Op. 65 No. 5
14. Grandmothers Minuet Op. 68 No. 2
15. At Your Feet Op. 68 No. 3
16. At The Cradle Op. 68 No. 5
17. Once Upon A Time Op. 71 No. 1
18. Puck Op. 71 No. 3
19. Gone Op. 71 No. 6
20. Remberences Op. 71 No. 7

If these pieces are appealing to you, I highly recommend going to the page listed above and downloading the whole collection.  Admittedly the whole collection is quite large, however, as I mentioned above they will likely find their way into your listening on a semi-frequent basis and are well worth the time and space.

Haydn’s String Quartets

If a single piano is not enough to satisfy your musical tastes maybe something with four instruments would be more to your liking.  I think of the Haydn String Quartets as being the classical music analog to our current popular music: four instruments, with songs written in clear, short, easily digested pieces.  The only difference between a string quartet and our current popular music is that they were generally composed as a group of three or four songs that are related to each other.  (There are some cases where there are only two pieces, or up to seven pieces in a set, but three or four pieces are more common.)

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA routinely features musical performances which are released as podcasts under a Creative Commons BC-NC-ND-SA license.  While this is not the most open of licenses, the performances are typically quite nice, and make for worth additions to building a classical music collection.  And, if you find that the music of Haydn’s String Quartest is appealing, you may wish to sign up for the the ISGM Podcast:

1. String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4
2. String Quartet No. 59 in G minor, Op. 74 (“Rider”)
3. String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 64, No. 6

Conclusion

So, this has been an introduction to some of the smaller, more accessible compositions in classical music.  There are plenty more that you can check out floating around on the web.  The sites referenced in this article make an excellent starting point for exploring some freely available classical music.

In the next piece in this series, I will focus on talking about the classical music periods: explaining what the focus of each was, and why we tend to keep track of which composers were in which periods, and how that might affect the music that you are searching for.