Know your classics!

I seriously enrolled in the best university course EVER.
It’s called Classical Music Repertoire and basically I have to memorize all the pieces from list you can see below. My first look at the list was reassuring, because I already know a lot of it. However, there are some things on the list I have never listened to and have to know from beginning to end. For example, I’ve never been into Wagner before and his Tristan und Isolde is on the list. It is an opera that lasts more than three hours and theoretically the teacher might play anything from it on the exam. On the exam we get 10 audio samples and you have to name the composer, the name of the work, year of origin and any other relevant information you can tell about it. So if you know the storyline of Tristan und Isolde that would give you extra points. Of course, if you can tell more about it from a musical perspective your score extra points as well.
Thankfully, I already know the Matthäus Passion very well, because that’s also a very long composition. Right now I’m getting the music from wherever I can, because the university couldn’t give us a CD with all the pieces on it. Something with copyright. The teacher remarked: ‘how you get it in your private time is none of our business’. So….I have some of the pieces on CD, but how to get the rest…YARR!?? Let’s say my laptop is staying on tonight. Some of the pieces are hard to find on the interwebs, so does any of you have Boulez, Bruckner, Liszt, Debussy and Ives???

The list is as follows:

Bach – Matthäus Passion, Goldberg Variations, Suite for Cello solo no.2.
Bartok – Concerto for Orchestra
Beethoven – Symphony 9, Sonata in A flat major
Boulez – Le marteau sans maître
Brahms – Symphony 1
Britten – War Requiem
Bruckner – Symphony 7
Chopin – Two Nocturnes, opus 37
Debussy – Préludes (Book I & II)
Dvorák – Symphony 9, Trio no. 4
Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue
Gubaidulina – Offertorium
Haydn – String Quartet opus 33, Symphony 103
Charles – The Unanswered Question
Liszt – Les Préludes

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Mahler – Symphony 5
Mendelssohn – Midsummernight’s Dream
Messiaen – Turangalila-symphonie
Milhaud – La Creation du Monde
Monteverdi – L’Orfeo
Mozart – Don Giovanni, Concerto for Clarinet
Rachmaninoff – Piano Concert 3
Rameau – Pieces de Clavecin en Concerts
Reich – Different Trains
Schönberg – Drei Klavierstücke, Suite for Piano
Schubert – Quintet in C major, Vier Lieder
Schumann – Lieder und Gesänge from Wilhelm Meister (Goethe), Kreisleriana
Shostakovich – String Quartet no 8
Sibelius – Concerto for Violin
Stockhausen – Gruppen, for three orchestra’s
Straus, R. – Solome
Stravinsky – Le Sacre du Printemps, Pulcinella: Suite
Sweelinck – Fantasia Chromatica
Tchaikovsky – Symphony 6
Varese – Amériques
Verdi – La Traviata
Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
Wagner – Tristan und Isolde
Webern – Fünf Stücke für Orchester
Weill – Dreigroschenoper

The first twenty pieces will be tested during the first exam on the 4th of December. I’ll say goodbye to metal for now!