Pieces of Classical Music that make you Happy

Cecilia Bartoli - Agitata Da Due Venti

I love Bartoli. And Vivaldi.

Andreas Scholl performing "Ombra mai fu" from Handel's "Xerxes." A simple ode to a plane tree.

Ombra mai fu di vegetabile, cara ed amabile, soave più.

Translated: Never was a shade of any plant dearer and more lovely, or more sweet.

Handel, Passacaglia

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that the theme from Pink Panther doesn't count? 😁

R4 - works for me! Fun choice. It definitely puts a smile on MY face.

Bach Sinfonia from Cantata 29, Dupre transcription

I love this takeoff on Bach's "Jesu, joy of man's desiring" by George Winston.

Even though it's off of a holiday album (and a "new age" one at that), it's something I turn to throughout the year.

Henry Mancini is a Classic!

Liszt, "La Campanella"

Enescu is not well known but he wrote one of the most upbeat pieces ever, and certainly the best of all the Hungarian rhapsodies. I love it. It makes me smile. And want to dance.

Handel, 'The Trumpet Shall Sound"

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Serenade To Music

Kiri te Kanawa singing "O Mio Babbino Caro," from Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi."

Felix Mendelssohn - Symphony No.4 in A, "Italian" - 1st Movement

He called it the "jolliest" piece he'd ever written. It's a keeper.

Chopin - Nocturne Opus 2 No. 9

Makes me think of cottonwood seeds floating by on a June day. And me without a care in the world.

“Sempre Libera” from Traviata

The thrilling love duet from the prologue of Götterdämmerung is one of my favorites. I’m typically up out of my (office) chair and conducting the VPO by the end of the piece, when I listen to my favorite version (Solti/Decca).

Linked is Kempe conducting Nilsson.

Saint Saens' organ symphony -- here's just the finale.

Wow.

The bouncy Swedish Rhapsody...

Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein!

I figured the thread wouldn't be held to the Classical Period, when I saw that OP posted a Baroque piece. I played that very movement on bassoon in college, and loved it (Bach & Baroque are all-time favorites for me anyway). I'm not a big fan of large groups of strings in general (and I really don't enjoy playing in orchestras), but cello is my favorite from that family.

The fugue finale from Britten's "Young Person's Guide" always makes me happy. The bassoons on this recording were especially well-mic'd, which I love, as a bassoonist.

The Khachaturian Piano Concerto

L. M. Gottschalk’s “The Banjo” always brightens my day!

I've loved Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" for years. I always find new patterns and new textures in it.

I’ve always enjoyed this classic

Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending

Vaughan Williams, whenever I like to imagine myself in a blue-skied countryside.

We posted that at the same time, R26!

Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams. Serenade To Music too.

Ralphie is getting a fair amount of love here.

Mozart - Serenade For Winds

[quote] "Ralphie is getting a fair amount of love here."

My favorite Vaughan Williams piece is the "Sea Songs" Quick March. I've also played this on bassoon, and loved it.

As long as we're talking about Ralph Vaughan Williams, this is one of his most upbeat and cheerful pieces, EVER!

just was thinking The Lark Ascending, and a few posters beat me to it. Always feel like my breathing has slowed, peaceful and slightly high after listening. If The Lark Ascending was in pill form, I'm sure the DEA would classify it as a controlled substance.

Percy Grainger's Mock Morris. A jaunty dance piece for the English Morris dance, composed by an Australian. First performed in London, 1912.

Grainier’s solo piano work is so good. Love the beautiful Bridal Lullaby which was used at the ethereal star of Howards End. Also can’t forget his band music (Lincolnshire Posy!), but that’s a different thread.

Carmen Dragon's themed albums with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra

An oldie but a goodie, "Summer" Presto from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

My mother played this album over and over when I was a kid, love it all but especially this part at about the :55 mark when it gets cranking.

Scarlatti Sonata D Major K

That certain canon...

Smetana's Vltava...

*Wistful sigh*

R10 is like a gallop of whirling dervishes!

Some wonderful syncopated rhythms. (And the second flautist has a handsome profile)

"happy" is in the heart of the listener... as in, great choices here, lots of opera and baroque (why not? major keys, rhythm, counterpoint!)... but I am often made "happy" by quiet, slow, even melancholy music. Arvo Part, Mozart's Requiem, Gorecki....

... and the evergreen Satie.

I don't look to music to make me happy, whether pop, rock, or classical. The pieces that engage me emotionally, however, are many:

"Summer Music" - Barber

Symphony No. 7 - Beethoven (second movement in particular)

Symphonies 2, 3, 6, and 8 - Mahler

String Quartets - Shostakovich

Piano Quintet - Brahms

lots and lots of Schubert

Bach organ music, among other Bach works

I so much prefer the sound of a cello to that of a violin. I find violins to be "whiny" and irritating.

Same for trumpets. I prefer french horns or mellophone.

[quote] “I don't look to music to make me happy”

Well, SMELL R43 and his Shostakovich string quartets! Jump to 5:13

R38 - Did you mean K. 96? If so, GREAT choice!

The Overture to the Marriage of Figaro — the most delightful and wonderful opera ever composed — never fails to bring a smile to my face.

G.F. Händel: Water Music

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048

I don’t know if “it makes me happy” but it sure is cathartic, Pines of the Appian Way, the ending of Respighi’s Pines of Rome. I can’t link because my favorite version was taken down on YouTube. It was a 2007 New Year’s Eve concert with a Japanese conductor and he really went all in, horns on the balcony and the percussionist just whaling away on the kettle drums. Made me want to jump up and scream at the end so probably best I wasn’t in the audience.

more bach

R43 Weird, I thought I had written this list (I mean seriously, I'm so old now and read threads and come across a post I like, and realize I had written it), but then I noted I would have put Adagio for Strings instead of Summer Music, and Mahler's 4th (Ruhevol) instead the 6th.

The second movement of Beethoven's 7th and the 3rd movement of Mahler's 4th and Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel are three angles at the one same single Truth/Beauty of human impermanence.

Classic symphony...

Happy--and somewhat surprised--to see how much love Vaughan Williams is getting in this thread. My favorite of his is the fifth symphony. The entire work is fantastic, but the third movement (beginning at 18:07) is perhaps the single most beautiful thing I've ever heard.

François Joseph Gossec - Gavotte

Here performed by flute and piano.

Bugs Bunny introduced Americans to many classics. But there's a special place in my heart for this version of Rossini's "Thieving Magpie" as recorded for Ren & Stimpy.

Classic Bugs...

ATM, I am listening to "Best of Bach". Just wonderful. This soundtrack may not count as classical, precisely, but I absolutely love it. It's just beautiful.

Who can forget the Tango scene from "Scent of a Woman?" The great Carlos Gardel's "Por Una Cabeza?" How could anyone listening (much less watching) not have a smile on their face?

Everyone should learn Argentinian milonguero tango.

Samuel Barber's "Summer Music" reminds me of the person who introduced me to post-Adagio Barber, and that is a pleasant memory.

Barber's "Violin Concerto" also sparks me some joy. Here's the version by Leonard Bernstein and Isaac Stern. Barber stands in the middle.

Schoenberg: Opus 33a Zimmermann: Die Soldaten Boulez: Pli selon Pli. Carter: Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano

Johann Strauss II - the Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka

Snappy!

so many choices for 2Cellos (Hauser and Sulich)

but when the musicians are this gorgeous, the music is secondary.

^ Beautiful, and so is the video, but they skip some notes.

I always wanted to hook this up to my alarm clock.

Dvorak's Cello Concerto, anything sung by Maria Callas...

If you like your conductors gorgeous, too, behold Lorenzo Viotti.

Here's another one, this thrills me.

how do you do

This interpretation of Satie is hilarious sacrilege.

Tchaikovsky AND Balanchine.

Lesson #143 of "How to feel like a tsarevich."

The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba arrangement for recorders. Delightful!

I find the cute violinist in shorts and hi-tops deliciously distracting.

Anything by JS Bach

R73 cutie pies

For years the NPR station in Boston used to come on the air at 6 am, first with the low sounds of birds tweeting, then increasing in volume, then segueing to The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Really a pleasant way to wake up.

Bach truly makes me happy. Many other truly beautiful pieces make me melancholic or wistful, eg Mozart’s Ave Verum or Bizet‘s Entr’acte from Carmen.

R64 - Why settle for only TWO 'cellos?

Lakmé - Flower Duet

yeah - this makes me happy.

Itzak Perlman does Beethoven with a muppet. :-)

There are many truly fine selections in this thread. It's sad to consider how few modern Americans take the opportunity to familiarize themselves with such selections.

Like the Bug Buggy examples above, it used to be people could even understand the parodies.

Another cartoon connection: Faust's L'air des bijoux (The Jewel Song), Bianca Castafiore's greatest hit. Although this singer does a much better job, La Castafiore's always characterized as another Florence Foster Jenkins.

very baroque, very happy , very gay

Overture to Candide, conducted by the composer himself

Bach has made several appearances on this thread, deservedly so. A few of those posts were mine.

A less popular (?) baroque composer, Arcangelo Corelli, deserves honorable mention. So many delightful pieces, it's difficult to choose one with which to start.

As a Gen-Xer, I remember "I Vow to Thee" from Princess Diana's wedding and her funeral. It was, supposedly, her favorite. It was also more recently used in the funeral procession of Prince Philip. The stirring movement from Holst's Jupiter Symphony, it's been inspiring Britons and anglophiles of every walk for over 100 years, in many forms. Personally, I love hearing it with vocals, when I watch the film "Another Country."

recalling when QEII was coronated I feel happy when I hear this

R86, it is a beautiful piece, but it isn’t from the Jupiter Symphony. That title is given to Mozart’s last symphony, No. 41 (a Jeopardy clue from this week). Your piece is from The Planets, Op. 32, which is a seven-movement orchestral suite by Holst. Movement four is known as “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.”

jupiter minuet

I love classical music so much more than contemporary music. Nothing will ever give me more goosebumps than Bach's "Moonlight Sonata", Debussy's "Clair De Lune", and Smetana's "Vltava".

[quote]Bach's "Moonlight Sonata"

Beethoven would be in shach.

R90 Or Bach's Rite of Spring!

It isn't classic, but this song is like a gift from heaven for depression.

Charpentier: Te Deum - Prelude

Franz von Suppé : Light Cavalry - Overture

Léo Delibes (1836 - 1891) Pizzicato That beard alone is quite an accomplishment.

Claude Debussy : Clair de Lune, for Piano (Suite Bergamasque No. 3), L. 75/3

Mozart Piano Sonata No 16 C major K 545 Barenboim

Wonderful interpretation by Jenő Jandó

Geoffrey Burgon. Brideshead Revisited - Main Theme The finest TV series of all time.

Chapter one. He adored New York City...

Indeed, he did

R96 Daffy Duck mounting stairs, slamming doors.