Classical music might seem like a world apart from the quick-hit thrills of pop culture, yet its greatest themes have proved remarkably adaptable.
Time and again, the works of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, and others have spilled beyond the concert hall to soundtrack our collective imagination. These pieces carry an emotional weight that makes them irresistible for moments of celebration, parody, or sheer drama.
Think of Beethoven’s 'Ode to Joy', resounding at Olympic ceremonies and political rallies alike, its soaring melody instantly summoning unity. Or Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, transformed from a ballet staple into a recurring gag on SpongeBob SquarePants. Sometimes these moments are playful, sometimes they’re grandiose, but always they remind us of how deeply classical music is woven into everyday culture.
And then there are the reinventions: Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s barnstorming take on Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, which reimagined a patriotic American theme as a prog-rock anthem for arena crowds. Such collisions reveal not only the durability of classical music but its ability to evolve, surprise, and thrive in unexpected contexts.
Here are 11 of the greatest pop culture moments where classical music stepped into the spotlight and stole the scene.
Classical music's 11 greatest pop culture moments
12. Percy Grainger’s Country Gardens
Although 'Country Gardens' is an old English folk song traditionally used for Morris dancing, its widespread popularity today is largely due to Percy Grainger. This eccentric Australian-born composer, celebrated for his inventive approach to folk music, brought "Country Gardens" to life with lively orchestration and infectious rhythmic energy, puncturing romanticised notions of what the tune represented: “The typical English country garden is not often used to grow flowers in,” he once remarked. “It is more likely to be a vegetable plot. So you can think of turnips as I play it.”
His musical arrangement, and resulting royalties from performances, provided him with a big part of his income for the rest of his life and yet Grainger himself came to detest it, due to its immense and persistent popularity, which overshadowed his more experimental works.
11. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Baroque music at its most extravagant, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor gained wider fame in the 19th century thanks to the advocacy of fellow German composer Felix Mendelssohn and through various orchestral transcriptions. However, it was the piece’s inclusion in Walt Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia that truly catapulted it into popular culture. Since then, the work has appeared in films such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Phantom of the Opera, firmly cementing its association with gothic horror.
10. Holst’s Jupiter
In another life, Gustav Holst would have made a great movie composer. Certainly, there are plenty of film composers who have paid homage to his Planets suite, amongst them Hans Zimmer and John Williams, who infused his Star Wars theme with more than a whiff of ‘Jupiter’s’ noble tone.
For me, however, the most moving tribute comes from Bluey – that iconic cartoon about a family of blue and orange dogs – where a snippet of ‘Jupiter’ is used to convey the quiet heroism of parents and the sacrifices they make for their children. It might not be the Shawshank Redemption, but I’m not ashamed to admit that this little moment in the CBeebies repertory had me weeping tears of joy.
9. Copland’s 'Fanfare for the Common Man'
Written to honour the ordinary people contributing to the war effort during World War II, Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man stands out for its sheer majesty. There is nothing more distinctly and proudly American than this work, whose primal trumpet calls summon up the sheer scale and breadth of the US landscape. All of which helps to explain why we’ve heard it in sports arenas, presidential inaugurations and even rock adaptations, not least by the British prog rockers Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
8. Bernstein’s West Side Story
Is there anyone on this planet who can’t recognise at least one tune from this legendary suite? West Side Story has been quoted just about everywhere from Family Guy to Olympic figure skating, not least because Leonard Bernstein, who straddled the worlds of classical and popular music, knew more than many a composer how to push his audience’s buttons. You’d be hard pressed to find anything more rhythmically propulsive than ‘America’ or more melodically winning than ‘Tonight’. And while some might say that some of his tunes verge on the saccharine, I’d argue that he always rescues them with the ingenuity of his harmonies.
7. Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Originally composed in 1787 as a serenade for strings and meant to provide light entertainment at social gatherings, Eine kleine Nachtmusik has far transcended its origins. Its influence now extends from the parks and gardens of Vienna, where it was first played, to films, television, advertisements, and public events worldwide. Used everywhere from commercials to romantic comedies as a sonic shorthand for "classical refinement," Mozart's little serenade has become one of the most instantly recognizable pieces of all time.
6. Barber’s Adagio for Strings (Platoon)
From the moment Samuel Barber composed the Adagio for Strings in 1936 as the slow, second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, the work quickly took on a life of its own, due to its deeply emotional and haunting character. Since then, the Adagio has become the soundtrack of American mourning; a musical symbol of collective grief, often played to mark national tragedies, not least JFK’s death and 9/11. It was also famously used in the 1986 film Platoon to underscore the emotional weight and tragedy of the Vietnam War.
5. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker
It’s odd to think that Tchaikovsky was less than enthusiastic about The Nutcracker, complaining that the subject matter was trite and pointless and that the music was "infinitely worse than [his ballet] Sleeping Beauty.” By now The Nutcracker has probably infiltrated every area of popular culture, from Spongebob Squarepants to the Barbie movies. That’s partly because it does such a good job of capturing a sense of childhood fantasy, partly because it’s so varied in terms of mood, and partly because it’s so darned catchy; I challenge anyone to name a dud tune in this ballet, which has done arguably done more to draw new audiences to classical music than any work either before or since.
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4. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (‘Ode to Joy’)
Used in Olympic ceremonies, political events, and countless adverts, the final movement of Beethoven's final symphony has become synonymous with triumph and brotherhood. That said, there’s one appropriation of this piece that is about as far from uplifting as it gets: its infamous use in A Clockwork Orange.
Here, Alex the protagonist, is subjected to the Ludovico Technique, a brutal form of aversion therapy where he is forced to watch violent scenes while listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, specifically the ‘Ode to Joy’, the aim being to create a powerful association between the music and the violence he is forced to endure. The powerful contrast between what we were hearing and what we were seeing made this one of the most memorable musical moments in cinema.
3. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (Manhattan)
From its opening clarinet solo, this piece immediately asserts itself as the embodiment of stylish nonchalance—while simultaneously capturing something innately American in spirit. George Gershwin himself described his Rhapsody in Blue as “a musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, our unduplicated national pep, our metropolitan madness.” That is exactly why why this piece is such a good fit for Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan, where it’s used in the opening montage as a cinematic love letter to the city. Since then the piece has worked its way into countless other contexts, not least Disney’s Fantasia 2000 and Sesame Street.
2. Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' (Apocalypse Now)
Few moments in cinema have fused classical music and modern warfare as memorably as Francis Ford Coppola's (pictured above) use of Richard Wagner’s 'Ride of the Valkyries' in his monumental Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now. As U.S. helicopters descend on a Vietnamese village, their loudspeakers blast the opera theme, transforming a brutal assault into a nightmarish spectacle of pageantry and terror. Coppola’s choice underscores both the grandiosity and absurdity of war, turning Wagner’s 19th-century vision of mythical battle into an unsettling soundtrack for real carnage. The sequence ensured the music’s place in pop culture history.
1. Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra (2001: A Space Odyssey)
Immortalized by 2001: A Space Odyssey, where it accompanied key scenes of human evolution, the opening fanfare of this piece has become synonymous with space, grandeur and epic beginnings. Since then it has often been parodied or referenced in other films, such as WALL-E, Zoolander, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Big Bus, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Ghostbusters II, and Barbie (2023), where Zarathustra is usually used to amplify moments of revelation or humour. The only problem is that many people don’t have a clue how the rest of the piece goes.
Pics: Getty Images
