[Prestidigitweeze]

Though I, too, love chamber music best, I associate it with a fuller range of emotions than visceral bliss (Beethoven's Op. 132 has moments of resonant zen never quite achieved by anyone else). My favorite composers are probably Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, Anton Webern (my best friend, who is never sentimental, cried when he heard the structural revelations in Webern's arrangement of the Ricercar from Bach's Musical Offering), Bartok, Monteverdi -- the most tasteful and literate opera composer who ever lived -- Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin, Artur Honneger, Stockhausen ("Gesang der Jugend" was the first music I ever heard as a child), Faure (his settings of Verlaine), Scriabin, Hans Werner Henze, Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Alfred Schnittke, Carlos Gesualdo, Machaut, late Mozart (and any of his more contrapuntal experiments), Henry Purcell, Buxtehude, very, very late Liszt, Stravinsky for his chamber music (particularly the Septet), Corelli for his suspension chains, Samuel Barber for his art songs), Robert Schumann for his Piano Quartet, Ravel for his String Trio (the only instrumental piece I know of that contains a villanelle), Thea Musgrave -- when people say there have been no great composers who were women, I always cite her -- and of course, Mahler for his Kindertotenlieder, Ruckert Lieder, Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth Symphony.

There's also jazz (Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Bill Evans). Beside these, other kinds of music seem apt but short-lived soundtracks.