So many people feel a bit 'off' about being able to define anything as great music or bad music, and I want to suggest that you can - but that of course we're all different! We are influenced by our parents and their tastes and I would say we often think of great music as stuff we've heard early on and love, but maybe that's formative music rather than great music. I don't mind which genre, age, or period it is, there are other criteria to help us understand whether something is worthwhile.
“Great music is whatever you think great music is”
Daniel Hope performs Bach’s E Major Violin Concerto
1. Bach - Violin Concerto in E Major
I'm sure many would agree with me about the complete genius of Bach. One of the early pieces I remember thinking was really good was Bach's E Major concerto, which was a favourite of my parents. Why do I like it? Because I profess to like harmony. At the start there's no harmony there, just a simple major triad, but you turn the page and he suddenly lands us in an extraordinary harmonic sequence which is the same as the Cum Sanctu Spiritu in his B Minor Mass.
Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 1. Poco Sostenuto - Vivace (Leonard Bernstein / Vienna Philharmonic)
2. Beethoven - Symphony No. 7
It's such simple harmony, and yet it's just the sound of that first chord with the beautiful oboe shining through.
3. The Beatles - Yesterday
It's that second chord, to start the modulation to the relative minor. It's absolutely superb. The fantastic tenor Andrew Staples once told me "I met Paul McCartney and asked him who wrote that second chord. ‘We didn't know enough about sevenths, so John went off with his guitar to a geezer on the other side of Liverpool - he came back strumming all manner of seventh chords!’”
4. Mozart - Requiem
In the orchestral introduction, there is a series of chords where he harmonises a rising melody with a dominant of the dominant and a beautiful scrunch . I bought a facsimile to see if there was a smudge at that moment - whether he wrote a simple harmony and then thought "Oh no, I can do better than this" - and indeed there it is! If you add moments of genius like that up you get pure, unalloyed genius going on for a long long time.
5. Gershwin - Summertime from Porgy & Bess
My father adored Gershwin. In Summertime, you only have to hear the first chord to feel the hot, languid summer mood. At the end, he suddenly finds the subdominant major in a beautiful, bittersweet circle of fifths. It's an absolutely stunning end and it so beautifully fits the meaning of the lyrics.
Richard McVeigh plays Olivier Messiaen's 'Transports de joie' from 'L'Ascension
6. Messiaen - Transports de Joie from l'Ascension
How can we include Olivier Messiaen when his music is so challenging? Well, he has a really tight harmonic scheme that he uses - perhaps he discovered this method first, and only then started writing with it. I find it fascinating that almost all modern composers get the rough end of everyone's tongue for their compositional technique, but Messiaen is admired by so many for his wonderful structure and the sound world it creates.
Ralph Allwood is founder of the Rodolfus Foundation and Musical Director of the Rodolfus Choir. To discover more about the charity and its work, follow our social links below.