We all know that music and relaxation make good, well, bedfellows. Elsewhere on our site we’ve looked at the links between music and mental health, for example. We’ve recommended some great music to aid meditation and mindfulness. And it turns out, in fact, that music can also help you achieve the ultimate in relaxation: sleep. Classical music, in particular, can make for some of the best soundtracks for sleep.
A 2010 survey by UK chain Travelodge found that 84 per cent of Britons were in the habit of listening to music to help induce a good night’s sleep. And here is where classical music often comes into its own. The same survey found that 20 per cent of adults liked to drift off to classical music, with Mozart, Beethoven and Bach being the most favoured sleep-inducing composers.
Here are 11 recommendations for some great classical music to help you drift off into the land of sweet dreams.
Best classical music for sleep: Amy Beach, Debussy, Eric Whitacre
Amy Beach: ‘Berceuse’ from Three Compositions
The American composer and pianist Amy Beach (1867-1944) was a master of chamber music. Her gifts are shown off to great effect in this sumptuous lullaby written for violin and piano. It’s one of her lesser-known chamber works, but provides light relief at the end of a long day. The continual return of the lullaby theme is comforting and reassuring, as is the use of tonic and dominant harmonies.
There’s nothing untoward going on here: no loud dynamics, jarring shifts in tonality or moments of harmonic tension. The piano and violin softly talk to one another, with the theme passed between them. The violin is muted to maintain the soft dynamics. You can hear some of this magical interplay in this fine recording featuring American violinist Rachel Barton Pine.
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Debussy: Clair de Lune
Composed in 1890, revised in 1905, Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune is one of the best pieces in the solo piano repertoire. It’s actually the third movement in a four-movement work, the Suite Bergamasque, but you’ll hear Clair de lune much more often than its fellows.
Its name means ‘moonlight’, and the piece is a kind of miniature tone poem: a depiction in music of the gentle, shimmering quality of moonlight. The piece is characterized by its delicate, flowing melody and subtle, rich harmonies, evoking a sense of tranquility and introspection. Its gentle ebb and flow generate an ethereal, dreamlike atmosphere, perfectly capturing the essence of a moonlit night.
Eric Whitacre: Sleep
Eric Whitacre‘s choral music is renowned for its crunchy chord clusters, serene weightlessness and impressionistic word painting – all of which provide the cure for racing thoughts and end-of-the-day anxiety.
If you’re still awake by the end of the song, its final two lines should send you off peacefully. ‘As I surrender unto sleep, As I surrender unto sleep.’ Manifest sleep, and it shall come.
The piece was initially composed as a setting for Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, but after a legal to-and-fro with the Frost estate, the poem was no longer allowed to be used. Instead, the American poet and lyricist Charles Anthony Silvestri set new text to Whitacre’s score.
‘This was an enormous task,’ says Whitacre. ‘I was asking him to not only write a poem that had the exact structure of the Frost, but that would even incorporate key words from “Stopping”, like “sleep”. Tony wrote an absolutely exquisite poem, finding a completely different (but equally beautiful) message in the music I had already written.’
If, when trying to nod off, you find lyrics distracting, try listening to this. Whitacre rehearsed a wordless version of ‘Sleep’ and it’s pretty captivating.
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Read our reviews of the latest Eric Whitacre recordings here
Best classical music for sleep: Mozart, Satie and more
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21: II. Andante
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 has many, many charms. Among them is the beautifully rocking motion of the middle movement, not to mention the dreamlike tone of the violins, conjuring a superbly restful atmosphere that will be conducive to sleep in some listeners.
This movement was memorably featured in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan, in a recording with Géza Anda on the piano. Consequently, No. 21 had acquired the nickname of the ‘Elvira Madigan‘ concerto.
By the way, if you prefer a slower rhythm (and more of a minor-key mood), you may want to try the soulful Adagio from the same composer’s Piano Concerto No. 23 instead.
Caroline Shaw: Plan & Elevation: IV. ‘The Orangery‘
All five movements of Caroline Shaw‘s string quartet Plan and Elevation feature an individual ground bass line, but it’s the fourth movement whose soft broken chord bass line has a gentle rocking motion to help you nod off. The harmonics played on the solo line over the top have an ethereal quality which adds to the effect.
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John Luther Adams: Become Ocean
We’ve all tried those hourlong soundscapes on apps like Headspace or Calm, so why not try the musical equivalent? One of the most important pieces of music to engage in climate change and environmental activism, John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean submerges the listener in its rising sea levels. The piano rumbles, the waves of sound rise and fall, and the strings shimmer. It’s utterly transportive and will envelop you in its vast musical landscape as you float off into sleep.
We spoke to John Luther Adams in 2014 about his environmental activism and experience of writing Become Ocean. We also named Become Ocean as one of the 20 pieces of music that defined the last century.
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Erik Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1
Composed in 1888, Erik Satie‘s three piano pieces known as the Gymnopédies are a brilliant crystallisation of the composer’s somewhat unique musical style. There’s a simplicity and a sense of quiet introspection to these pieces – particularly the first – that make them ideal bedtime companions.
All three Gymnopédies are written in 3/4 time and all share similar structures and moods, though they differ slightly in harmony and melody. Slow, deliberate tempi add to the general ambience of calm and contemplation. The melodies, often somewhat hypnotic, drift past without any apparent hurry. It’s possible to trace the beginnings of minimalism back to these little gems from Satie.
Best classical music for sleep: Max Richter, Bach, Brahms
Max Richter: Sleep
Rarely has a piece of music ‘matched the brief’ so well. Max Richter wrote the 8.5-hour work in consultation with neuroscientist David Eagleman as a piece to be played overnight to sleeping audiences. It is the ultimate immersive experience – a piece created to be listened to throughout the night. ‘I wrote Sleep as an invitation to pause our busy lives for a moment – a lullaby for a frenetic world,’ says Max Richter.
The hypnotically slow-paced movements glide between one another offering a gentle segue to sleep. If you wake up in the middle of the night, it’ll softly lull you back again.
Back in 2015, BBC Radio 3 established two Guinness world records with a live broadcast of Max Richter’s Sleep. The eight-hour, one-minute and 23-second performance was the ‘longest live broadcast’ and the ‘longest single continuous broadcast of a piece’ to have ever featured on radio.
Plus, it’s COVID-friendly. We recently named it as one of the best socially distanced pieces of classical music, because audience members are invited to spread out on single beds and sleep through the performance.
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JS Bach: Goldberg Variations
Legend has it that the Goldberg Variations were originally written by Bach as a lullaby. Johann Gottlied Goldberg, one of Bach’s pupils and the favourite musician of the Russian diplomat Count Kaiserling, supposedly asked Bach to write a piece for Kaiserling to help him sleep.
Sure, the historical evidence behind this story may be dubious, but the point still stands: Bach’s Goldberg Variations are a brilliant set of pieces to help you nod off. They are light, graceful and have interweaving melodies across both hands which build and grow as you enter a deep sleep.
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Brahms: Wiegenlied
Brahms‘s ‘Wiegenlied’ – ‘lullaby’ or ‘cradle song’ – is a song for voice and piano dedicated to Brahms’s friend Bertha Faber on the birth of her son. There’s a hidden romantic thread throughout the song as well, with a countermelody included in tribute to Bertha, whom Brahms had been in love with in his youth.
The song has a lilting melody, which ends with an uplifting message in its lyrics: ‘Tomorrow morning, if God wills, you will wake once again’.
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Ivor Gurney: Sleep
One of the song cycle Five Elizabethan Songs by the early 20th-century English poet and composer Ivor Gurney, ‘Sleep’ explores Gurney’s desire to escape into his dreams. The text addresses sleep directly, yearning for it: ‘Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving, Lock me in delight awhile’.
The back-and-forth quaver pattern in the accompanying piano creates a continual rocking motion, before ending on a contented major chord, as though the singer – and you, the listener – has fallen asleep. A moment of rest for all involved.
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