New York magazine is celebrating its 40th year with a special anniversary issue. In it, the magazine's culture critics give their take on the most essential New York works of art since the publication's inception, creating "The New York Canon: 1968-2008."

The classical music list, written by Justin Davidson, offers a wide range of artists and events, from Steve Reich's Drumming, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971, to the John Adams-curated opening-week festival of Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in 2003. Among the other quintessential New York moments in between are Laurie Anderson's United States I-V, the epic, two-night event in 1983 from that "great American raconteuse"; the US premiere of Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1991, which, despite the surrounding controversy, "contained ravishing music"; and Audra McDonald's 1998 debut solo album, Way Back to Paradise, with music by emerging songwriters like Adam Guettel, and the "killer concert at Joe's Pub" that launched it.

Listen to Audra perform "The Allure of Silence" (Adam Guettel / Lindy Robbins) from Way Back to Paradise:

Included in the theater canon, according to New York magazine's Jeremy McCarter, is the arrival of Stephen Sondheim's Company in 1970, which "brought new complexity and darker shadows to Broadway" ("Even now," McCarter writes, "other songwriters are struggling to catch up."), and the 2005 revival of the composer's 1979 work Sweeney Todd.

On the pop music list, by Hugo Lindgren and Ben Williams, is Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light, on which David Byrne and Brian Eno create a sound that would inspire for decades to come, and The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs, "a distinctly New York masterpiece."

To read the complete list from New York magazine, visit nymag.com.