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

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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?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Yeah, that’s how you refer to these old pieces. Some of them have colloquial nicknames or subtitles like “Emperor” (Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 in E Flat Major Op73), or Vivaldi’s “L’estate” (Concerto No. 2 in G minor Op. 8, RV 315 “Summer”) but most don’t.

So, yeah. You just have to memorize the full names of pieces if you want to refer to them.

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