I've been listening to classical music recently while at work. I've decided to post about some of my favorites and where I might have first encountered each song. A lot of names of classical music are pretty much un-memorizable, so I really had to dig on a couple of these to find the names. Who on earth is going to remember the title of Opus Ninety-Something in A Major?
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paginini - The song is nearly synonymous with the late great Christopher Reeve's wonderful movie Somewhere in Time, which is to this day one of the only chick flicks that I really deeply appreciate. Maybe that's because it's also a science-fictiony movie. Wait - scratch the maybe. It's because of the science fiction element.
The time travel in Somewhere In Time makes about as much sense as the time travel in Christopher Reeve's Superman movie, but that doesn't matter. The song is great classical music, and I might not know about it without the movie.
Beethoven's Pathetique sonata - I think I became aware of this song via Billy Joel's This Night, back when I used to be an enormous Billy Joel fan. Classical music is way beyond copyright, so if an artist wants to put words to it and create an original song, there's no legal issue with that.
Moonlight Sonata and Shubert's Symphony 8 Unfinished - In college, I was hanging out with my cousin and heard a song on an episode of Animaniacs. That's the soundtrack to The Smurfs! I exclaimed. Yes, I was an idiot. The song wasn't written for The Smurfs. But how many of us haven't had ignormaus moments like that in our early 20s?
Air on the G String - Still one of my favorite classical pieces. I think I first took note of it in a James Bond film, or maybe it was the movie Se7en.
Chopin's Waltz in A Flat - I first took note of this classical piece after becoming a fan of Elizaveta, or Elly K, who once commented on this blog. She adapted the classical piece into her own song Breakfast with Chopin.
Albinoni Adagio - This song eluded me for years, if not decades. I first took note of it in the late 90s when I heard an odd electric guitar version of it during the ending sequence of The Doors movie with Val Kilmer. Remember that thing? Yeah. Then, sometime around 2003, I found a copy, was happy for a week or two, then promptly forgot/lost it. Years later, I started looking again. A few weeks ago, I actually happened across the song.
Beethoven Symphony 7 in A Major op.92 II, Allegretto - This song is used to good effect during the destruction-of-the-world sequence at the end of the Nicholas Cage movie Knowing.