The concert hall

Songs > Classical and film holds music from Bach to Stravinsky. Some demos are a whole piece or a whole movement, others its opening or its best-known tune. In the orchestral demos each instrument of the score plays on its own channel, with its own sound, so you can follow one part, mute it, or open it in the piano roll. The notes about each demo say what was left out, or moved to another octave, when a piece had to be shortened.

Baroque

Canon in D, by Johann Pachelbel: three violins play the same line, each two bars behind the last, over a bass of eight notes that repeats from start to end, a ground bass.
Air on the G String, by Bach: long held notes in the first violin, each breaking into quick figures, over a bass in steady octave leaps that walks down the D major scale.
Prelude in C, by Bach, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, played as a hip hop beat in Hip hop and lo-fi: no tune at all, one chord to a bar, broken into the same rising figure, and each chord changing as few notes as it can. From bar 5 the chords lead to G major, the dominant, which bar 11 reaches with D7 to G: a modulation.
Hallelujah Chorus, from Handel’s Messiah.

The piano

Für Elise, by Beethoven, the whole rondo: the theme rocks between E and D♯, the leading tone of A minor; the stormy second episode reaches B♭ major, the Neapolitan chord of A minor (see Chords from outside the key).
Moonlight Sonata, the opening of the Adagio, in C♯ minor: D major, the Neapolitan chord again, comes in the third bar.
Funeral March, from Chopin’s second sonata: one note, again and again, over a bass rocking between two bare fifths, with no third.

The orchestra

Demo	Listen for
The Blue Danube, Johann Strauss II	the waltz climbs the D major chord, then the same shape over the A7 chord, the dominant
In the Hall of the Mountain King, Grieg	the trolls creeping up the B minor scale over a bass on B, faster and faster: watch the tempo strip of the playlist
Danse macabre, Saint-Saëns	Death tuning his fiddle to a tritone, A against E♭
New World Largo, Dvořák	the cor anglais tune, all major pentatonic, like a spiritual
Dies irae, from Mozart’s Requiem	D minor in bare octaves; then new keys, each reached through a diminished seventh chord
Jupiter Hymn, Holst	every line starts on IV, not I
Himno Nacional Argentino	a verse that turns to B♭ minor and reaches F through diminished sevenths and a German sixth

Ravel’s Boléro

Boléro (1928) is one long crescendo, a quarter of an hour of it. The snare drum plays the same two bars from the first bar to the last, while two tunes pass from instrument to instrument, each time a little louder and fuller. The demo plays the whole piece with the instruments of Ravel’s score, which the mixer sets out in sections, as a score does:

The mixer of the demo Boléro: the Woodwinds section, Piccolo, Lead (a flute), Oboe, English Horn, Clarinet, Soprano Sax, Tenor Sax and Bassoon, then the Brass section, French Horn, Trumpet, Muted Trumpet and Trombone, each channel with its own instrument

The first tune stays in C major. The second is in C Mixolydian, C major with a B♭, and borrows D♭, A♭ and E♭ from the Phrygian mode on C.
Listen for Ravel’s mixed colours: a horn plays the tune with the celesta and two piccolos above it, on the notes of the horn’s own overtones, so that they blend like the stops of an organ.
In the last statement the music leaves C for the first time: eight bars in E major, a jolt, then back to C and the final crash.

Debussy and Stravinsky

Early in the 20th century, composers left the major and minor keys behind, and the chord sheet’s other views come into their own (see Beyond keys).

La Mer, by Debussy, the opening of From Dawn to Noon on the Sea: no chords in the usual sense, only a held B in the bass and, above it, notes of a pentatonic scale, B, C♯, F♯ and G♯. The chord sheet hears G♯m7 over B in B, F♯ and G♯, and its Pitch-class sets view calls them 3-7.
The Rite of Spring, by Stravinsky. In The Augurs of Spring the strings hammer a polychord, E♭7 over F♭ major, written Eb7|Fb (see Chords and their names), while eight horns accent it where no beat leads the ear to expect it. In the Ritual of Abduction the meter changes all the time, 9/8, 6/8, 7/8, 3/4, 2/4, and most notes come from the octatonic scale, half step and whole step in turn.
Petrushka, by Stravinsky, in five demos from the four tableaux of the ballet: Russian folk tunes in the modes over drones, and Petrushka’s own chord, C major and F♯ major at once, two triads a tritone apart that share no note.

Mussorgsky’s Promenade, from Pictures at an Exhibition, and the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, a waltz in five, are in Odd meters and the Balkans.