Classical Music With a Sports Theme

[Ferretfancy]

Martinu Rondo- Half Time ( Football)

Shostakovich Ballet -The Age of Gold ( Also football)

[Petrushka]

Perhaps the most specific classical music piece relating to sport is the Yale-Princeton Football Game (subtitled Two Halves in Two Minutes) by Charles Ives.

It depicts an actual American football match in 1897. According to the sleeve notes of the Naxos recording 'The attentive listener can hear the kick off, the cheers, the referee's whistle and the excitement rising play by flying wedge play until the climactic zigzag dash to the goal line'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqsX4TnXtNw

[Alison]

Josef Strauss: Sport Polka

[Petrushka]

Josef Strauss: Sport Polka

Josef Strauss: Jockey Polka (the BBC used to use this when giving the Grand National runners and riders)

[Petrushka]

Robert Farnon: March - Derby Day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKDUcp-PmhY

[EdgeleyRob]

Edith Piaf, Je ne regattas rien?

Shostakovich's The Golden Age is a ballet about a football team - I don't know if there is a choreographed soccer match in the scenario.

According to the Naxos cd notes

Scene 4: Workers' Stadium

The fourth scene takes place in the Worker's Stadium, and begins with a march depicting the Procession of the Workers to the Stadium, along with a Dance of the Young Pioneers, followed by Sports Games [1/21]. The Football Match [1/22] is a vividly non-graphic representation (perhaps influenced by recent sporting evocations from Honegger and Martinů), in which the opposing teams forcefully act out their cultural and ideological, as well as sporting differences.

[doversoul1]

L'Olimpiade

Wiki
More than 60 baroque and classical composers used the libretto for their own settings

So, I think this will do.

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Naive/V5295

[EdgeleyRob]

There is,of course,reference to a football match in 'Is my team ploughing' / George Butterworth.

David Golightly’s Middlesbrough Symphony is dedicated to the town's football club. ( A fellow forumite recommended this to me many moons ago,I can't remember who it was but thanks)

The composer says -

I aimed to capture the atmosphere of a typical match day - with all the pre-match excitement and the two halves of the game built into the structure of the music.

the work depicts an optimistic learning journey through life as well as the highs and lows of the "beautiful game".

[Quarky]

Gymnopédie.

[Oldcrofter]

Any song cycle !

[Sir Velo]

Gymnopédie.

Let's not forget that γυμνός – or gymnos - is the Greek for nudity, which is where gymmastics is derived from (ie Greeks desported in the altogether).

Given the piece's almost complete stasis, any association with the modern idea of gymnastics has to be at the least ironical, and probably completely unintended.

[Sir Velo]

Is there any classical music with a sports theme that hasn't specifically been written for a tournament or film/television?

I would say that any piece entitled "La Chasse" has a "sporting" connotation.

Liszt: "Wilde Jagd"
Schumann: "Jäger auf der Lauer"; "Jagdlied"
Elgar: "Nimrod"
Beethoven: Piano Sonata in E Flat
Mozart: St Qt in B Flat K458
Schoenberg: Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd

[Pabmusic]

There is,of course,reference to a football match in 'Is my team ploughing' / George Butterworth...

Or anyone else's setting (Arthur Somervell, for instance) but not, definitely not, RVW's in On Wenlock Edge. He thought that verse was rotten poetry and left it out! Housman was not pleased.

[Quarky]

Let's not forget that γυμνός – or gymnos - is the Greek for nudity, which is where gymmastics is derived from (ie Greeks desported in the altogether).

Given the piece's almost complete stasis, any association with the modern idea of gymnastics has to be at the least ironical, and probably completely unintended.

Not so sure about that, Sir Velo. From Yahoo answers:

While Eric Satie loved playful titles often based on Ancient Greek, and while erlampo correctly identified the first part as stemming from Ancient Greek "gymnos" meaning "naked", the second part is not derived from "pes" (which is Latin, the Greek equivalent being "pous, podos" - as in Oedipous), but rather from "pais, paidos", meaning "child". As with "pous", it is the oblique cases (i.e. the cases other than the nominative) that are the basis for derivations and for loanwords in other languages; so just as "podiatry" is the medical discipline that deals with feet, "pediatrics" is the discipline that deals with children's health.
Gymnopédie is the French form of "gymnopaidiai", an annual festival in Ancient Sparta where naked youths (athletes in Ancient Greece were always naked) performed athletic dances.

I'm not sure what Satie had in mind when he composed this piece, but may be he was thinking of some decorations on Grecian Urns?

[Sir Velo]

Or anyone else's setting (Arthur Somervell, for instance) but not, definitely not, RVW's in On Wenlock Edge. He thought that verse was rotten poetry and left it out! Housman was not pleased.

I believe the offending verses were:

"Is football playing
Along the river-shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?"

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal."

I think on balance VW got it right, though no doubt some on these boards would argue that the author of a work is always the best arbiter of its quality.