Who's your favorite composers?

We love Dvorak, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Schumann, Schubert and Bach are favourites in this household.

We enjoy the following CDs

Dvorak: The Symphonies

Brahms: The Symphonies

Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos

Rossini Overtures

Bach: Conertos

Schumann Complete Piano

Schubert Music for Violin and Piano

We like loads of others as well, and also opera and operetta – we are big classical music fans.

Lots of great ones already mentioned. I also highly recommend Aaron Copland for a contemporary American composer. Chopin has some beautiful music as do Brahms and Schubert. Scott Joplin for ragtime, John Philip Sousa for marches, Tchaikovsky at Christmas for The Nutcracker, or Handel for The Messiah. Or for fun study Rodgers and Hammerstein and learn about musicals like The Sound of Music.

My students, when I taught music, loved the book Lives of the Musicians. My DD has enjoyed it very much this year, and she saw a woman in the book. She asked to study her next, so when we finish Mozart we are going to study Clara Schumann. Perhaps your children could have a say in who they would like to study.

Here is a list of the most common ones.

http://www.classicsforkids.com/composers/composers_atoz.asp

Alicia

I have too many! LOL Definitely Dvorak, Brahms, J.S. Bach, Shostakovich (the finale of his 5th Symphony, Festive Overture, the jazz suites, and his arrangement of Tea for Two are great choices). 

For American composers, definitely Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, and Samuel Barber.

I have a ton of others, but not something that would grab the attention of kids so much. 😛

We just finished Chopin and my DD7 really enjoys his music. We have a digital piano and it has several Chopin pieces pre recorded. She plays the pieces every day and makes her own dances up to it :). I also enjoy Chopin but my altime favorite is Mozart.