A curated collection of 300 classical works and cycles: symphonies, concertos, keyboard music, opera, chamber and choral music. Explore composers, background and listening guides.
One entry per work or cycle. Whole symphonies, operas and sets count as one entry. The collection draws on the supplied candidate lists and is presented alphabetically rather than as a definitive ranking.
300 matching works | Showing 126-150 | Page 6 of 12
Composition: 1940
Hindemith composed this independent orchestral symphony in 1940, during his move into American musical life. Unlike his symphonic works derived from operas, it carries a key designation rather than a dramatic title. Its four movements...
Composition: 1934
Hindemith shaped this three-movement symphony while working on his opera about the painter Matthias Grunewald. The movements correspond to images associated with the Isenheim Altarpiece: an angelic concert, an entombment, and the...
Composition: 1914-1917
Holst organized The Planets around the astrological characters associated with seven planets. The movements are contrasting character pieces, from the irregular march of Mars to the fading voices of Neptune. Earth is absent, and the...
Composition: 1941
Honegger wrote his Second Symphony for Paul Sacher and the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Its principal forces are strings, with a trumpet that may reinforce the chorale near the end of the finale. Three movements move between sustained...
Composition: 1945-1946
Honegger's Third Symphony uses Latin liturgical headings for three entirely instrumental movements: Dies irae, De profundis clamavi and Dona nobis pacem. Written at the end of the Second World War, it confronts violence and the search...
Composition: 1955
Mysterious Mountain unfolds in three movements, with a double fugue at its centre. Hovhaness balances sustained, hymn-like orchestral writing with flowing contrapuntal activity. The mountain in the title is a symbol rather than a named...
Composition: 1981-1982
Hovhaness gave this symphony an explicit connection to Mount St. Helens and its 1980 eruption. Its three movements move from landscape and a love song associated with Spirit Lake toward the volcano's destructive activity. Large...
Composition: Circa 1904-1913
Ives brought together four orchestral holiday portraits: Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, The Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day. Hymns, marches and overlapping layers evoke remembered community celebrations in...
Composition: 1897-1898
Ives wrote his First Symphony in the context of his studies with Horatio Parker at Yale. The four-movement score works within a European orchestral tradition, including a slow movement whose English-horn melody recalls Dvorak's example....
Composition: Circa 1907, with later revisions
Ives's Second Symphony places American songs and hymns inside a design that also recalls the European orchestral tradition. It has five movements, with slow sections framing or preparing faster ones. The music circulated long before its...
Composition: 1901-1904
Ives drew this compact symphony from hymn memories and music associated with his work as a church organist. Its three movements evoke a gathering, children's activities and communion at an American camp meeting. A chamber orchestra...
Composition: Circa 1910-1916
Ives's Fourth combines hymns, marches, fugue and simultaneous musical layers in four movements. Its second movement draws on Hawthorne's The Celestial Railroad, placing conflicting musical processes beside one another. The complex score...
Composition: Circa 1783
Kraus recast an earlier symphony in C-sharp minor as this C-minor work, enlarging and revising its orchestral conception. A slow introduction opens a three-movement design, with an Andante between the two faster movements. The work is...
Composition: 1854
Liszt organized his Faust Symphony as musical portraits of Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, drawing on Goethe's drama. Themes undergo transformation between the movements; Mephistopheles distorts material already associated with...
Composition: 1855-1856
Liszt organized his Dante Symphony around Inferno and Purgatorio, drawing its subject directly from the Divine Comedy. The second part leads into a choral Magnificat, adding voices to the orchestra at the close. The resulting design...
Composition: Multiple dates, mid-to-late 19th century
Liszt's nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies draw on dance idioms and, in many pieces, existing melodies. The last additions include works built from his own motifs. Many explore the contrast between slower, flexible passages and rapidly...
Composition: 1983
Lutoslawski's Third Symphony was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. A repeated-note signal punctuates a large continuous design, moving through preparatory episodes toward a more concentrated principal section. Some...
Composition: 1992
Lutoslawski wrote his last symphony for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Its two connected sections follow a plan in which an exploratory opening prepares a more continuous principal movement. A clarinet melody alternates with quicker...
Composition: 1895-1896
Magnard opens his Third Symphony with widely spaced chords that return later in the work. The four movements include a scherzo titled Danses and a Pastorale introduced by the English horn. Contrapuntal writing gives the faster passages...
Composition: 1912-1913
Magnard's final symphony is a four-movement work completed shortly before the First World War. A substantial opening gives way to a scherzo-like Vif and a slower movement before the finale gathers the argument. Its orchestral writing...
Composition: 1908 (principal composition)
Mahler called Das Lied von der Erde a symphony for voices and orchestra. Its six movements set German adaptations of Chinese poems, moving between exuberant public gestures and more solitary reflections on nature and passing time. The...
Composition: 1884-1888 (initial composition); later revisions
Mahler's First Symphony developed from an initially more explicitly programmatic, five-movement work into the familiar four-movement score. It draws on his own songs and places a minor-key version of a familiar round within the...
Composition: 1910 (left unfinished)
Mahler left his Tenth as a five-movement project in varying states of completion. The opening Adagio is far more fully worked out than most of what follows. Performances of all five movements therefore depend on posthumous editorial...
Composition: 1888-1894
Mahler's Second Symphony begins with a large funeral movement and eventually answers it with voices. Dance-like recollection and a restless scherzo precede the intimate song Urlicht and the expansive choral finale. The work developed...
Composition: 1895-1896 (principal composition)
Mahler's Third expands the symphony into six movements with an unusually large first movement and a slow finale. Instrumental dances and nature-like calls lead to settings of Nietzsche and a Wunderhorn poem for solo voice and choruses....
The 300-entry selection uses the 100 general favorites in the supplied classical list, then adds the earliest 200 nonduplicate symphony candidates in the supplied order. It is a curated discovery collection, not a universal popularity ranking. One work or cycle counts as one entry; movements and performances are not separately counted. Titles, musical forms, chronology and version notes are reviewed against the cited sources. Composition, premiere and publication dates are labeled separately; uncertainty is retained. Era and listening suggestions are editorial aids.
1960-2025. Each year contains 150 selections.