An Actually Erotic Classical Music for Sex Playlist

Early this fall, I asked friends to tell me which pieces of classical music they believed to be “the all-time sexiest.” I promised there were no wrong answers. I wasn’t being disingenuous—though I was thinking about how erotic classical music playlists on Spotify and elsewhere, if not “wrong” or “bad,” are full of famous pieces so ubiquitous that it’s hard to imagine them actually arousing desire in the 21st century. If you search “erotic classical music” on any music streaming platform, you’ll find Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” Debussy’s “Claire de Lune,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” and many other pieces that should make you spit out your coffee laughing. Yes, you’ll find less awkward examples of “erotic,” such as Ravel’s “Boléro” and “Daphnis et Chloé,” Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” and Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” These works are singular and bewitching, but I don’t see why they should repeatedly be singled out, at the exclusion of everything else, for their eroticism. Are they really that hot? 

For this reason, I’ve created a playlist that offers alternatives and new ideas. The ten pieces I’ve chosen do reflect some of my biases. You won’t find anything manic (à la “Flight of the Bumblebee”), funereal (like Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”), or composed by Philip Glass (whose music, according to my three-year-old, sounds “a yot like ambulance sirens”). I steered away from famous pieces already enshrined on erotic classical playlists, but I didn’t avoid classical music’s preeminent composers. 

If you’re unhappy with what you find here, please: Make your own public playlist.