In my opinion, the exclusion of classical music is a huge oversight and it calls into question the legitimacy of the list.

For one, the world of classical music recordings contains so much. Even for a classical music expert it's daunting to sift through all the performances and performers. And many of the more popular pieces have been recorded dozens of times. How would you organize it? You might have, say, 3 recordings of Mozart's 40th and Jupiter in the top 50. I mean, I agree with not including classical albums.

Possibly the only exception is original compositions. Still, one could argue that they are included. John Fahey, Neu!, Faust, Robbie Basho, and Godspeed You Black Emperor! I would consider contemporary "classical music," and their work is certainly in the running. Some soundtracks are also on this site. It's just that the more conventionally orchestral soundtracks don't appear in many best-of lists, however you still have something like Peter Gabriel's Passion (Last Temptation of Christ) in this site.

The question is if, say, John Williams composed a concerto and conducted a recording, and if it somehow made enough EOY and decade lists, would Henrik include it?

There are several full-on contemporary classical pieces in the top 3000: Philip Glass's EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH; MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS and DRUMMING by Steve Reich; Stockhausen's KONTAKTE; and John Cage's one-of-a-kind INDETERMINACY. (Arvo Part's TABULA RASA is also Bubbling Under at the moment, and will almost certainly climb back onto the list with the next update given its inclusion in Tom Moon's 1000 RECORDINGS book.)

But most classical music is excluded from the list, mostly because, as already noted, with classical we're almost always talking about the -piece- itself, not necessarily a specific recording (except in rare cases like Glenn Gould's legendary recording of the Goldberg Variations). Even in the case of most of the works cited above, there have been multiple versions. It would just be too difficult to incorporate classical music here.

If anyone knows of a site not dissimilar to AM that lists the greatest classical works of all time, posting a link here might be a good idea.

My feeling on classical and jazz is, although they rock, it's impossible to objectively measure them against more popular genres.

For me, comparing a rock recording to a classical recording is like comparing a rock recording to a movie. They just rate on different scales.

Also, most classical recordings today are just the n-thousandth rendition of a canonical classic, and most newly written classical pieces are weird atonal stuff or stuff based on mathematical patterns that you can only really enjoy if you're academically versed about it. I need a list to help me decide if I'll like Arcade Fire much more than I need one to help me decide if I'll like Mozart, or 'Intersection of two fractals'.

If an effort was made to include classical, through adding classical-specific lists or changing weightings, the point at which it became "acceptable" would be completely arbitrary, and the specific albums would be somewhat token. What would be the criteria for weighting? Until there is a classical album in the top 10?

anyone want to start an AM Classical Pieces voting forum? Top 100 maybe?

i just watched a performance of "Rite of Spring" on youtube and feel ready to riot.

http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/pages/best-classic-wks.html

Isn't that just the list of one person? I used to use digital dream door for discovering new classical pieces, but it seemed so arbitrary I stopped.

I do agree that there should be a site that tells us the "best" or "greatest" classical pieces, by genre and time period, chosen by experts. There are a lot of individual books and lists, so an easy first step would be to combine them.

As far as finding recordings for them, plenty of great sites do that already with reviews or collecting reviews.

I completely disagree with the original poster. It's hard enough to compare jazz to rock to hip-hop, side by side, but at least they are all styles within the pop music tradition. Classical music is another animal altogether.

I would be done with this forum if I had to read a debate about the relative merits of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony versus Pet Sounds.