This is going to be a weirdly long post. I recently did a 30-day music challenge on my Facebook/Instagram stories. I’ve never posted this extensively to my stories on any social media platform so I’m pretty darn proud of myself. I also got a lot of feedback about my music choice.

All of the feedback makes me feel a lot of feelings.

Anyway, I’ve compiled a list of all 30 (actually 32, since I included an extra piece on day 8 and subbed out Rautavaara for Haas) pieces that I featured below. I may do more in-depth essays on a couple of these later.

You’ll notice there’s a lot of Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel. I wholly expected there to be more Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and Mozart but the evocative prompts like “A song that reminds you of summer”, “A song about drugs or alcohol” made big, brassy Romantic compositions an easy target.

For your listening convenience I’ve included a Spotify playlist of all the pieces I’ve featured near the footer. Unfortunately Spotify truncates the playlist to 100 songs 🤭 and only offers 30-second previews. For the best experience, access the full playlist here. For multi-movement pieces (symphonies, chamber music, etc.) I’ve included the entire work although I only chose to highlighted certain movements in my 30-day challenge.

Pieces that are not nominally multi-movement but consist of collections of pieces (Trois chansons, Klavierstücke, etc.), I’ve split the difference and included a subset (up to the full collection) that I think make the most sense and would be reasonable to enjoy as a single artistic statement.

Without further ado:

30-day song challenge

• Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin
• Trois beaux oiseaux du paradis (“Three birds of paradise”), Maurice Ravel
• Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Samuel Barber
• Serenade for string orchestra, Op.9, Josef Suk
• La Valse, Maurice Ravel
• Saltarello, Anonymous
• Pulcinella, Igor Stravinsky
• Symphonie fantastique, Hector Berlioz
• (Feste romane, Ottorino Respighi)
• Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44, Sergei Rachmaninoff
• Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, Johannes Brahms
• Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, Edvard Grieg
• Concerto Grosso No. 1, Alfred Schnittke
• Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60, Johannes Brahms
• Sinfonia, Luciano Berio
• Lincolnshire Posy, Percy Grainger
• Cello Sonata in D minor, Op. 40, Dmitri Shostakovich
• Piano Concerto No. 3 “Gift of Dreams”, Einojuhani Rautavaara
• (String Quartet No. 2, Georg Friedrich Haas)
• Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”), Gustav Mahler
• 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118, Johannes Brahms
• Don Quixote, Op. 35, Richard Strauss
• Piano Concerto in F major, Gian Carlo Menotti
• Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Sergei Rachmaninoff
• Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, Johannes Brahms
• Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, Edward Elgar
• Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 101, Johannes Brahms
• Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, Sergei Rachmaninoff
• Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs), Richard Strauss
• Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98, Johannes Brahms
• Polotvsian Dances from Prince Igor, Alexander Borodin