Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

A lot has changed since I last wrote regularly.

A lot has changed in just the past 6 months.

But I want to get writing here again.

One of the biggest changes is that I’m no longer at the job I held for nearly 12 years, a position that afforded me ample opportunity to listen to music throughout the entire day. My current attempt at remaining self-employed also allows me to listen to a great deal of music, but the focus of this piece is on a series of lists I made back when I was chained to a desk and Windows PC no matter how much work there was to do or how quickly I was able to get it done.

For quite a while, I maintained something akin to a Bullet Journal, but over time it evolved to just a to-do list of daily or weekly tasks and a list of exactly what I listened to every day. I really enjoyed having that when I used that notebook every day and had plenty of time to sit in front of it and write and think and organize.

Rather than keeping up with that on a day-to-day basis, there’s another, more central way to keep track of what I’ve listened to, and it relates to my desire to get back to being more familiar with some of the really basic standard pieces in the repertoire.

It began with string quartets, but unsurprisingly expanded to include most of the other big forms of music. The process of building an ‘official’ list of the must-know pieces was fun and educational and interesting, and led to the very lengthy lists below, which I am very much enjoying getting through.

I’ve included first names of the composers who may be a bit more obscure to make them easy to find if you want to go look ’em up. Also, I’ve not included some of the basics (Beethoven, Mahler, and Bruckner symphonies) that I already know very well and thus don’t need to investigate further.

I do love a good list.

String Quartets: 233

• Bartók
• Beethoven
• Bloch, Ernest
• Bridge, Frank
• Debussy
• Diamond, David
• Dvořák
• Henze, Hans Werner
• Hindemith
• Holmboe, Vagn
• Krenek, Ernst
• Langgaard, Rued
• Martinů
• Mendelssohn
• Mozart
• Myaskovsky, Nikolai
• Piston, Walter
• Ravel
• Rosenberg, Hilding
• Sallinen, Aulis
• Schoenberg
• Schubert
• Shostakovich
• Simpson, Robert
• Stenhammar, Wilhelm
• Taneyev, Sergei

Piano Sonatas: 150

• Barber
• Beethoven
• Brahms
• Bridge, Frank
• Feinberg, Samuil
• Ives, Charles
• Krenek, Ernst
• Liszt
• Medtner, Nikolai
• Mozart
• Myaskovsky, Nikolai
• Prokofiev
• Rachmaninoff
• Schubert
• Scriabin
• Shostakovich
• Szymanowski

Cello Concertos: 45

• Arnold, Malcolm
• Atterberg, Kurt
• Bacri, Nicolas
• Barber
• Bax, Arnold
• Carter, Elliott
• Castelnuevo-Tedesco
• Chin, Unsuk
• Dutilleux, Henri
• Haydn
• Holmboe, Vagn
• Honegger, Arthur
• Kabalevsky
• Khachaturian
• Kokkonen, Joonas
• Korngold
• Krenek, Ernst
• Lalo
• Lutosławski
• Martinů
• Myaskovsky
• Penderecki
• Reinecke, Carl
• Rosenberg, Hilding
• Sæverud, Harald
• Saint-Saens
• Sallinen, Aulis
• Salonen, Esa-Pekka
• Schnittke, Alfred
• Schumann
• Shostakovich
• Simpson, Robert
• Walton, William
• Weinberg, Mieczysław
• Zwilich, Ellen Taaffe

Symphonies

Group A- The Popular Guys: 124

• Dvořák
• Dutilleux
• Holmboe, Vagn
• Kabalevsky
• Martinů
• Mendelssohn
• Myaskovsky, Nikolai
• Nielsen
• Prokofiev
• Rachmaninoff
• Schumann
• Shostakovich
• Sibelius
• Tchaikovskky
• Vaughan Williams

Group B- The Obscure Ones: 162

• Arnold, Malcolm
• Atterberg, Kurt
• Bax, Arnold
• Diamond, David
• Englund, Einar
• Gal, Hans
• Hartmann, Karl Amadeus
• Henze, Hans Werner
• Kokkonen, Joonas
• Lutosławski
• Magnard, Alberic
• Nørgård, Per
• Penderecki
• Petterssen, Allan
• Rosenberg, Hilding
• Sessions, Roger
• Simpson, Robert
• Schuman, William
• Sallinen, Aulis
• Schnittke, Alfred

Violin Concertos: 70

• Barber
• Bartók
• Berg
• Brahms
• Britten
• Bruch
• Busoni
• Conus, Julius
• Diamond, David
• Dvořák
• Elgar
• Gal, Hans
• Glazunov
• Hartmann, Karl Amadeus
• Henze, Hans Werner
• Kabalevsky
• Khachaturian
• Korngold
• Ligeti
• Martinů
• Mozart
• Myaskovsky, Nikolai
• Nielsen
• Paganini
• Prokofiev
• Rubbra, Edmund
• Sallinen, Aulis
• Salonen, Esa-Pekka
• Saint-Saens
• Schnittke, Alfred
• Sessions, Roger
• Shostakovich
• Strauss, R.
• Szymanowski
• Tchaikovsky
• Vieuxtemps
• Walton, William
• Weinberg, Mieczysław
• Wieniawski

Piano Concertos: 121

• Ades, Thomas
• Atterberg, Kurt
• Bartók
• Beach, Amy
• Beethoven
• Berwald, Franz
• Britten
• Busoni
• Carter, Elliott
• Chin, Unsuk
• Dallapiccola, Luigi
• Davies, Peter Maxwell
• Dvořák
• Englund, Einar
• Field, John
• Gal, Hans
• Glazunov
• Henselt, Adolf
• Henze, Hans Werner
• Hummel, Johann N.
• Ireland, John
• Kabalevsky
• Khachaturian
• Krenek, Ernst
• Ligeti
• Lutosławski
• Martinů
• Medtner, Nikolai
• Mendelssohn
• Milhaud
• Penderecki
• Pierné, Gabriel
• Prokofiev
• Rachmaninoff
• Reinecke, Carl
• Rosenberg, Hilding
• Sæverud, Harald
• Saint-Saens
• Salonen, Aulis
• Sessions, Roger
• Shostakovich
• Simpson, Robert
• Stenhammar, Wilhelm
• Vaughan Williams
• Zwilich, Ellen Taaffe

…for a total of 905 pieces of music.

Listen to each of those five times, some of them backdated because I definitely already know them, and that gets us to 4,525 listenings of pieces. Let’s say on average they’re a half hour long, which makes for 2,262.5 hours of music, or 13 weeks of nonstop, 24hr listening. Can that be correct? It appears to be.

They look something like this:

I planned as well as I could to have the composers in alphabetical order, to group them such that they fit on one page based on the number of composers, how many pieces one of these composers had, etc. The piano concertos page was more compact because most of the composers listed wrote less than five concertos, so I was able to list them down either side of the page and they wouldn’t meet in the center. There were obviously some afterthoughts…

Did I miss anything? Thoughts?

(By the way, tallies are made in the local Asian style of five strokes in the shape of the character 正. That’s a fun fact for you.)