how do professionals refer to specific, but unnamed classical pieces?

Question

i’m listening to a banger classical music playlist right now and once again i’m confronted with the question: how do i refer to them to others? how do i even look them up on youtube? for example, i love a piece by vivaldi that i believe is fairly popular. spotify and youtube list it as “Violin Concerto in G Minor, RV 315 “L’estate””. that’s not exactly catchy, and just looking for “vivaldi g minor” brings up a ton of stuff on YouTube. it’s no different with all the other big boys – bach, mozart, brahms… do people who regularly have to do with classical music actually memorise those absurd strings of seemingly random numbers? if i want to tell someone i love a piece by Bach, do i say “check out Bach’s 1st Prelude in C Major, BWV 846!”? that can’t be right, can it?

In: Other

Answer 1

Luckily, things started to get much easier from the Classical period. Mozart’s works, for example, are often referred to by the Kochel number, K576, K545, etc. Schubert’s works also have corresponding D numbers, although they aren’t used as often. If one is serious about classical music, mentioning the K number for Mozart’s works is enough.

In the Romantic period, most composers wrote program music, ie. music with “themes/programs”, so you just say “Years of Pilgrimage – 1st year”, “Dante Symphony” and people will know you’re referring to Liszt’s music.

For violin concertos, piano concertos, etc. , it’s still No. 1 in A major, No. 2 in D minor., but then composers didn’t write that many concertos (obviously because of the complexity). Interestingly, most of the “big boys” only wrote one or two famous concertos for each instrument:

Chopin: 2 piano concertos
Liszt: 2 piano concertos
Brahms: 1 violin concerto, 2 piano concertos
Tchaikovsky: 1 violin concerto, 1 piano concerto (plus 2 more I’ve never heard anyone likes)
…

The list goes on and of course it’s not exhaustive (there are other concerto-like works written by the above composers). My point is when you refer to music after the Baroque period, you can talk more like a normal person: “Hey, did you listen to that guy play Brahms’ violin concerto? It was horrible!” “Chopin’s piano concerto no.1 is sooo much better than his second.”