What is the Most Epic Orchestral Music

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Posted 2021-03-03 by T. A. Rose ⇒ follow

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There are amazing orchestral pieces in the vast and old world of classical music. But I'll expand this question to make it more universal by asking for movies with epic orchestral music on top of all the best and most epic solo orchestra pieces.

I would include pieces such as Bedrich Smetana's The Moldau - a deep and stirring example to illustrate an epic, with a staggering 15 million views for less than fifteen minutes of music, this is as popular as it is epic. I don't know what it is about this piece, yet even just a minute or two convinced me of its popularity. I've added it as it epitomised what I wanted to see in an epic or stirring piece of orchestral music, plus it had the listeners.

There are too many good epics, in fact, so feel free to share a good movie soundtrack orchestral piece or score or share a classical orchestral masterpiece, or share more modern orchestral works if you have found something less heralded but just as epic. Any epic music can be included but preferably orchestral. Concertos and Opera music may seem like they are pushing the scope of the question, but if you can name something really melodic or rich then I don't see why such pieces/scores can't be an answer as well.

For more ideas, this has the best orchestral film scores ranked and explained fairly nicely at udiscovermusic.com , mentioning Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Batman to name a few.

Despite both music-listening and movie-watching being pastimes, I'm more a buff of classical music than the movies, so here are a few more ideas for epic music:

This piece by Russian Romantic Era composer Tchaikovsky has the bulk of the views I like to see in a popular epic but is also fairly interesting to listen to in full, and, somehow due to use in several TV commercials , some of its melodies are inescapable, but for clarification, it's called the 1812 overture - with 36 million YouTube views. But the full piece is well worth its views with many less familiar but still melodic sections.

At 28 million YouTube views, the amazing thing about Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 , is despite it being less of a household name compared to his Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 9 was mind-bogglingly composed when he was almost deaf according to The Guardian , hence at least an epic story behind this epic orchestral piece. Link to Beethoven encyclopedia article here at Brittanica.com .

Hopefully, plenty of ideas for a contribution. While I seemed to make my focus the YouTube viewing count of my suggested pieces, it's highly valued to add something a bit more daring or different, sort of why I went for Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as an example instead of Symphony No. 5. Any good recommendations would make a great answer to what is the most epic orchestral music?