Classical California Hits the Books: A Back-to-School Playlist

Do you have little ones, teens, or college kids headed back to school soon? We’ve created a playlist to help kids hit the books, easing the transition from the halcyon days of summer to chillier ones spent studying inside. This list includes music for brainpower, music that musicians themselves study to improve their technique, and music that provides the soundtrack for school events.

1. J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier

Johann Sebastian Bach created The Well-Tempered Clavier as a set of exercises for budding keyboardists, specifically his own sons. Through his student, Heinrich Gerber, we know that Bach assigned a specific course of study to his pupils: his own Sinfonias and Inventions, followed by some suites, and then The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Well-Tempered Clavier contains preludes and fugues in each of the 12 major and 12 minor keys, inspiring scores of other composers to match this feat. To this day, it remains a benchmark for keyboard players.

No better music than Bach for Bach to School! (I’ll see myself out.)

2. Mozart: Overture to Don Giovanni

Have you ever heard of the “Mozart effect”? According to a 1993 study published in Nature, listening to Mozart boosted participants’ scores on the spatial intelligence portion of the IQ test. So, maybe listening to Mozart can make you smarter after all!

But here’s some good news for all you last-minute crammers out there: did you know that Mozart himself was a terrible procrastinator? In the case of his famous opera Don Giovanni, Mozart didn’t write the overture until the very last minute, having been out at a party the night before the premiere. His wife Costanza helped keep him awake until he could finish it, finally submitting the score at 7 o’clock the next morning.

Here’s the overture to Don Giovanni: the anthem of procrastinators everywhere?

3. Chopin: Etudes

Another landmark series of pieces for pianists-in-training, Chopin’s Etudes are some of the most musically compelling and difficult pieces in the piano repertoire.

Kate Liu makes the “Black Key” Etude look easy in this brilliant performance from the 2015 Chopin Competition:

4. Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1

Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, the de facto graduation march for high schools and colleges everywhere, was first played at a school graduation on June 28, 1905 at Yale, where Elgar had been invited to receive an honorary doctorate.

Enjoy this explosive performance from the BBC Proms, featuring the entire audience belting out the piece’s signature theme, “Land of Hope and Glory”:

5. Brahms: Academic Festival Overture

Premiered in 1881, Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture marks the occasion of his award of an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław in Wrocław, Poland). The University was undoubtedly expecting a stately, ceremonial graduation anthem, but instead Brahms put together a collage of popular drinking songs, much to his hosts’ chagrin.

This parade of the greatest beer-hall hits of the 1870s included these recognizable bangers: “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus” (“We Have Built a Stately House”), stated in the trumpets; “Der Landesvater” (“Father of Our Country”), which is taken up by the strings; “Was kommt dort von der Höh’? ” (“What Comes from Afar?”)—apparently a freshman orientation favorite—carried by the bassoons; and the rousing finale, “Gaudeamus igitur” (“Let Us Rejoice, Therefore”).

The first of these themes, “Wir hatten gebauet,” was so notorious as a student protest song advocating for the unification of Germany that its public performance was still banned in some areas. As a result, the Viennese premiere of the piece was delayed by police for two weeks.