Thread: too popular, can't be good - or, sins of your teenage years

I'm thinking of the works that suffer among the highbrow because they're too popular among the hoi polloi.

- Vivaldi's Four Seasons
- Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture
- Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite
- Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
- Barber's Adagio for Strings
- Ravel's Bolero
- Strauss' Radetsky March
- Strauss' Blue Danube
- Pachelbel's Canon
- Albinoni's Adagio (rev. Giazotto)
- Mozart's A Little Night Music

What else is there?

Perhaps

- Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance
- Rossini's Overture to William Tell
- almost anything by Philip Glass
- almost anything by Chopin

There could be a category of things that are just too easy to like, and must be degraded for that:

- Grieg's Lyric Pieces
- Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words
- Bruch's Violin Concerto #1
- Beethoven's Fur Elise

Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Thankfully it takes on a new life of awesomeness when you hear it in the context of Die Walküre.

Bach's Air on the G string
Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite
Prokofieff's March from Love for three Oranges
Rimsky's Scheherazade

and there must be more to go.

That's perfect. Thank you!

Add to that Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, and Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu.

Of course, what would a teenager like myself know other than committing the opposite of the ad populum fallacy?

Classical music in general. I listened to it along with trad. jazz and bebop as a kid, then for whatever reason I stopped. It was only after AH WAS SAAAAAAVED BAH FRANK ZAPPAAAAAHHHH (and that's a slightly complicated story) that I started listening to modern classical music around 2007. Since around 2008 I've been working my way backwards to the stuff I used to listen to, only to find that I don't enjoy it so much anymore, Mozart especially.

Dukas: Sorcerer's Apprentice
Orff: Carmina Burana

Maybe also Holst's The Planets

The slow movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto 21. The horribly nicknamed "Elvira Madigan".

Originally Posted by science

[...]
Maybe also Holst's The Planets

Not all of it. The Mars movement though.

Oh, this is all perfect.

I think we could go by performer as well. Andrei Rieu got a lot of attention recently. Josh Groban or Sarah Brightman could be other examples. Can't like anything by them!

Andrea Bocelli, the man every "real" opera lover must hate.

So you leave it to me to offer Lang Lang?

Originally Posted by Hilltroll72

So you leave it to me to offer Lang Lang?

No, Lang Lang is a genuine abortion.

Yes, Lang Lang. Thank you!