We're looking forward to an epic summer of sport, featuring - among other highlights - the Euro 2024 football championship, Wimbledon, the US Open and of course the 2024 Olympic Games and Paralympics in Paris. So, as sporting fever mounts, we have gathered some of the best pieces of music about sport. Don the running shoes and press play as we run through some of the most rousing, inspirational or just plain beautiful pieces of music about sport.
- Olympic Games music: the key role played by music across Olympic history
- Best Olympic music of all time
Best music about sport
Claude Debussy: Jeux (1913)
Debussy’s captivating Jeux was premiered by the Ballets Russes just two weeks prior to the riotous debut of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The short ballet evokes three young people searching for a lost tennis ball at dusk. And it ends with a sinister conclusion. The music is in a swift triple-metre, often interrupted by syncopation and rubato.
Arthur Honegger: Rugby (1928)
Honegger’s Rugby (Mouvement Symphonique No. 2) is an orchestral tone poem representing a game of rugby through the passing of a musical theme from one section of the orchestra to another. The dichotomy of dissonance and consonance reflects the struggle of the game, and the final passages glorify the winner’s victory.
Jean Sibelius: The Lonely Ski Trail (1925)
Our next piece of music about sport takes us deepo into the snowy wastes of Finland. Sibelius's evocative piece The Lonely Ski Trail is scored for speaker and piano and is based on a poem by Bertel Gripenberg. The piece rotates themes of loneliness and mortality around skiing. It brings these emotions to the fore with syncopated rhythms and wistful melodies. It is sometimes performed in a version for harp and strings.
Mauricio Kagel: Match (1964)
Kagel’s Match is a piece for two cellos and percussion. A game of tennis is represented through the two cello lines. The percussionist, meanwhile, takes the role of the interfering referee.
- Six of the best... tennis-playing composers
- Game, set and match: 10 fascinating connections between tennis and classical music
Listen to our sporty tunes here:
More best music about sport: skating, football and more
Émile Waldteufel: The Skaters’ Waltz (1882)
The Skaters’ Waltz, Op. 183 is probably the best known work by French composer Émile Waldteufel, along with one of the best loved pieces of music about sport. It evokes a frozen scene around the Seine in Paris.
Waldteufel contrasts the stately grandeur of a French horn line with flurrying scalic passages in the flute, piccolo and violin parts. The use of sleigh bells and the triangle adds a seasonal touch to the piece.
Mark-Anthony Turnage: The Silver Tassie (1997-9)
The Silver Tassie is an opera based on a play of the same name by Seán O'Casey. Set during the First World War, the opera opens with local sporting hero Harry as he accepts a prize (the Silver Tassie) for his achievements. The plot goes on to document his demise at the hand of experiencing the tragedies of war.
Charles Ives: Yale-Princeton Football Game (1898)
Charles Ives’s Yale-Princeton Football Game is the perfect encapsulation of his shared passion for music and sport. It's truly one of the best and most evocative pieces of music about sport in the repertoire.
As a Yale graduate, the composer returned to the university for the game. Consequently, he wanted to express the experience afterwards in music. Like in Honegger's Rugby, the use of instrumentation characterises the different players on the pitch.
Erik Satie: Sports et divertissements (1914)
Satie’s Sports et divertissements is a collection of 21 piano miniatures, each presented alongside a short poem. Each depict a sport or leisure activity. And Satie uses music programmatically to reflect the characteristics of each of the games. A bouncing ball in tennis is audible in the short staccato quavers. The smooth waves under a yacht, meanwhile, come across in legato quavers. It's one of the best pieces of music about sport as it's so imaginative and atmospheric in its various depictions of sporting activity.
Need a playlist to listen to when you go for a run? We've got just the playlist here.