Modern life has made music available to everyone, so the recordings of artistically valuable music become widely available nowadays, which wasn’t the case until recently. For this reason, listening to valuable artistic music is made possible in the work with children in kindergartens as a source of enhancing their emotional experience and acquiring the art of music. The aim of the paper is to determine the features of the Viennese classical music that make a particular musical composition suitable for active listening with children of an early age and pre-school children. A research was carried out on the grounds of auditory analysis of a total of 97 different musical compositions by Viennese classicists suggested by the authors of a manual for educators. The research confirmed that the musical compositions of Viennese classicists are suitable for the activity of listening to music in the work with kindergarten children, but a requirement of several criteria must be met. Musical compositions or fragments of compositions must not last longer than three minutes, whereas fragments which in form are deemed a rounded whole can be used as well. Musical compositions should have an atmosphere suitable for children’s experience so that the pieces of music with cheerful, fluttering, tender, wistful and spirited moods are preferable, whilst tumultuous, sad, serious and disturbing moods are to be avoided. When choosing Viennese classicists’ musical compositions, the tempo will most often be fast to moderate, and the occurrence of the agogic changes will be small as well. Viennese classicists use dynamic nuances as well as contrasts in the dynamics, so when working with children, the Viennese classical compositions are suitable for middle and older children when employing analytical listening. The tonality and measure of a musical composition are not a criterion for selecting the music of the Viennese classicists. The development of the chamber music in the Viennese classics gave birth to numerous works which, in terms of other criteria, are appropriate for the activity of listening to music with the kindergarten children. However, due to a number of musical instruments, they will be suitable for working with children of middle and older age groups. The practical contribution of the paper is a list of the musical compositions or fragments of musical compositions by Viennese classicists intended for the music-listening activity in the work with kindergarten children.