Best Classical Melodies

If you think Classical music is boring, or that you don’t know enough about it to ever get your foot in the door, think again. Here are a few most well known melodies in Classical music history, and we guarantee that you have heard every single one of them already. You just may not have known their names or origins.

Specifically, the opening two measures, of only four notes. The rhythm is precisely that of the letter V in Morse Code, and for that reason, it was a signal used by the Allies in WWII (what’s the German word for irony?). Everyone in the civilized world has heard it, probably more than once. The story of how Beethoven
came up with it is legendary and most likely not true. He was trying to begin his 5th symphony but couldn’t think of a theme to start it. There was a knock at the door in the same rhythm as the theme and the rest is history. Why is this doubtful? Beethoven was almost 100% deaf by the time he started his 5th symphony, and wouldn’t have heard a knock at the door.

Another story is that he heard, or felt it, in a severe clap of thunder one afternoon while out walking. It remains the most performed melody in all of Classical music’s history. It has been incorporated into every 20th Century genre of music: rap, blues, disco, heavy metal, rock and roll, country, you name it.

Symphony #5

Ludwig van Beethoven

Toccata means “touch” in Italian, indicating how lightly the fingers should perform such a work on a keyboard instrument. Toccatas have been written by almost every composer you can name, but this one is the one everyone knows. You may not know it by name, but when you hear it, you snap your fingers after the first 3 notes. The legend of its composition is that Bach was bored one day at the organ and played around until he came up with this melody. This is completely unsubstantiated. We have no idea of the origin of the work, and many musicologists have argued that he didn’t write it. This lister argues, however, that he did, because the fugue that accompanies this toccata is absolutely top-notch, and could not have been composed by anyone else, not even Handel. Bach is the all time master of the fugue, and this one ranks among his best.

The toccata is primarily famous through The Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom is often depicted seated at the underground organ playing this by himself. It has featured in a number of other films, too, including Disney’s Fantasia (1940), and is a byword in the horror film genre, now, especially Hammer Film Productions.

Toccata in d minor

Johann S. Bach

This divertimento takes about 15 minutes to perform, and of its four, legendary movements, the first is, by far, the most well known. Milos Forman made good use of it, in his film Amadeus, as an example of how popular Mozart’s work is, even to those who don’t know he wrote it. Salieri plays a couple of his own melodies for a priest, who regrets that he doesn’t know them. Then Salieri plays the first few notes of this one and the priest finishes it for him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you wrote that!” he says.

“I didn’t,” Salieri replies with a look of utter disgust and contempt. “That was Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”

You might be amazed to know that Mozart wrote this on commission from someone who needed “some happy music” for a ball. At the time, Mozart was sick with the flu. His wife, Constanza, was sick with the flu. They could barely afford food, and his father, Leopold, had just died. He was not in a happy mood, but he was not about to turn down the money. Some records indicate that he wrote the whole piece in a week. It was not published until 1827, long after he died.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

Wolfgang A. Mozart

Beethoven isn’t typically thought of today, among musicologists, as a composer with the ability to compose lyrical melodies along the lines of the next entrant. Beethoven was able to make a mountain out of a molehill. He composed themes or motifs, and was the primary precursor to Richard Wagner’s leitmotifs. But, now and then, Beethoven sang out a melody to rival anyone’s. The final movement of his 9th Symphony is one of the most famous moments in musical history, and everyone in the civilized world can hum its tune.

In German, it is “Ode an die Freude,” a poem by Friedrich Schiller, and the poem might have been no more than just another Romantic poem, were it not for Beethoven’s musical setting of it. Now it is one of the most famous poems in world literature, because of him. Hector Berlioz argued that modern music began with this symphony. John Ruskin, the British essayist and critic, was not, however, as enthusiastic about it. He called the English premiere of it “a nerve-wracking hellish experience, full of India war-whoops, and finishing with a tune that sounds like Yankee Doodle.” Humorously enough, Yankee Doodle can be sung to this melody.

But Ruskin also thought William Wordsworth was a terrible poet. Not much of an accurate critic. The Ode to Joy is the definition of timeless. As long as there are people on Earth, some of them will be listening to it.

Ode to Joy

Ludwig van Beethoven