The Most Famous Classical Music Pieces

"Famous" and "beginner-friendly" overlap a lot, but they're not identical. This list is organized by era rather than by ease of listening, as a reference to the works most likely to come up in conversation, on screen, at a wedding, or on a concert program - with a line or two on what each piece actually is and how it got so well known. For a shorter, listening-order starter list, see best pieces for beginners instead.

Many of these pieces are better known by a nickname or a single excerpt than by their full title, so the nickname comes first where that's how most people would search for it.

Baroque (c. 1600 – 1750)

Canon in D - Johann Pachelbel. Written for three violins over a bass line that repeats the same eight notes again and again. Largely forgotten for centuries, it was revived by a 1968 recording and has been a wedding favorite ever since - few pieces have been rearranged more often.
The Four Seasons - Vivaldi. Four violin concertos, published in 1725, each depicting a season - birdsong in "Spring," a summer storm, chattering teeth in "Winter." One of the most recorded works in the Baroque repertoire.
Brandenburg Concertos - Bach. Six concertos presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721, each for a different combination of solo instruments - a showcase of everything the Baroque ensemble could do.
Air on the G String - Bach. The slow "Air" from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3, nicknamed after an 1871 arrangement that let a violinist play the whole melody on a single string.
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - attributed to Bach. The organ piece that became shorthand for horror-movie menace, and the opening of Disney's Fantasia (1940). Scholars still debate whether Bach actually wrote it.
Cello Suite No. 1 - Bach. Its rippling Prelude is one of the most recognizable pieces ever written for a solo instrument, and a staple of film soundtracks and advertising.
Messiah - Handel. An English-language oratorio first performed in Dublin in 1742. Its "Hallelujah" chorus is the most famous choral movement in the repertoire, and audiences still traditionally stand for it.
Water Music - Handel. Suites written to accompany King George I on a barge trip along the River Thames in 1717 - outdoor party music that never went out of fashion.

Classical (c. 1750 – 1820)

Eine kleine Nachtmusik - Mozart. "A little night music": a serenade for strings from 1787, with one of the most recognizable openings in all of classical music.
Symphony No. 40 - Mozart. One of only two symphonies Mozart wrote in a minor key, with a restless, instantly familiar opening theme.
"Queen of the Night" aria - Mozart. From the opera The Magic Flute (1791) - a vengeful showpiece that climbs to some of the highest notes in the operatic repertoire.
Requiem - Mozart. Left unfinished when Mozart died in 1791 and completed by his student; the "Lacrimosa" and "Dies irae" are its best-known movements. Our requiem page covers the form.
"Rondo alla Turca" - Mozart. The lively finale of his Piano Sonata No. 11, imitating the sound of Turkish military bands that fascinated Vienna at the time.
"Surprise" Symphony (No. 94) - Haydn. Nicknamed for the sudden loud chord that interrupts its gentle slow movement.
Für Elise - Beethoven. A short piano piece that wasn't published until 1867, 40 years after Beethoven's death - nobody is entirely sure who "Elise" was. It's now one of the first "real" pieces many piano students learn.
"Moonlight" Sonata - Beethoven. Piano Sonata No. 14 (1801). The nickname came from a critic after Beethoven's death, who compared its hushed first movement to moonlight on a lake.
Symphony No. 5 - Beethoven. Four notes - da-da-da-dum - that might be the most famous opening in music, expanded into an entire symphony that moves from struggle to triumph.
Symphony No. 9, "Ode to Joy" - Beethoven. Premiered in 1824, with a choral finale setting Schiller's poem - a melody now used as the anthem of the European Union.

Romantic (c. 1820 – 1890)

William Tell Overture - Gioachino Rossini. The overture to his 1829 opera; its galloping finale became famous all over again as the theme of The Lone Ranger.
Ave Maria - Schubert. Originally a song from 1825 setting lines from Walter Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake, now sung everywhere to the Latin prayer text.
Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2 - Chopin. The most famous of Chopin's nocturnes: an intimate, singing melody for solo piano.
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 - Liszt. A dazzling piano showpiece that generations of viewers know from classic cartoons. See our page on the rhapsody.
Wedding March - Felix Mendelssohn. From his 1842 music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It became the standard recessional after Queen Victoria's eldest daughter chose it for her wedding in 1858.
"Here Comes the Bride" - Wagner. The Bridal Chorus from his opera Lohengrin (1850) - so the classic wedding pairs Wagner on the way in with Mendelssohn on the way out.
Ride of the Valkyries - Wagner. From Die Walküre, the second opera of his Ring cycle; unforgettable in the helicopter attack scene of Apocalypse Now.
Orpheus in the Underworld "Can-can" - Jacques Offenbach. The "Infernal Galop" from his 1858 operetta, forever linked with high-kicking Paris dance halls.
La traviata and Rigoletto - Verdi. The drinking song "Libiamo" (La traviata) and "La donna è mobile" (Rigoletto) are two of the most widely known tunes in all of opera.
The Blue Danube - Johann Strauss II. The most famous Viennese waltz of all, first performed in 1867 - and a century later, the soundtrack to spacecraft drifting through 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Carmen - Georges Bizet. His 1875 opera produced two of the most famous tunes in music: the sultry "Habanera" and the "Toreador Song."
In the Hall of the Mountain King - Edvard Grieg. From his music for Ibsen's play Peer Gynt (1876): a tiptoeing theme that speeds up and grows louder until it explodes.
Swan Lake and The Nutcracker - Tchaikovsky. Two of the most performed ballets in the world; The Nutcracker in particular has become a Christmas institution.
1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky. A musical retelling of Russia's defeat of Napoleon, famous for its finale scored for real cannon fire.
Lullaby - Brahms. His 1868 cradle song, so well known it's simply called "Brahms' Lullaby" - played in nurseries and music boxes the world over.
The Carnival of the Animals - Camille Saint-Saëns. A comic suite of musical animal portraits from 1886. He refused to let most of it be published in his lifetime - except "The Swan," now a cellist's signature piece.
Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" - Dvořák. Written in America and premiered in New York in 1893; its slow movement's English horn melody is one of the best-loved tunes in the orchestral repertoire.

Late Romantic & 20th century (c. 1890 – 1945)

La bohème and "Nessun dorma" - Puccini. La bohème (1896) is one of the most performed operas anywhere; "Nessun dorma" from Turandot became a worldwide hit after Luciano Pavarotti's recording was used for TV coverage of the 1990 World Cup.
Flight of the Bumblebee - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. A short burst of buzzing, nonstop fast notes from his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, now a favorite showpiece for almost every instrument.
Gymnopédie No. 1 - Erik Satie. A slow, dreamy piano piece from 1888 that sounds decades ahead of its time - an ancestor of today's ambient music.
Clair de Lune - Debussy. "Moonlight": the third movement of his Suite bergamasque for piano, and the most famous piece of musical Impressionism.
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 - Edward Elgar. Written in 1901. Its broad middle tune is sung in Britain as "Land of Hope and Glory" and played at almost every graduation ceremony in the United States.
Piano Concerto No. 2 - Rachmaninoff. Sweeping, lush, and endlessly borrowed by film and pop songs - and written in 1901 after a long creative crisis.
The Rite of Spring - Stravinsky. The ballet whose violent rhythms and dissonance caused a near-riot at its 1913 Paris premiere - and changed the course of 20th-century music.
The Planets - Gustav Holst. An orchestral suite of seven movements, one per planet; the menacing "Mars" and grand "Jupiter" are the blueprint for a great deal of later film music.
Rhapsody in Blue - George Gershwin. Classical form meets jazz in this 1924 work for piano and band, which opens with a famous clarinet glissando swooping up more than two octaves.
Boléro - Ravel. One melody, one snare-drum rhythm, and a single 15-minute crescendo across the whole orchestra.
Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev. A 1936 musical story for children, with each character played by a different instrument - many people's first introduction to the orchestra.
Adagio for Strings - Samuel Barber. A slow, aching piece for string orchestra, broadcast on the radio when President Franklin D. Roosevelt's death was announced in 1945 and a piece for moments of public mourning ever since.
"O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana - Carl Orff. The thundering opening chorus of his 1937 cantata, ubiquitous in movie trailers and sports broadcasts.

Contemporary (1945 – present)

Star Wars, Jaws, and Schindler's List - John Williams. The most famous film scores by the best-known living composer; the two-note shark motif from Jaws might be the most effective use of two notes in movie history.
Spiegel im Spiegel - Arvo Pärt. "Mirror in the mirror": a quiet, slowly unfolding piece from 1978 for piano and violin (or cello), and one of the most widely heard works of the late 20th century.
Glassworks - Philip Glass. His 1982 album, written to make minimalism approachable for home listening - and a good place to start with the style.

Why these pieces, and not others?

Any list like this is partly a list of accidents. Some pieces are famous because they're masterpieces, but many got their biggest boost from somewhere outside the concert hall - a cartoon, a movie scene, a royal wedding, a sports broadcast. That's not a knock against them: it's how most people meet classical music for the first time. If one of these pieces grabs you, follow the link to its composer, and try something else they wrote; the famous piece is usually just the front door.

Browse the full Eras and Composers sections for everything that surrounds these highlights, or see the timeline of classical music history to place them in order.