You Know More Classical Music Than You Think

You probably know Beethoven’s Fifth.

Maybe not by name. Maybe not by composer. But if someone tapped out da da da dum, chances are you would recognize it instantly.

Those four notes have appeared everywhere. They’ve been referenced in cartoons, television shows, movies, and commercials for decades. They’ve turned up on The Simpsons, South Park, and countless other shows. They even inspired the disco hit A Fifth of Beethoven, which appeared in Saturday Night Fever. Long before most people ever attend a symphony concert, they’ve already heard Beethoven.

And Beethoven’s Fifth is far from the only classical piece that has quietly become part of everyday life.

One of the surprising things about attending an orchestra concert is discovering how much of the music already feels familiar.

Take Mozart. Even if you couldn’t name a single Mozart concerto, you’ve almost certainly heard his music. It appears in films, television shows, advertisements, and cartoons so often that his sound has become shorthand for classical music itself. For many people, their first encounter with Mozart wasn’t in a concert hall at all. It was through a movie, a commercial, or a scene on television.

Sometimes the connection is even more direct. This season’s Symphonic Sessions series includes Elgar’s Enigma Variations, home to one of the most recognizable pieces of music you’ve probably never learned the name of. The variation known as Nimrod is heard regularly at remembrance ceremonies, national commemorations, and major public tributes around the world. Many listeners recognize it within seconds, even if they don’t know what it’s called.

Other pieces may sound familiar for a different reason.

You may not have heard Dvořák’s Cello Concerto before, but you’ve almost certainly heard music influenced by it. Dvořák’s sweeping melodies and rich orchestral writing helped shape the sound of generations of film composers. The emotional language we associate with movie scores today owes a great deal to composers like him.

The same is true of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Its soaring melodies feel remarkably modern because the musical vocabulary it helped establish still appears in film music today. Long before Hollywood existed, composers like Mendelssohn already knew how to create anticipation, excitement, romance, and wonder through music alone.

Then there’s Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, featured in the season finale of the BMO Masterworks series. Even if you’ve never heard the title before, parts of the piece may sound surprisingly familiar. Its grand finale, The Great Gate of Kyiv, has appeared in documentaries, broadcasts, trailers, and popular recordings for decades. The music has a cinematic scale that feels immediately recognizable to modern audiences.

And then there is Bruckner.

This season, audiences will hear Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, sometimes called the “Romantic.” If you’ve never heard Bruckner before, you might be surprised by how familiar the experience feels. Massive brass sections. Towering climaxes. Long stretches of suspense followed by enormous releases of sound.

In some ways, Bruckner sounds less like what people imagine classical music to be and more like the ancestor of today’s epic film scores. If you love the sweeping scale of fantasy films, historical epics, or blockbuster soundtracks, you’re already hearing the influence of composers like Bruckner.

Classical music has a reputation for being unfamiliar, but the opposite is often true.

Much of the music we hear in movies, television shows, video games, and popular culture traces its roots back to composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Elgar, Mussorgsky, and Bruckner. They figured out how to create suspense, joy, triumph, heartbreak, and excitement long before anyone added music to a film.

That’s why their work continues to resonate. The emotions still feel immediate. The stories still connect. And the sounds continue to shape the music we hear every day.

So, if you’re worried that you don’t know enough about classical music, here’s a secret:

You probably know more than you think.

The surprise isn’t that you’ve heard Beethoven’s Fifth before.

The surprise is realizing how long this music has already been part of your life.