The Fourth is generally recommended as the starting point, then the Seventh and Eighth. The Fifth and Ninth are his masterpieces but you need to learn his musical language to appreciate then, like Scriabin or Sibelius. We dig re-pe-tition in the symphonies and its hooks, they really sink in me.

As an order to listening:

4
7
8
5
9
6
3
1/2/0/00 (interchangeable, only for fans)

His sacred music is great and can often be found in complete sets. He wrote three Masses, a Te Deum, Psalm 150, and some motets:

Te Deum
Psalm 150
Mass 1/3
Motets
Mass 2

Top composers, I don’t know if it’s ten:

my favorites: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Bruckner, Rossini, Handel, Gesualdo

my favorites outside my favorites: Vivaldi, D Scarlatti (these two did the exact same thing hundreds of times, gloriously), Brahms, Sibelius, Bartók, Puccini

my favorites outside my favorites outside my favorites: Barber, Adès, Arnold, C.P.E. Bach, J.C. Bach, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Bizet, Debussy

Samuel Barber was an American composer born around 1900. He wrote in a popular, post-Romantic idiom, best known for the Adagio for Strings though the “School for Scandal” overture may be the better starting point. Thomas Adès is a contemporary composer. At least one of his compositions is discordant shit, but others are quite lovely. Malcolm Arnold was a 20th-century English symphonist. The Bach boys were innovators in the Classical period in the mid 18th century. Vincenzo Bellini (“Norma”, “La Sonnambula”), Gaetano Donizetti (“La fille du régiment”, “L’Elisir d’Amore”, “Don Pasquale”, “Lucia di Lammermoor”), and Georges Bizet (“Carmen”, “Les pêcheurs de perles”) were opera composers. Claude Debussy you’ve heard of. He’s his own guy. Sometimes you’re in the mood, sometimes you’re not. Like Satie, just not marshmallow Fluff.

music that I want to vibe with it: Vaughan Williams, Delius, Bax, Widor, Canteloube, D’Indy

Frederick Delius basically made a career out of Vaughn Williams’ Pastoral symphony. Arnold Bax wrote a lot of music and his symphonies are probably its peak. Very British, in the countryside way and not the imperial, Elgarian way. I’ve heard exactly one Vincent D’Indy composition but it’s a D’Indy: Symphonie sur une air montaignard, or Symphony on a French Mountain Air. Charles-Marie Widor was a composer mainly for solo organ and us best known for his organ symphonies; the toccata of No. 5 is often played as a stand-alone piece. Joseph Canteloube arranged three sets of Chants d’Auvergne, arrangements of Auvergnois folk songs in the Languedoc dialect. Natania Davrath’s late ’50s recordings are still thr best, though Dawn Upshaw and especially Kiri Te Kanawa have released solid recordings.

early music: Palestrina, Victoria, Josquin, Dufay, Byrd, Dowland, Machaut, Monteverdi

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Tómas Luis de Victoria, Italian and Spanish, were contemporary 16th-century composers who wrote a number of masses and motets. Josquin des Pres, filed under Josquin, and Guillaume Dufay were medieval composers who presaged the Renaissance, with personal feeling creeping into increasingly elaborate – and increasingly secular – polyphony. Indeed, Dufay wrote the first Mass based on a secular tune in the mid 15th century. William Byrd was an English Renaissance composer. Given that you’re an Englishman and England has been strangely barren of great compisers – in true English fashion, you imported one – and that you’ve probably heard of him. John Dowland was a 17th-century poet and writer of lute songs. Guillaume de Machaut was a 14th-century composer best known for writing the Messe de Nostre-Dame, the first extant polyphonic setting of the complete Mass. Frankly it’s a bore compared to his madrigals, lais, virelais, and rondeaux. Claudio Monteverdi is most significant for writing the first opera that took off, I think the third of all time, L’Orfeo. He was also a prolific vocal composer including at least eight books of madrigals (start with the fifth and eighth) and several sets of hours and vespers. The 1610 Vespers are considered his best work. The opera is aactually pretty decent and worth a look if you’ve got two hours for its historical importance, if nothing else. As instrumental parts weren’t fully written out or assigned to particular instruments yet, and there was no standardization of the orchestra, any two recordings may be totally unalike. Do your research.

incompletes (heard too little to call them my favorite): Scriabin (heard the fifth sonata), Schoenberg (Verklärte Nacht, variations for orchestra, string quartets, various piano pieces), Webern (passacaglia, symphony), van Rossum (a thrift-shop LP. A poor man’s Bartók), Liszt (various piano pieces, concertos), Messiaen (Turangalîla symphony, various organ pieces), Nielsen (symphonies 4 and 5), Piston (symphonies 1 & 2), Poulenc (Stabat Mater, various chamber music, Gloria, organ concerto) , Stravinsky (violin concerto, Le sacre du printemps), Granados (Goyescas), Albéniz (Iberia), Hanson (symphonies 1 & 2), Pergolesi (Stabat Mater). I’ve heard all Wagner’s mature operas but still not the Ring cycle. It’s on a wish list for someday.