The humorous thing is, that I catch people singing it in English all the time and they have no idea what it is, they think it's a religious hymn or something.

carl orff carmina burana really does it for me, the whole piece not just the opening of o fortuna

Also, another is Carmen Suite by Bizet.

I'd like to bring up Handel. I enjoy him quite a bit.

I too love it wholeheartedly

I love almost all Dmitri Shostakovich's work. The 15 symphonies are great, but the 8th and 13th are my favorites.

I also like Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Scriabin, Dvorák and Mahlers 1st and 2nd Symphony.

James Blonde thinks you can't go wrong with tintinnabuli.

James Blonde like his Arvo Pärt, I see.

Noumenal does too. Moving on, he recently got some new recordings and would like to share.

1. Mahler 6 with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony. Yay. All the cool kids listen to Mahler.

2. A bunch of new Schnittke: 3rd SQ, 3rd Symphony, Cello Concerto 1, Cello Sonata 1.

3. Ives - Symphony No.2 & Robert Browning Overture - I've wanted this recording for a long time because it's the Nashville Symphony and I was in the audience at the performance that's on the CD.

4. Xenakis - Dox Orkh (this means Kick-Ass) and Kraanerg

5. Ligeti - 1st Book of Piano Etudes

6. Gubaidulina - Introitus (Piano Concerto) and Offertorium (Violin Concerto)

I too love Sibelius' music.

while there is indeed a lot of treacle in the Mozart his concerto's are sublime

Schnittke doesn't get enough of a mention, methinks. I've got three CDs of his stuff, and they're all glorious. I got a Xenakis percussion CD recently, he's really rather good at composing for percussion.

Today I got Heifetz's rendition of Bach's sonatas & partitas for solo violin... it's making me quite woozy. Utterly magnificent.

The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky kicks ass.

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Yeah, I think I'm going to look into Schnittke - I'd like to analyze some of his stuff. Sometimes, I think he's better than Shostakovich, to whom he's often compared, right?

The thing I often get from him is that he is, in many ways, quite a challenging composer, perhaps more so because he doesn't write in a way that instantly screams "I am difficult" a lá many contemporary composers. I suppose about Shostokovich one could say the same. I very often think he's better than Shostokovich, but then I'm an awkward sod at the best of times.

At any rate, Shosty is great. Dooodly doo, I'm a poet.

I went for a bike ride today and used the 3rd movement of the 8th symphony as a soundtrack.

When I first heard Shostakovitch, I thought it was so dissonant and modern, but now it just pretty conservative to my ears. Has for a good while now. There is a musicologist here that studies only Shostakovich. People are fascinated by the whole Soviet thing. Whatever.

'Shosty' I like, but I'm not so far into my theoretical knowledge that I appreciate his subtleties. I'm not really much further than shouting at Bach for being a bit too clever for my liking, to be honest. Still fun though.

What did you make of Gubaidulina, by the by? I've never really got into anything of hers I've heard, but I know she's well thought of. And, for that matter: Spectralism - silly, fun, crap, or all of the above? I adore Saariaho (sp?) and find Radelescu silly but fun.

The Offertorium (Violin Concerto) is pretty cool, but I tend to like everything, I'm just like that. I haven't listened to the other Gubaidulina yet.

Radulescu is one of those composers that exists for me, so far, as a name and concept, but I haven't heard any recordings. Not in a long time any way. Do you have any suggestions? In general, I haven't gotten into electro-acoustic music that much, and French stuff scares me, especially anything associated with IRCAM..... But I really like the composers that inspired Spectralism - Messiaen, Scelsi, Boulez, or whatever Wikipedia says..... Saariaho, I want to get some recordings. Suggestions? I'll probably just get whatever eMusic has and then move on from there. I really don't get to listen to a lot of new music these days. This summer I'm going to dive into some.

As far as "theoretical knowledge" goes, the big thing that helps is an understanding of form, particularly classical form and the way it has shaped music since the mid 18th century. This is why a lot of people gravitate towards the baroque and the avant-garde: music from around 1730 to WWII demands certain knowledge of the listener in terms of expectations and so on. Both formally and harmonically-contrapuntally. Baroque music comes at you in a constant stream with a steady rhythm - there are strict rules but they don't really matter because all they do is make sure everything sounds right. Little prior knowledge is needed to follow the musical logic and process. "Avant-garde" music is similar - it's all about texture, timbre, rhythm - like rock music.

I'm really interested in the way classical form and rhetoric were reinvented in the 20th century - how traditional forms and materials (like triads, scales) are re-worked and re-tooled. Anyway, as far as theory goes, I think it can aid in making every aspect of listening, performing, composing more enjoyable and better. But something like Shostakovich is perfectly enjoyable without even thinking of that stuff. However, I was listening to Schoenberg's 4th SQ the other day, and I would have been lost without constantly thinking about the form and concentrating on the row forms and all that. Yeah. Not that I can hear when the row is inverted or retrograded and transposed and all that - just certain intervals that stick out.

Check it out:

http://dme.mozarteum.at/mambo/index.php

All of Mozart's works, digitized and free. ALL OF IT.

I really dig Bartok and Penderecki, any composer to advise me ?

Ligeti, Xenakis, Schoenberg and Stravinsky are the first names that spring to mind of that ilk. And a little bit of Wagner and 'captain Wagner-lite' Glenn Branca wouldn't go amiss either.

Yes, I know I'm being disingenuous.