I post so many pop ditties that you may think that is the only type of tune I like. Not so.
Here is one of my favorites that I listen to often: Korngold's Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra.
Some parts of this piece are so beautiful they overwhelm me emotionally and tears fill my eyes. I often wonder what heights of human achievement European civilization could have attained if it had not destroyed itself in incomprehensibly horrific wars. Maybe some of the anguish of the European soul slaying itself is expressed in the best of its music, like no other in the world, superior to anything any other civilization has ever produced or probably ever will. And, of course, Korngold is a minor composer in the vast pantheon of European and European-diaspora genius. Minor? One could only dream of being so minor.
Much of the concerto is derived from Korngold's compositions for movies, the then-new venue for orchestral music. So audiences in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, enjoyed and were moved by the melodies from Korngold's mind.
From a contemporary time, another one of my favorite musical pieces from a somewhat similar popular venue -- Broadway musicals -- that I do very much like is the original version of "All the Things You Are" from Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical Very Warm for May.
What a civilization we once had! What a culture! I can only appreciate the trailing stardust as it vanishes into the ever-receding past. Will there ever be such as we had ever again? Why did we let it go?
And these two pieces are bagatelles when compared to the towering geniuses of musical composition Western civilization produced. But what bagatelles!
