In 2024, the ABC’s Classic 100 poll asked Australians to vote for the classical music that makes them feel good, building a playlist of music to make you feel on top of the world.
People around Australia, and a few overseas, cast 120,231 votes in Australia’s biggest classical music poll. From classical music for the stage to music for the screen, we counted votes for a total of 899 individual works.
Who voted for who in 2024
More women than men voted in 2024, comprising 61 per cent of the tally, with another 35 per cent of voters being male and 4 per cent self-describing as non-binary or preferring not to say.
While the majority of voters said they were 65 or older, people of all ages voted for the music that made them feel good.
The music of Bluey has been building a new generation of classical music fans, with our youngest voters picking tunes from the iconic Australian children’s series.
The screen music theme continued for young adult voters aged 18-34. For this age group, Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit soundtracks came out on top.
Voters aged 35-54 chose Holst’s The Planets as their favourite feel-good work. It’s a much-loved work in its own right, but we can’t help wondering whether our young voters have been influencing their parents and grandparents.
Jupiter from The Planets was the centrepiece of Bluey’s Sleepytime, which was voted the fourth most popular episode of the series in this year’s Bluey Fest.
The Pearl Fishers was the work chosen by the broadest demographic sweep; voters aged both 55-84 and 85+ nominated Bizet’s early opera above all other works.
First place and first timers
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the Choral, took out the top spot in 2024, echoing 2020’s Classic 100: Beethoven.
His Emperor Piano Concerto, which topped 2021’s Classic 100: The Music You Can’t Live Without, also made it into the top 10 this year.
Overall Beethoven was the most-voted-for composer in the 2024 countdown, which is consistent with the results of 2019, where he finished first in the Classic 100: Composer.
A total of seven works by Beethoven were voted into the Feel Good top 100 in 2024, followed by Mozart with five works and John Williams with four.
Three of Beethoven’s works placed in the top 20, ahead of John Williams’s Star Wars, which came in at number 22. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto came immediately behind it at number 23.
Nine pieces appeared in the Classic 100 for this first time this year, including Simon Jeffes’s Music For A Found Harmonium at number 73 – familiar to fans of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
More recent music made you feel good
The top-voted era in the 2024 Classic 100: Feel Good was music from the 20th and 21st centuries, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all works in the top 100. Of these 61 works, 46 were composed between 1900-1999, and 15 from 2000 on.
The most recently composed was 2021’s River at number 51, written by Kalkadunga musician William Barton alongside Richard Tognetti and Piers Burbrook de Vere. The work was performed around the country by the Australian Chamber Orchestra earlier this year.
There were 26 works by 25 living composers included in this year’s top 100; of these, Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man ranked highest, making the top 10 at number seven.
Fourteen Australian composers got a mention in 2024, across 11 works, including Joseph Tawadros for Bluegrass Nikriz and Nigel Westlake and Lior for Compassion.
Two were First Nations Composers – Gurrumul and William Barton – while the highest-voted Australian and female composer was Elena Kats-Chernin, at number 17, for her 2003 ballet Wild Swans.
Gurrumul’s posthumous fourth album Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow), coming in at number 63, was produced with the input of long-time collaborators and friends Erkki Veltheim and Michael Hohnen.
Music for the screen also had an impressive representation in 2024 with a whopping 25 soundtracks you told us you listen to in order to feel good included in the top 100.
This was the highest number of inclusions of music for the screen outside of the dedicated screen countdowns. Near the top of the countdown was The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit soundtracks at number 12, and at the other end we heard Yann Tiersen’s 2001 music for Amélie at number 97.
In 2024, voting included musicals for the first time. Three classics made the cut: West Side Story (29), Singin’ In The Rain (62) and The Sound of Music (92).
Themes that made you feel good
Your ultimate feel-good themes were pretty clear – works featuring animals, the natural world and the human voice were strongly represented throughout the top 100.
Whether it was Jurassic Park for those dino-sized thrills, Nigel Westlake’s Antarctica for sweeping, big feelings or Carl Orff’s power-pose piece Carmina Burana, there was something for everyone in the 2024 Classic 100: Feel Good.