Music may very well be the most powerful tool to showcase this. Right now, we need the Christmas spirit more then ever, which is where this music might come in helpful. Many people don't research a piece when listening to it, which is understandable. Still, there are many pieces that have such a wonderful story to tell that it would be a shame not to elaborate on them. It truly enriches a piece to listen to them with the context in which they were written. This is why we are taking a special look at the top 10 greatest classical pieces for Christmas.

It looks like people are quick to wave away some of the most important aspects of practice, in order to make themselves feel good about the duration thereof. Many students sacrifice so much time hitting piano keys and sliding down a cello's fingerboard, paying little attention to the sound they produce while being satisfied way too easily.

A short paper (F. Rauscher et al., 1993), published in the scientific journal Nature would be the first to cite the so called "Mozart effect". This study involved college kids who listened to either 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata in D-major, a relaxation track or silence. The results were quite intriguing. The paper said that students who had listened to Mozart before doing their tasks, seemed to show significant improvement in their performance. This did not result in just one or two extra spatial IQ points, but it resulted in a whopping eight to nine extra spatial IQ points.

It is one of the key instruments with which classical music is associated which is largely due to its versatility. Composers have always loved writing for it, due to the heartfelt emotion you are able to express with the piano. Although classical music has had a bit of a dip in the modern days, the piano will always connect classical music with the general public. It has become one of its many functions and is what has gotten many people into classical music.

It is the piece that has gotten so many people into classical music that there probably is no composer that even remotely compares to Niccolò Paganini. Paganini's Caprices modernize the way classical music is seen by breaking the stereotypes when it comes to classical music and the violin. It does that by showing off the techniques that gives outsiders in particular, a wow factor, even when the technical difficulty isn't that high.

After the invention of the violin in the 16th century, composers quickly picked up on the amazing versatility with which one can compose music for the instrument. The amount of sheet music written for the violin is truly astounding. It lead to fierce rivalry between composers, trying to think of new ways to compose for the instrument, and only the absolute best withstood the test of time.

Composers like Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Niccolò Paganini, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Johann Strauss II and Eugène Ysaÿe are only some of the names that come to mind when talking about exciting classical pieces. To give you a clear picture of what I'm talking about specifically, here is an overview.

It didn't take long for the piano to get recognition of its value to the musical world after the invention of its first version; the fortepiano (1698-1709). Although there had already been another instrument which works similarly to it called the harpsichord, the fortepiano was a truly revolutionizing instrument. It was played by musical geniuses like Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and it started developing into how we came to know it, now.

We all know the currently renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin, but there's a chance you haven't yet heard him play Chopin's piano concerto no. 1, aged 12 years old... Yes indeed, 12 years old. It's shows that his current top-level playing didn't just come out of nothing and it's quite amazing to see where all this development lead up to, 3 decades later.

Niccolò Paganini, equivalent to Franz Liszt for the piano, is said to be a showman who liked to make his compositions so challenging that at the time, only he would be able to play it the way he did it. His technical abilities were so extraordinary that there were stories in circulation that he was in league with the devil and that he had been imprisoned for murder.

The violin was built in 1743 by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù and the instrument, preserved as a museum piece, was carefully restored in 1937. Since then, the signature of the restorer can be found next to the signature of the maker. Paganini called the instrument "Il Cannone" or "My Cannon", due to its powerful sound that impressed the audience while giving his concerts. In the 17th and 18th century, the craft of violin making experienced a Golden Age in Italy. Even with all the new technologies that have been developed in violin making, instruments of Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri are still unsurpassed.