15 Pieces of Classical Music About Trees

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

No matter how many of us end up moving into towns and cities, human beings are still irresistibly drawn to forests, woodlands, and trees.

Classical composers are no exception. In fact, a huge percentage of them were great nature lovers (Beethoven, for one, often composed in his head during his walks), and many of them went so far as to write music inspired by forests.

Forest under bright sunlight © Flux AI Image Generator

Today, we’re looking at fifteen pieces of classical music about trees. Put on your hiking boots and join us!

Francesco Geminiani: La foresta incantata (1754)  

Italian composer Francesco Geminiani lived from 1687 to 1762. He helped to popularise the Italian style of violin playing abroad, most famously in London.

He was widely admired during his lifetime, being considered the equal of composers like Handel and Corelli, but for whatever reason, he has fallen out of favour today.

In 1754, he wrote a pantomime ballet called La foresta incantata (“The Enchanted Forest”).

Franz Schubert: Der Lindenbaum from Winterreise (1827)

Winterreise (“Winter Journey”) is a series of twenty-four songs for voice and piano.

These two dozen songs are narrated by a man who, when he hears of his beloved’s betrothal to another, goes on a wintertime journey to escape the memory of her.

Der Lindenbaum (“The Linden Tree”) is the fifth song of the cycle. In it, the narrator notices a linden tree as he travels. It serves as a reminder of happier days, during which he used to sit under one and enjoy his day.

As he passes, the linden tree seems to call out to him. However, he doesn’t turn back. Instead, he leaves the tree and all the memories it represents and keeps travelling forward into an uncertain, unsettled future.

Vincent d’Indy: La Forêt Enchantée (1878) 

French composer Vincent d’Indy wrote La Forêt Enchantée in 1878 when he was just twenty-seven years old.

At the time, Wagner was a major influence on the young composer (as he was to many young composers), and you can really hear that influence here.

In this piece, d’Indy follows the story of a knight named Harald, who visits an enchanted forest and meets seductive elves. In the finale, he drinks from an enchanted forest lake and falls into a deep sleep.

Franz Liszt: Waldesrauschen (1862-63) 

In the early 1860s, pianist and composer Franz Liszt wrote two concert etudes. The first is called Waldesrauschen, or “Forest Murmurs.”

This piece uses the piano to imitate the sound of breezes blowing through trees. Those breezes begin very quietly with a marking of vivace, or “in a lively manner.” Eventually, the work and the wind become loud and passionate. 

Johann Strauss II: Tales from the Vienna Woods (1868)

One of the most famous parts of Vienna is its woods, found just outside the city. It’s a sizable woods: almost thirty miles long and between twelve to eighteen miles wide.

Julius Schmid: Beethoven’s Walk in Nature

Schubert and Beethoven often found creative inspiration in those woods, and so did Johann Strauss II.

In 1868, he wrote one of his famous waltzes (which is actually an arrangement of multiple waltzes) and called it Tales from the Vienna Woods.

It was inspired by the dances of the rural citizens. To imitate folk instruments, Strauss employed a zither.

Alexander Glazunov: The Forest (1887)

Russian composer Alexander Glazunov wrote an orchestral fantasy called The Forest at the age of twenty-two.

He wrote an entire program for it, describing in exacting detail what he’d seen in his mind’s eye: daybreak, birds chirping, the appearance of nymphs, a hunting party, and finally, more bird calls.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Forest of Fir Trees in Winter from The Nutcracker (1892) 

Every ballet lover knows the story of The Nutcracker. A little girl named Clara receives an enchanted nutcracker doll on Christmas Eve. In the middle of the night, Clara visits the doll while the rest of the household is asleep – and magical events transpire.

After witnessing a battle between gingerbread soldiers and mice, Clara is astonished to see the nutcracker turn into a handsome prince.

The ballet’s first act ends when the prince leads her into a forest as snow falls. This stunning music by Tchaikovsky accompanies their journey.

Edward MacDowell: To an Old White Pine from New England Idyls (1896) 

In 1896, American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife moved into a farmhouse in the New Hampshire countryside.

MacDowell was deeply inspired by his New England surroundings. In 1902, he wrote a series of ten piano miniatures depicting various natural phenomena and history, including “An Old Garden” and “From Puritan Days.”

The seventh in the set of ten is called “To an Old White Pine.” There is a brief poem at the top of the score:

A giant of an ancient race
He stands, a stubborn sentinel
O’er swaying, gentle forest trees
That whisper at his feet.

John Ireland: The Almond Trees (1913)

John Ireland was an English composer born in 1879. He began his musical studies with piano and organ, then became interested in composition in the late 1890s.

The Almond Trees is a slender, evocative, meandering work with a real Impressionist tinge.

Jean Sibelius: The Trees (1914)

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius may be best-known for his symphonies, but his piano music is worth checking out, too.

One of the loveliest examples is The Trees, a collection of five sensitive pieces for solo piano.

Each movement is named after a particular species of tree: When the Rowan Blossoms, The Solitary Pine, The Aspen, The Birch and The Spruce.

Ottorino Respighi: The Pines of Rome (1924) 

The Pines of Rome is an orchestral tone poem in four movements, and possibly the most famous example of tree-inspired classical music.

The pines at the Villa Borghese

Each of the four movements portrays pines in a particular location in Rome: The Pines of the Villa Borghese, Pines Near a Catacomb, The Pines of the Janiculum, and The Pines of the Appian Way.

The piece moves backwards in time in a striking way. The first movement portrays children playing in twentieth-century Rome, but with each movement, Respighi goes further back in time, and by the end, he’s depicting a legion of Roman soldiers marching down the tree-lined Appian Way.

Arnold Bax: The Tale the Pine Trees Knew (1931) 

While listening to the ominous opening measures to Arnold Bax’s tone poem The Tale the Pine Trees Knew, one wonders what dark events these trees have witnessed.

We’re left to speculate since Bax didn’t leave a concrete program.

However, he did at least mention that the work was inspired by visits to Norway and Scotland. He wrote:

This work is concerned solely with the abstract mood of these places, and the pine trees’ tale must be taken purely as a generic one. Certainly, I had no specific coniferous story to relate.

Igor Stravinsky: Dumbarton Oaks (1937-38) 

In the late 1930s, American diplomat and philanthropist Robert Woods Bliss and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss gave themselves quite the anniversary gift: they commissioned a work by Igor Stravinsky!

Stravinsky answered the call by writing this attractive neoclassical concerto for chamber orchestra.

It was named after Dumbarton Oaks, the Bliss’s massive estate in Georgetown, Washington, DC.

If the name sounds familiar to you, it might be because a few years later, in 1944, the Dumbarton Oaks Conference was held at the estate. Participants came out of the conference with proposals for the establishment of what ultimately became the United Nations.

L’arbre des songes by Henri Dutilleux (1983-85) 

French composer Henri Dutilleux wrote L’arbre des songes (or “The Tree of Dreams”) in the mid-1980s. It’s a four-movement violin concerto that was dedicated to violinist Isaac Stern.

Dutilleux described it like this:

All in all the piece grows somewhat like a tree, for the constant multiplication and renewal of its branches is the lyrical essence of the tree. This symbolic image, as well as the notion of a seasonal cycle, inspired my choice of ‘L’arbre des songes’ as the title of the piece.

Treesong by John Williams (2001) 

American composer John Williams also took inspiration from trees when writing this violin concerto.

He found himself drawn to a particular tree at the Boston Public Garden: in his words, “a beautiful specimen of the Chinese dawn redwood, or metasequoia.”

This species of tree was once thought to have gone extinct. Fortunately, however, some modern-day examples were discovered, thereby saving the species and enabling modern humans to enjoy them.

Later, Williams met Dr. Shiu-Ying Hu, a botanist from Harvard. While they were walking in the Arnold Arboretum, she pointed out the oldest metasequoia and told the story of how she planted it in the 1940s.

“I was thunderstruck by this coincidence, and when I told her of ‘my’ metasequoia in the Public Garden, she informed me that the younger tree I loved so much was also one of her children,” Williams wrote.

The awe and human warmth of this realisation, along with Williams’s love for these trees, colours TreeSong.

Conclusion

From John Williams’s portrait of redwoods to Geminiani’s portrait of an enchanted forest, it’s clear that composers from every generation have enjoyed branching out by writing tree-inspired music, and there will surely be more tree-inspired music to come!

Which of these works best evokes the magic of trees? Have we missed any of your favourites? Let us know!

Five of the Most Famous Women Composers of the Classical Era

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

Think about Classical Era composers and you might think of men in splendid attire wearing white wigs: men like Mozart or Haydn. But you might be surprised by how many classical era composers were actually women!

Most historians agree that the Classical Era began in the 1750s and didn’t give way to the Romantic Era until the 1820s or 1830s.

Obviously this was a time when professional opportunities for women were limited compared to the present day, but it was also a time when new ideas about what women could learn and accomplish had begun to take root.

There are many women who wrote great music during the Classical Era. Here are five of the most famous.

Marianna Martines (1744-1812) 

Marianna Martines was born in 1744 in Vienna, Austria.

Importantly for Martines’s career and artistic development, her family lived with her father’s friend, the poet Metastasio, who was the Empire’s Poet Laureate.

Metastasio connected her with a poor young keyboard teacher living in the upstairs apartment named Joseph Haydn, who she studied with from the ages of seven to ten.

Marianna Martines

She received a fabulous and wide-ranging musical education from several great teachers and eventually began to sing for Empress Maria Theresa.

She became best known for her vocal performances and compositions and wrote many oratorios, cantatas, and choral works throughout her musical life.

It would have been unseemly for a woman of her social class to make money as a performer, so she made her money composing and teaching, and when her mentor Metastasio died, she inherited a portion of his estate.

Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1739-1807) 

Duchess Anna Amalia was born in 1739 in Wolfenbüttel in present-day Germany.

When she was sixteen, she married the Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The following year, she had a son named Karl August. Shortly afterwards, her husband died, leaving her a widow and also her infant son’s regent.

As her son grew, she focused on making the court in Weimar intellectually and artistically brilliant. It became known as the “court of the muses” and hosted German cultural giants like Goethe and Schiller.

Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

She somehow found time to write music herself, including harpsichord sonatas, vocal works, a symphony, and even two operas!

The most famous of the two operas was Erwin und Elmire, based on a libretto by Goethe, and composed in 1776, the year after her son reached his majority and she retired from the role of regent.

Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824) 

Maria Theresia von Paradis’s father was Imperial Secretary of Commerce and Court Councilor to the Empress Maria Theresa, and he named his daughter after his boss. When she was a toddler, she lost her sight, resulting in lifelong blindness.

Maria Theresia von Paradis

She was extremely musically gifted, and because of her family’s connections to the court, she received first-rate training in singing, keyboard playing, and composition. Her memory was astonishing: she was said to have sixty concertos memorised.

She went on tour to London and Paris in 1783, at the age of 24, and made a big impression. She even played piano concertos by Haydn and Mozart.

Later in life, she focused on composition herself, using a specially made composition board to write the music out. She wrote a wide variety of works, from piano sonatas to operas. Unfortunately, many of these works remain lost.

Louise Reichardt (1779-1826) 

Unusually for the time, Louise Reichardt was born to two composers: both her mother and father wrote music. Her father and grandfather worked at the court of Frederick the Great.

Tragically, her talented mother died when Louise was just four. Her father became overwhelmed by his work and raising Louise and her siblings, so he didn’t spend much time teaching her music. However, she seems to have learned, anyway, and while she was still a child, he published works that included contributions by her.

Louise Reichardt

When she was a young woman, Reichardt struck out on her own to make a living in Hamburg, where she became a freelance musician, teacher and conductor of the Hamburg chorus. However, she never conducted publicly; conducting was seen as an unseemly activity for a woman.

She was most famous for her lovely lieder, which she wrote for the emerging middle-class market.

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) 

Maria Szymanowska is sometimes referred to as the female Chopin, but since she was born before him, maybe we should think of Chopin as the male Maria Szymanowska!

She was born in Poland to a prosperous family. We don’t know much about her musical training or her early life, but we do know that she got married to a lawyer named Józef Szymanowski in 1810. They had three children together but were divorced in 1820.

Maria Szymanowska

Interestingly and unusually, her performing career began during her marriage, when she was a young mother. She toured through Europe and was extremely well-received. She made a final move to St. Petersburg in the late 1820s and died there in a cholera epidemic.

She wrote over 100 pieces for piano, many of them for the domestic market, a la Louise Reichardt.

Her music is right on the cusp of the transition between the Classical and Romantic Eras, and their uniquely Polish tinge predicts the nationalism that would appear in the piano music of Chopin and Liszt.

It’s a tragedy that she didn’t live longer, but it’s a joy to listen to the great music that survives.

15 Pieces of Classical Music About Trains

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

Composers have always been inspired by trains, and it’s easy to understand why: the rhythmic chugging of steam engines, the sweeping landscapes viewed from a train window, and the sense of adventure and nostalgia associated with rail travel…

All of these sounds, sights, and feelings have inspired composers to create music that continues to resonate with audiences today.

All aboard as we chug through fifteen pieces of classical music about trains!

Eisenbahn-Lust Waltz by Johann Strauss I (1836) 

Johann Strauss I (the father of the composer of The Blue Danube) was a well-known composer and orchestra leader who wrote many pieces for various dances and celebrations.

In 1836, he wrote this ebullient waltz (which translates into “Train Ride Fun”) to celebrate the construction of early railroads. They were just beginning to connect communities near Vienna to the city proper.

Mikhail Glinka: Travelling Song from A Farewell to Saint Petersburg (1840) 

This work comes from a larger suite of works called A Farewell to St. Petersburg.

Glinka was going through a tough patch at the time, as his marriage was disintegrating (his wife would ultimately leave him for another man). He poured some of his personal feelings about turmoil and transition into this set of songs.

The frantic Travelling Song takes inspiration from the perpetual motion of steam locomotives – and probably the composer’s desire to escape his difficult circumstances!

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Le Chemin de Fer (1844) 

Charles-Valentin Alkan was once viewed as one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century, but after being passed over for a prestigious teaching position at the Paris Conservatoire, he largely withdrew from public life.

Today, he is best known for his personal eccentricity and the wonderfully original and staggeringly challenging piano music he left behind.

Although Strauss and Glinka’s works came earlier, this is the first work to graphically portray the sounds and motions of a train. It’s sometimes characterized as banal, but no one can deny that it’s fun!

Hector Berlioz: Le Chant des chemins de fer (1846) 

Le Chant des chemins de fer translates into Railroad Song.

Somewhat amusingly to modern ears, it’s a whole cantata for orchestra and voices dedicated to glorifying the French railroad (as well as a celebration of the labour of all those who made its construction possible).

The occasion of its composition was the opening of the Gare de Lille, the main railroad station in Lille, France.

Berlioz wrote this work over the course of three nights for the money. He wanted a cannonade to go off in the final chords for maximum drama, but unfortunately, one couldn’t be located in time for his grand artistic vision.

Hans Christian Lumbye: Copenaghen Steam Railway Galop (1847) 

Here’s another work composed to celebrate the opening of a railroad. This time, it was the opening of the first railroad in Denmark, which ran between Copenhagen and Roskilde.

Lumbye, a well-known composer of light music, pulled out all the train-based stops here. A bell clangs; whistles go off; percussion instruments unite to imitate the huff and puff of a steam-powered train rushing off to its new destination.

Lustfahrten, Walzer by Eduard Strauss (1879-80) 

Like father, like son! Eduard Strauss, like his father Johann Strauss I, also wrote a work to honour the railroad, this one called Lustfahrten, or “Pleasure Trips.”

It was dedicated to the “Comité des Eisenbahnballes” (The Railway Ball Committee). Presumably, every attendee present found it transporting.

The Great Crush Collision March by Scott Joplin (1896) 

Here’s one of the stranger entries on this list.

In 1896, a man named William George Crush, an agent with the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad decided it would be a good idea to get rid of two of the railroad’s old locomotives by staging a massive trainwreck and selling train tickets to transport eager spectators directly to the scene of the crash.

A bespoke temporary town was built to accommodate the expected crowds. In the end, forty thousand people showed up!

Unfortunately, the crash turned into a disaster. The locomotives’ boilers exploded on impact, and two spectators died in the aftermath.

This extraordinary event was memorialized by up-and-coming composer Scott Joplin, who wrote a strangely upbeat piano piece portraying the deadly disaster.

Of special note are the notes he wrote in the score: “the noise of the trains while running at the rate of ninety miles an hour” and “the collision” (marked fortissimo, of course).

Pacific 231 by Arthur Honegger (1923) 

French composer Arthur Honegger was obsessed with trains. “I have always loved locomotives passionately,” he wrote. “For me, they are living creatures, and I love them as others love women or horses.”

So it makes sense that one of his first big successes was Pacific 231, an imaginative orchestral work that gives the impression of an ever-accelerating train.

It’s easy to tell from moment to moment what stage of its journey the train is in. Six boisterous minutes in, the train decelerates and arrives safely at the station.

Charles Ives: The Celestial Railroad (ca 1924) 

New England composer Charles Ives based his piano work The Celestial Railroad on the work of another New Englander: Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his short story of the same name.

In Hawthorne’s story, the narrator takes a train from the city of Destruction to the Celestial City. He begins talking with Mr. Smooth-It-Away, who is an expert on all things Celestial City, despite having never been there before. The story ends with Mr. Smooth-It-Away revealing his true form as a kind of demon. Luckily, in the end, it turns out to be a dream.

This work satirises the utopian and religious movements common in Hawethorne’s day, and Ives clearly enjoyed exploring the story’s themes in his own music.

When Ives wrote his fourth symphony, he adapted The Celestial Railroad into the symphony’s second movement.

Vladimir Deshevov: Rails (1926) 

There’s not a lot of information available online about composer Vladimir Deshevov besides the fact that he was born in 1889 and died in 1955.

However, this evocative fleeting portrait of a speeding train deserves a spot on this list, anyway!

Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Little Train of Caipira from Bachianas brasileiras No. 2 (1930) 

Translated into rough English, “Bachianas brasileiras” means “Bach-inspired Brazilian pieces.”

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a series of them, combining the European classical tradition with folk music influences from South America.

The finale of the second Bachiana Brasileira is called The Little Train of the Caipira. (A caipira is a person from a more rural area in Brazil.)

This piece follows the caipira’s journey through the countryside of Brazil. It’s up to listeners to decide what happens once the train decelerates and pulls into the station.

Benjamin Britten: Night Mail (1936) 

In 1935, British directors Harry Watt and Basil Wright created a twenty-minute documentary about the distribution of mail in Britain. It may have been an unassuming subject, but the work turned into a classic.

Poet and author W.H. Auden was involved with the production and wrote poetry for it. Meanwhile, his creative partner, composer Benjamin Britten, wrote the score.

The two men fused their efforts in this unusual spoken-word piece featuring both Auden’s poetry and Britten’s music.

Bohuslav Martinů: Le Train Hanté (1937) 

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů wrote Le Train hante, or The Haunted Train, in 1937 for that year’s World Exhibition in Paris.

The work isn’t about passenger trains but rather an amusement park train ride, which explains the music’s manic, fairground-like qualities.

Steve Reich: Different Trains (1988) 

Steve Reich’s Different Trains was inspired by the fact that, as a Jewish American boy born in 1936, Reich often took train rides across the country to see his relatives. Once he got older, he realised that if he’d been born in Europe at the same time, he might have been forced to ride a train to another destination: a concentration camp.

The work is scored for string quartet and tape. The tapes include interviews with Americans reminiscing about their train journeys and Europeans describing their experiences on trains during the Holocaust. The sounds of sirens, whistles, trains, and even a string quartet were also recorded and woven into the music.

Ian Clarke: The Great Train Race (1993) 

Composer Ian Clarke describes this train-inspired showstopper for flute-like so:

Techniques include residual/breathy fast tonguing, multiphonics, singing & playing, lip bending, explosive harmonics and an optional circular breathing section. A forward with explanations of the techniques is given along with fingerings in the score for easy reference. The multiphonics used are of the more friendly variety; seven from only four different fingerings.

It is astonishing to hear how a talented flutist can evoke an entire train with no other instruments present!

Conclusion

These fifteen pieces of classical music about trains have taken us on quite a musical journey. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. Mind the gap as you disembark onto the platform!

30 Best Classical Music Movies As Rated by Rotten Tomatoes

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

Looking for a movie about classical music to watch? You’re in luck! Today we’ve not only assembled a list of thirty movies about classical music, but we’ve also checked in with movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes to see which ones have gotten the best scores.

We’re sharing them in reverse countdown style order, starting with the worst-reviewed and working our way up to the best.

So, pop some popcorn and enjoy these thirty movies about classical music.

Paganini: The Devil’s Violinist (2013) – 13 reviews, 31% positive 

Have you ever been frustrated by actors in movies faking playing their musical instruments? Have you ever fantasized about how cool it would be if actual musicians could play musician characters?

Then this movie might be for you. In 2013, violinist David Garrett starred as nineteenth-century superstar Niccolò Paganini. The film traces his shocking gambling losses and his scandalous love life. Pro violinist David Garrett plays violin onscreen, but according to most critics, that wasn’t enough to save the film.

Rhapsody in Blue (1945) – 6 reviews, 33% positive

In 1937, composer George Gershwin died at the age of 38 from a brain tumor. A few years later Hollywood came calling, seeking to immortalize his life in film.

The first big tribute to him came in the form of the movie Rhapsody in Blue, which starred actor Robert Alda as George Gershwin.

The movie was a bizarre mishmash of real life and fiction. Weirdly, George’s sister was completely written out of the story of his life, and his love interests in the movie were not based on real women. Meanwhile, other friends like Al Jolson and Oscar Levant made cameos as themselves.

Critics complained that the film has too many musical performances in it. (But maybe that intrigues you!)

Unfaithfully Yours (1984) – 18 reviews, 33% positive 

Claude Eastman (played by Dudley Moore) is both a conductor and a composer. He has just married a much younger woman, and he harbors paranoia that she is going to cheat on him, so he hires a private detective to follow her.

The detective comes back with footage of Eastman’s wife with one of his orchestra’s playboy violinists. But is his wife really cheating, or is it all just some comic misunderstanding?

August Rush (2007) – 123 reviews, 37% positive

In this movie, a cellist studying at Juilliard gets pregnant after a one-night stand with a rock singer. She gets hit by a car, goes into a coma, and gives birth while unconscious. Her father has the boy put up for adoption but tells his daughter that he died.

As you can imagine, the boy turns into a musical savant. He and his mother embark on twin journeys to find each other. Will they finally reunite in dramatic fashion at a New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park? You’ll have to watch to find out!

Although critics were not fond of this movie, audiences loved it. There’s a huge discrepancy between the critics’ scores and the audiences’: 37% to 82%. So maybe it’s worth checking out after all!

Lisztomania (1975) – 11 reviews, 45% positive 

This is definitely the weirdest movie on this list. It’s very (very, very) loosely based on the life of composer and pianist Franz Liszt. It starts when Liszt and his mistress Marie d’Agoult are caught in flagrante by her husband. The two are punished by being nailed inside a piano that is then placed in the path of a speeding train. And that’s only the beginning.

All kinds of madness proceed to ensue. (The film ends with Liszt using a spaceship to destroy a Wagner-Hitler hybrid, just in case you were wondering.)

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2009) – 94 reviews, 52% positive 

This movie is based on the 2002 novel Coco and Igor by Chris Greenhalgh, which is an imagination of the potential affair between the two creative giants.

So, did Chanel and Stravinsky actually indulge in a dalliance? Some people think so; others don’t; there is apparently no concrete proof. But if it did happen, it probably looked something like this stylish evocation of 1920s Paris.

The Soloist (2009) – 207 reviews, 56% positive 

In 2005, real-life Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Lopez met a bass player with schizophrenia named Nathaniel Ayers, who was living on the streets of Los Angeles. Ayers attended Juilliard for two years but had to drop out due to his deteriorating mental health.

The movie explores what happened next: how a reader procures Ayers a cello, Ayers’ struggle to get into housing, and how the friendship impacts Lopez.

The two main characters are played by Robert Downey, Jr., and Jamie Foxx.

Humoresque (1946) – 8 reviews, 57% positive 

Humoresque is a delicious black and white melodrama. It charts the career of violinist Paul Boray (played by John Garfield), his love affair with his unhappily married patroness Helen Wright (played by Joan Crawford), and Boray’s erotically charged partnership with pianist Sid Jeffers (played by the ever-quippy Oscar Levant).

The film features some of the more convincing violin faking in cinema history, since violinist Isaac Stern’s hands were filmed in such a way to make it appear that John Garfield was actually playing.

One more fun fact: Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy for violin and orchestra was written for this movie!

Immortal Beloved (1994) – 56 reviews, 57% positive Play

After discovering some sensitive papers after Beethoven’s death, his secretary Anton Schindler attempts to ascertain the identity of a woman Beethoven labeled his “immortal beloved.”

He speaks to Beethoven’s piano student, Giulietta Giucciardi – then Anna-Marie Erdödy, a woman who Beethoven befriends after his deafness causes a concert he’s conducting to go disastrously – and, finally, Johanna Reiss, his brother’s wife, a woman who he claims to loathe, and who harbors a truly shocking secret.

Farinelli (1994) – 25 reviews, 60% positive

Farinelli is a biopic devoted to castrato singer Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi, better known by his stage name, Farinelli.

An important part of the movie is the relationship between Farinelli and his brother Riccardo. The two are involved together in various romantic escapades with various women.

The film also features cameos by real-life figures like Nicola Porpora and George Frederick Handel.

Music of the Heart (1999) – 91 reviews, 64% positive 

In Music of the Heart, Meryl Streep plays real-life school music teacher Roberta Guaspari, who starts teaching at a public school in Harlem. After ten years of building up the music program across multiple schools, funding is cut and Guaspari loses her job.

To save the program, Guaspari and the students decide to mount a benefit concert. However, shortly before the show, they lose their venue. Can classical music superstars like Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell save the day?

Mozart’s Sister (2010) – 63 reviews, 73% positive 

This movie is a fictionalized take on the life of Nannerl Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus’s older and musically talented sister.

While on tour, the Mozarts’ carriage breaks down and they are forced to stay at the abbey where the teenage Princess Louise of France lives.

With Louise’s introduction in-hand, the Mozarts go to Versailles. Nannerl tiptoes around a romance with a member of the French royal family. At the same time, she pushes back against her father, who doesn’t believe it is proper for her to compose or play the violin.

The Piano Teacher (2001) – 89 reviews, 73% positive

The Piano Teacher is a spicy – and violent – French movie.

The main character, Erika, is a fifty-something piano professor in Vienna who lives with her controlling elderly mother. She enters into a romantic relationship with a young engineer who is also studying music. He ultimately becomes her student.

A lot proceeds to happen in that relationship that is not particularly family friendly, so we won’t get into it here. But if you want to watch it, we’re certainly not going to stop you.

Impromptu (1991) – 19 reviews, 74% positive

If you’ve ever wondered what Chopin would be like if he was a Hugh Grant character, have we got the movie for you!

Impromptu is a sweet, charming, semi-historically accurate comedy recounting the story of the start of the romance between authoress George Sand (played by Judy Davis) and Frederic Chopin (played by Grant).

Opera-like misunderstandings develop when Franz Liszt (played by Julian Sands) and Countess Marie d’Agoult (played by Bernadette Peters) join the story.

The Red Violin (1998) – 42 reviews, 74% positive 

The Red Violin is more like a series of short films than one cohesive whole. It traces the history of a fictional violin made by a fictional luthier whose wife dies in childbirth.

Over the course of its life, the mysteriously red violin finds its way into the hands of a sickly child prodigy, a sexually voracious Paganini-like figure, and a music teacher caught up in the Cultural Revolution in China.

The framing device linking these stories together is the story of the violin being auctioned in the present day and investigated by an appraiser played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.

Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) – 28 reviews, 75% positive 

In Mr. Holland’s Opus, Richard Dreyfuss plays Glenn Holland, a music teacher who longs to write a symphony.

However, he’s distracted from composing by the demands of teaching high school students. He also becomes disconnected from his home life: when his son Cole is found to be deaf, he doesn’t put in the work to learn sign language, resulting in his wife becoming more-or-less a single parent.

What will happen when budget cuts threaten his job thirty years after Mr. Holland takes it? You’ll have to watch to find out.

A Late Quartet (2012) – 113 reviews, 77% positive 

A Late Quartet follows the members of the fictional Fugue String Quartet, which is reeling after their cellist Peter (played by Christopher Walken) is diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

The second violinist Robert and violist Juliette (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener) are a married couple, and tensions about their respective roles in the ensemble lead Robert to cheat on his wife.

Oh, and first violinist Daniel (played by Mark Ivanir) is in a relationship with Robert and Juliette’s daughter.

This movie charts all the messiness that follows. Roger Ebert observed, “It does one of the most interesting things any film can do. It shows how skilled professionals work.”

Chevalier (2023) – 162 reviews, 77% positive 

Chevalier is inspired by the real-life story of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a violinist, conductor, composer, swordsman, and ladies’ man who was a prominent figure in eighteenth-century Paris.

The movie follows the difficulties that Bologne faced due to his race (his mother had been an enslaved teenager). Several real-life storylines become brutally shocking.

The film also chronicles Bologne’s rebellious fighting spirit and his ability to adapt to new political circumstances at the dawn of the French Revolution. 

Grand Piano (2013) – 73 reviews, 79% positive 

The premise of this film is absolutely ludicrous, so make sure to suspend your disbelief. Once you do that, it’s a fun ride.

Elijah Wood plays a nervous pianist who is returning to the stage after a break due to debilitating stage fright. When the concert starts, he sees a note in his sheet music that reads “Play one wrong note and you DIE.” A red laser appears on him. (Behold the dangers of not memorizing the solo part!)

Increasingly unhinged hijinks ensue, including chases on catwalks over the stage and even the death of an usher.

Autumn Sonata (1978) – 32 reviews, 88% positive

In Autumn Sonata, Ingmar Bergman directs screen legend Ingrid Bergman in her final performance.

Ingrid Bergman plays a renowned aging pianist named Charlotte. Charlotte visits her daughters Eva and Helena. Eva has married a pastor and takes care of Helena, who has several debilitating disabilities. The film follows the three women as they reconnect and try to come to terms with their difficult past.

(By the way, keep Ingrid Bergman’s name in mind, because she appears in another film on this list…)

Hilary and Jackie (1998) – 58 reviews, 88% positive  

Hilary and Jackie tells the story of the real-life relationship (somewhat fictionalized for the sake of the movie) between Hilary du Pré and her cellist sister Jacqueline du Pré.

Jacqueline is fated to become one of the greatest musicians of the century, while Hilary is merely extremely accomplished.

The film examines the toll that great talent can take on a family, as well as the emotionally shattering aftermath of Jacqueline’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in her late twenties, which caused her astonishing career to be cut short just as it was getting started.

Note that the film included controversial details about Jacqueline’s relationship with Hilary’s husband and was criticized by some of her friends.

Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) – 237 reviews, 88% positive 

Meryl Streep plays the real-life socialite and singer Florence Foster Jenkins, who became a sensation in early twentieth-century New York for her terrible singing and her often-mystifying confidence in her abilities.

Hugh Grant stars as her manager and companion, who has been known to bribe reviewers into giving her positive press, while Cosmé McMoon (played by Simon Helberg, best known for his role as Howard from The Big Bang Theory) reluctantly signs on to be her accompanist.

Eventually a deluded Jenkins books Carnegie Hall and sells out the whole place. The movie explains how she became such a camp favorite and a strangely inspirational figure.

Amadeus (1984) – 154 reviews, 89% positive 

This might just be the most renowned movie about classical music ever made.

In the film’s opening, composer Antonio Salieri is committed to a mental institution after attempting suicide. He recalls to a priest how he once pledged faithfulness to God in exchange for musical talent. However, when Salieri meets the effortlessly talented Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and witnesses his obscene sense of humor in action, Salieri comes to believe that God has chosen to mock him by placing the talent that should rightfully be his in Mozart’s hands instead. He vows to destroy Mozart in whatever way he can.

It’s not historically accurate, but it’s inspired storytelling.

The Piano (1993) – 71 reviews, 90% positive 

In The Piano, a nineteenth-century Scotswoman named Ada McGrath (played by Holly Hunter) arrives in New Zealand to marry a frontiersman named Alisdair Stewart (played by Sam Neill). Ada brings along her precocious six-year-old daughter and a piano.

Ada is a mysterious woman. She has not spoken since childhood, preferring instead to communicate by playing piano. She also refuses intimacy with Stewart, who refuses to retrieve Ada’s heavy piano from the beach or to make any effort at all to understand his new wife’s desires.

Stewart’s neighbor, George Baines, eventually transports the piano from the beach, using Ada’s passion for the instrument as a tool to seduce her. Eventually Ada develops feelings for him. The film deals with the messy fallout from their relationship and her overwhelming love for her piano and music.

Shine (1996) – 44 reviews, 91% positive 

In Shine, a musical Australian boy named David Helfgott struggles under the pressures of his abusive teacher father Peter. Peter forbids his son from studying in America.

David gets a little older and befriends a novelist named Katharine. He’s offered another opportunity to study out of the country, this time in London. With the encouragement of Katharine, he finds the strength to leave, but Peter makes it clear to his son that if he goes, he will not be welcome at home again.

After leaving home, David’s mental health deteriorates dramatically, and he will have to endure intense struggles to stay in music.

Shine is based on a real-life story.

Tár (2022) – 348 reviews, 91% 

In Tár, Cate Blanchett doesn’t just play the eponymous title character, conductor Lydia Tár; she embodies her.

Lydia Tár is the first woman conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and preparing to make a landmark live recording of Mahler’s fifth symphony.

However, her relentless march into the pantheon of great conductors is interrupted when an estranged former protege dies by suicide, opening the door to an investigation of Tár’s abuses of power and privilege.

Will she be able to escape accountability? And what exactly does accountability even mean in an art form that has historically harbored and celebrated manipulators and abusers of all kinds?

Fantasia (1940) – 58 reviews – 95% positive 

Fantasia is a “musical anthology” film, featuring eight segments of classic Disney animation set to classical music performed by conductor Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The film includes such legendary animations as the seasons changing to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; a comic ballet danced by cartoon ostriches; and Mickey Mouse attending to his duties as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, to the work by Paul Dukas of the same name.

Fantasia’s soundtrack was recorded with innovative new recording methods that necessitated 33 microphones. Over 42 days of recording, 483,000 feet of film were used!

The Pianist (2002) – 189 reviews, 95% positive Play

The Pianist tells the story of Jewish Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman. As the title suggests, Szpilman is a young and very promising pianist. He is playing a recital on the radio when war breaks out.

In 1940, after the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, he and his family are sent to the Warsaw Ghetto, where many people die of illness, starvation, and violence in horrific conditions.

Szpilman is forced to embark on a harrowing journey to do whatever he can to resist and survive.

An American in Paris (1951) – 101 reviews, 95% positive 

An American In Paris is one of the great classic Hollywood musicals.

Dancer Gene Kelly stars as an artist named Jerry trying to make it in postwar Paris.

His best friend is Adam, a sardonic pianist played by Oscar Levant.

Adam has a singer colleague named Henri (played by Georges Guétary), who is engaged to Lise (played by Leslie Caron).

To top it all off, the elegant Nina Foch plays an heiress who is taken by Jerry’s art…or maybe just Jerry himself!

The plot, however, is secondary to the soundtrack, which consists of the greatest hits by George Gershwin. Its centerpiece is a dazzling seventeen-minute fantasy ballet set to – you guessed it – An American In Paris. It’s unforgettable.

Intermezzo (1939) – 11 reviews – 100% positive 

Remember that we mentioned to keep Ingrid Bergman’s name in mind? That’s because she’s the star of the number-one-rated classical music movie, Intermezzo, which also happens to be the first film that Ingrid Bergman shot in America.

Leslie Howard stars as a famous violin soloist named Holger Brandt who invites his daughter’s piano teacher (played by Bergman) to accompany him on his next tour. During the tour, the two fall madly in love. Will their love last, or will Brandt return to his family?

Conclusion

We’re coming up on a hundred years of films about classical music and classical musicians, and as Chevalier and Tár demonstrate, it seems likely that directors, screenwriters, and actors will continue to be inspired by the world of classical music in the years to come!