Cocktail Party Fact: Ralph Vaughan Williams found the theme for his Tallis Fantasia while editing The English Hymnal; but despite the music’s source, and its conversion-experience sound, Vaughan Williams himself was not a religious man. He called himself a “Christian agnostic.”
Commitment Factor: About 15 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Early Modern period.
What to Listen For: At the first [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Igor Stravinsky composed this great ballet score during a break from his labors on Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). Petrouchka started life as a concert piece for piano and orchestra, which can still be heard in the “Petrouchka’s Room” tableau.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic/Early Modern [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: In the months after undergoing surgery for a throat tumor, plagued with financial difficulties and filled with anxiety over his country’s political future, Jean Sibelius composed this famously gloomy symphony .
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic/Early Modern Period. A symphony in the traditional four movements.
What to Listen For: The [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Music Critic and Composer Virgil Thomson called this most popular of  Sibelius’ symphonies “hopelessly provincial.”
Commitment Factor: About 40 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic/Early Modern Period (1902). A four-movement symphony with the last two movements attached, taking a cue from Beethoven’s Fifth.
What to Listen For: The first movement is a very interesting piece in [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Maurice Ravel is said to have been influenced by George Gershwin in this piece. While that might be open to debate, Ravel’s affection for Gershwin’s music was undeniable: when Gershwin approached him for composition lessons, he refused, explaining that he didn’t want to risk turning a first-rate Gershwin into a second-rate Ravel.
Commitment [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: When Maurice Ravel played the piano score of La valse for Diaghilev, the great impresario’s judgment failed him for once. He rejected the music, and Ravel had to wait a decade to see it performed as a ballet.
Commitment Factor: About 15 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic/Early Modern Period. A symphonic poem for [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The theme of the slow movement became a pop song set to the words: “and I’m never gonna love again.”
Commitment Factor: About 60 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic/Early Modern Period (1908). A lush, four-movement symphony with the scherzo (joke) placed second. There’s also a “motto” theme that recurs in every movement.
What to Listen [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The “faun” in Stephane Mallarme’s poem “The Afternoon of a Faun” is not Bambi but a creature from Roman mythology, half man and half goat, that lives in the woods and spends its time making love to girl fauns, called “nymphs.” Mallarme’s poem, a dream of lazy summertime lust, inspired Claude Debussy [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: If you love big, splashy, cinema Bible epics with muscle-bound hunks and big-chested women (with names like “Jezebel” and “Delilah”), then you’ll love this. Here is the source music for all of those luscious, oriental-sounding soundtracks–only it predates them by several decades.
Commitment Factor: About 22 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic/Early Modern Period (1916). [...]