# Chronological listening



## Louchano (Apr 18, 2020)

Hi everyone, im new of the Forum, I'm italian.
I like this forum because have very huge contents, and Its very interesting.
I Just wanted to ask one question:
I'm listening from gregorian chants to contemporary music, slowly, in this period that you can't go out, and I have a lot of time, I arrived now to Haydn, and I wanted to arrive to 900'.
Do you think it's a good idea to learn classical music in chronological order? To understand the difference through the era, or not?
Or do you think that its better to listen to what you want, no matter the period.
Thanksssss



p.s Now i'm listening to the creation of Haydn.


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## Joe B (Aug 10, 2017)

As far as I'm concerned, listen the way you want. If you are trying to experience the evolution of music through time, then what you're doing sounds valid to me. I just hope you are enjoying the experience as you gather 'data' from one time period to another.
I prefer to listen to what I want, which is totally self serving, but that's why I like music. Lots of flavors for every mood.
On another note (pun intended):
*Welcome to the forum! *


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Do you think it's a good idea to learn classical music in chronological order? To understand the difference through the era, or not? Or do you think that its better to listen to what you want, no matter the period._

Welcome from Italy; I hope your country is on the mend.

You don't say anything about your experience or interest so it's impossible to tell your starting point. If you've already had some experience either performing or listening to classical music you probably have some preferences.

When I think back to when I was new to classical music I had a little experience listening to my mother and sister play piano, singing Handel in school, and playing the cornet.

Still I knew hardly anything about classical music. I started where a lot of people start -- listening to Beethoven, Bach and Tchaikovsky. These composers are so universally accepted and talented their music speaks to almost anyone.

If you go back to Gregorian chant and move forward from that point you may find yourself losing interest since the music from the pre-Renaissance simply isn't very interesting in terms of development and the instruments used. Of course being Italian you may have a different idea on this since there was music in your country then; my country (USA) didn't exist in that era and wouldn't for several more centuries.

I have heard Gregorian chant in concert and have read about it but if it were my first exposure to classical music I know it would not have interested me or fired my imagination the way Beethoven's 5th symphony and Bach's Orchestral Suites did -- music that wasn't composed for another couple centuries after Gregorian chant.

I'd say if chronology is a way you want to approach classical music then do so. It is as valid as any approach save the issues cited above.

I would caution that it sounds to me more like an intellectual or academic exercise with music than a way to enjoy it or learn new music. If that is your primary goal, the search through time and chronology, then it could be satisfying.

I found it more interesting to hear what came my way in terms of new music and composers as I went than to plan my journey -- though I did in my maturity set aside certain times to explore composers I did now know well such as Shostakovich, Mahler and Sibelius.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think it does help in some ways to listen more chronologically. I didn't and had to piece certain things together later. Especially when transitioning from the 19th to 20th century music, it makes a lot of sense to listen more chronologically.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Chronological listening is probably the smartest and most informative way to go about it. However, it's enjoyment quotient might be quite low for many folks.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I started with baroque myself...I had a friend in HS who spent days and months trying 2 instill the love of all things baroque in me, recording me tons of music...4 a long time I could not listen anything outside that period...But I guess its best 2 start from the beginning and fo further down the line...


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## Louchano (Apr 18, 2020)

OMG ahah
Thank you so much, I m impressed of the speed of your answers  
I posted the same post in an italian forum "musica-classica.it", and no one reply me  sad. (maybe less people)
Thank you for your advice, I like this kind of listening, because I'm totally new to all the music before 900, so I want to know everything ahah but at the same time i dont want to lose interests forcing me to listen to "every" composer, because there are too much, soo.. maybe I have to listen chronological, but only the best/famous composers first? Its a good idea? so I can have a general view before exploring what I want. Thank you so much.
sorry for my english ahah Im from naples (italy)


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Welcome to the forum; I hope it serves as an island of peace and community in the midst of the trying times your country (and the world) is going through. My advice - just dig in! Explore the TC Most Recommended lists pinned to the top of each subforum. Starting with the beginning of Western music and listening chronologically is a great idea if you really want to embark on an in-depth study, but it's certainly not the only way to understand classical music. For me, I started with the core repertoire, explored from there, and all the gaps started to fill in until I got a more complete picture of the history and progress of Western music. And though I love medieval and Renaissance music, I haven't explored anything earlier than Hildegard von Bingen - I think that's a good place to start chronologically (I think it may be a bit ambitious to start any earlier). And whatever you do, don't worry about trying to listen to "every" composer! Do some research if you wish, find out what you like, and as you move through your journey you'll be able to come back and dig deeper. If I were undergoing such a project, I would include these composers/works from the early years of Western music:

Gregorian chants
Hildegard von Bingen
Perotin
Tournai Mass
Guillaume de Machaut
John Dunstable


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## DaddyGeorge (Mar 16, 2020)

It's an interesting idea. I've made a lot of different listening plans during time - it's always good to broaden your horizons.Give listening order is quite helpful. When you're from Italy, maybe you would start by listening to music from ancient Greek times and of course ancient Roman times (you can find it on YouTube)...


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## Louchano (Apr 18, 2020)

there are very few things about greek and roman times, because they had only an oral tradition :/ but I have read that there is a lot of influence of that time, like the use of cromatism. Very insteresting..


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Welcome to the Forum.

Proceeding chronologically is fine, but you may be missing out on wonderful music that you might much prefer while you are slogging through a collection of music year by year.

My advice is rather to follow your interest. Start listening to name composers who sound familiar -- Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bach … whomever -- and if you like what you hear, explore within their music further. Listen to "famous" works first, rather than the lesser known pieces. Those are what we call "war horses" and they tend to be dependable as audience favorites. (For each composer named above, some war horses include: Beethoven (Fifth Symphony, Moonlight Sonata, Violin Concerto), Mozart (Symphonies 40 and 41, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Overture to Marriage of Figaro), Vivaldi (The Four Seasons Violin Concertos, the Guitar Concerto), Tchaikovsky (1812 Overture, Capriccio Italien, Symphonies 5 and 6, Swan Lake ballet music), Schumann (Spring Symphony, Rhenish Symphony, Piano Concerto), Stravinsky (Firebird Suite, Pulcinella, Rite of Spring), Ravel (Bolero, String Quartet, the two Piano Concertos), Bach (Brandenburg Concertos, Goldberg Variations, Mass in B Minor)….

Way leads to way. If you like Haydn, for instance, you have a lot of music to explore and won't have to hurry onto other composers. But consider that Haydn taught both Mozart and Beethoven, and sampling their music will open new avenues. Beethoven is a great influence upon folks like Brahms, and if you find Beethoven intriguing, you may want to dip into Brahms. Brahms should naturally lead you backwards to his mentor, Robert Schumann, and forward to his admirer, Arnold Schoenberg. Schumann naturally leads to other of his contemporaries, notably Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt. Schoenberg leads you into modern music by way of folks such as Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Beethoven can also be followed to Schubert, and Schubert opens the door to folks like Bruckner and Mahler.

If you find Mahler fascinating, you may want to turn to his contemporary Richard Strauss, and that opens to door to folks such as Korngold, Suk, Busoni, Max Reger.

If composer names have just begun to get obscure, then you see what happens as you follow along your listening likes. You begin to explore deeper and deeper into the music world and make new discoveries. You need not like all you hear. Move past those pieces and composers who seem less interesting and keep moving forward towards those whom you find enthrall you. Eventually you may actually find that composers whom you didn't once like very much have become greatly more interesting as you listened on further and further. My experience with J.S. Bach is like that: I didn't much enjoy his music in my youth, preferring the Romantic composers from the 1800s; but I eventually came back to Bach, and went forward to modern composers because of my strong following of those 1800s Romantic composers, who led me deeper and deeper and more widely time-wise than I ever expected.

That's what I mean by saying you may lose out on a lot of good music if you just proceed chronologically. The time order will take care of itself in the end. My own suggestion, as one who has listened to this kind of music seriously for well over half a century, is that it makes more sense to follow your interests and likes as you listen. I started with Tchaikovsky and listened heavily to his music before moving on, both backwards and forwards, to both those who influenced him and those whom he influences, and to other sorts of music from his contemporaries that sounded sort of like what he wrote. In the end, I came to music much different from Tchaikovsky's and arrived at an appreciation of the long era of classical music from the Medieval period to the new music of today.

All the best to you. And welcome to our world.


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## Louchano (Apr 18, 2020)

I'm not good at writing, but I understand everything you said. And this is what I wanted to heard, because there is something wrong in what I m doing, and I think I will follow your advices. Very accurate answer. I will follow my Interests, starting from the composers who sound familiar 
P.s Love this forum, beautiful people and beautiful answers.
Thank you.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Louchano said:


> Hi everyone, im new of the Forum, I'm italian.
> I like this forum because have very huge contents, and Its very interesting.
> I Just wanted to ask one question:
> I'm listening from gregorian chants to contemporary music, slowly, in this period that you can't go out, and I have a lot of time, I arrived now to Haydn, and I wanted to arrive to 900'.
> ...


I'd advise listening chronologically, so your cognitive faculties will "form" correctly, like charging-up capacitors slowly, so they can electrically "form" correctly. This will create a microcosm of the "evolution" of music in your synapses. By the time you've gotten past Wagner, and on to the more highly evolved 12-tone and serial music, your brain will be perfectly programmed to model this marvelous phenomenon we call "the evolution of music."

Here's a good series of CDs I have enjoyed:




Also, James Galway wrote a chronological history of music:


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

If you listen in reverse chronological order it's as though everyone's scuttling about trying to find the perfect balance, then they start finding it and can be more quiet and calm, then they feel they can start slowly dying peacefully to the basic sounds.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ethereality said:


> If you listen in reverse chronological order it's as though everyone's scuttling about trying to find the perfect balance, then they start finding it and can be more quiet and calm, then they feel they can start slowly dying peacefully to the basic sounds.


Yeah, it's like looking through a very large, powerful telescope, through the chromatic debris and dust, back to the "big bang" when music started from one big droning note, probably a Bb......


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## Louchano (Apr 18, 2020)

Never think about a reverse chronological. It could be interesting


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Never thought about it. I started listening in my preteens and it was pretty much 19th c. Then eventually tried all the other eras for better or worse. I do not think you have to know 19th c procedures to better appreciate early 20th and then the ugly era. You do not need to know or understand Mozart or Bach to appreciate Beethoven.

It's like this: when I was in college, I primarily read science fiction - the contemporary stuff being written then. I didn't know the early stuff like Verne or Wells nor did I need to. 

The history can come later. Listen to anything that you get something out of. This may sound like a cliche, but my barber, Silvio, grew up in WWII era Italy and fled to the US as soon as he could. He knows every Puccini and Verdi opera by heart. Knows nothing about Monteverdi, Vivaldi, or other earlier Italian vocal music. Doesn't bother him a bit. 

The only time I've ever really considered chronological listening was several years ago when I went through the (almost) complete Prokofiev output in the order he wrote it. Now, that's interesting!


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I'd advise listening chronologically, so your cognitive faculties will "form" correctly, like charging-up capacitors slowly, so they can electrically "form" correctly. This will create a microcosm of the "evolution" of music in your synapses. By the time you've gotten past Wagner, and on to the more highly evolved 12-tone and serial music, your brain will be perfectly programmed to model this marvelous phenomenon we call "the evolution of music."


Of course, this technique works well for … everything. When you need medical treatment, first seek out a witchdoctor or some tribal medicine man to cast some spells of healing; you can work up to herbs and elixirs; eventually go to the local barber aka surgeon, and eventually you'll get round to the modern medical-school trained professional physician, by which point your faculties will have been well formed.

If artists followed this learn-by-chronological-steps format, every composer's first symphony would be a "classical" sonata-form vehicle on par with early Haydn, and it would be quite a while before they opted into anything remotely original or "new".

It's certainly good to know one's history, and artists benefit by paying heed to the past masters, but we start off in our own modern world and progress forward sometimes at a hectically fast pace. I learned about computers by studying Fortran programming in the early 70s, but I would hardly expect my grandkids to begin where I began. Rather, we'd likely go over to the Best Buy (when it again opens, someday) and purchase a laptop, or an I-phone and begin right in with all the modern doo-dads and gizmos. I haven't written a Fortran program for years; at least not since … the early 70s.

Everyday folks tune into their radios or streaming devices and hear the latest popular music, completely forgoing any exposure to music of the "Gay 90's" or the Fin de siècle music of 1900. Heck, most of the "kids" today have little concept of who Frank Sinatra and Elvis are let alone Rudy Vallee, George M. Cohen, or Alberta Hunter. And they enjoy what they hear, be it the music of Lizzo, Taylor Swift, or Ed Sheeran. Why should "classical music" explorers be any different. They are, after all, well introduced to film music, much of it in a somewhat "classical" style (the orchestrations, for example) and so contemporary sounding compositions are nothing unfamiliar to anyone who pays even a mild attention to modern media, and that is nearly everyone, at least of those whom I know.

Let us pursue arts by way of our own interests rather than make it some sort of scientific project. Don't force a child to listen to Hildegaard von Bingen before exposing her to Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms … or Joan Tower. If a youngster watching TV hears Emily Cheung singing Mozart's "Queen of the Night Aria" during a Volvo commercial and expresses interest in the music, there is no need to steer the child to Monteverdi before telling him about Mozart's operas and the other music the boy genius wrote. There will be plenty of time for a new comer to classical music to dedicate his or her life to Musicology. At the beginning, just enjoy the music, and follow where it takes you. Our brains are actually quite efficient when it comes to "forming correctly", and not everything we are exposed to is done so in incremental or chronological steps.

Perhaps millionrainbows's observation is more applicable to musical instrument students than to music listening students, for instrumentalists tend to start at a simpler beginning before approaching more complex performing techniques. And there is merit to this approach, indeed. But though I never progressed much beyond rudimentary French horn lessons, I certainly enjoy listening to Dennis Brain play the Mozart concertos. Apples are not oranges.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Louchano said:


> Do you think it's a good idea to learn classical music in chronological order? To understand the difference through the era, or not?
> Or do you think that its better to listen to what you want, no matter the period.
> Thanksssss


that depends on the type of listener you are. Personally, I just listen what I want, without any plans or listening projects


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

It's kind of like saying you should start here first: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-physics-1/ap-mechanical-waves-and-sound

Where do you draw the line? The great classical composers drew the line at their own modern times, their impressions of modern music, and actually looking _forward _rather than backward. But maybe you want to start at the big bang.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Ethereality said:


> It's kind of like saying you should start here first: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-physics-1/ap-mechanical-waves-and-sound
> 
> Where do you draw the line?


that is very different. I actually studied physics and there you need to study from the foundations. You cannot start with quantum mechanics, you need to start with analysis, linear algebra, classical and theoretical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, classical wave theory, and only then can you begin with quantum mechanics.
There is no such hierarchical order in music. Modern music does not require that you start with medieval polyphony first, because without it you could not understand Beethoven.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

How does one understand Beethoven though? It's up to debate.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Ethereality said:


> How does one understand Beethoven though? It's up to debate.


my point is, that there is nothing to understand. Music is not an intellectual thing, that you need to analyze and understand. Just hear it and let it affect you, induce various moods and emotions.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Jacck said:


> Music is not an intellectual thing, that you *need* to analyze and understand. Just hear it and let it affect you,


It's also not a thing that you *need* to hear and let it effect you. You can easily do without it. My point is, the needs are up to the individual.


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## Louchano (Apr 18, 2020)

Thank you for your answer, Its a good view. To enjoy the music and then dedicate to musicology after if you want, yes it's a good idea, for me personally I did this kind of hystory study with non classical music, I think that I have a "disease", that I want to look back everytime, to have the view of everything, I did the same for literature, BUT... the problem is that in this way I m afraid that I wont know nothing about music, ALL but nothing


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

If you really want to understand music, go to a remote cave and listen to one note for two years.

"All of music can be understood by the understanding of one note." - some guy from India


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## sstucky (Apr 4, 2020)

I also started with the Baroque, in high school back in the days of the first Baroque revivals (mid 60s). At the same time, I was getting into Hindemith, the first 20th c. Composer I knew. It was a good basis for the next 55 years of listening.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Jacck said:


> my point is, that there is nothing to understand. Music is not an intellectual thing, that you need to analyze and understand. Just hear it and let it affect you, induce various moods and emotions.


Of course music is an intellectual thing, as is all art. Philosophy is an intellectual thing, too. In fact, we call our highest intellectual degrees by the term Ph.D -- Doctor of Philosophy. And music is philosophy. And science and math are likewise intellectual things, though they differ somewhat in their essence to either Music or Philosophy. Still, both, Music and Philosophy _and_ Science and Math are capable of analyzation and of being understood.

It sort of bubbles down, in a simplistic way, to the notion that one provides definitive answers to the question (Science and Math) while the other does not -- rather, the "answers", in as much as there are any, remain vague, conjectural, and unsettled, and any real definitive answer may simply not exist at all (Music and Philosophy). Which is part of the reason why I've always been drawn more towards the arts and philosophy rather than science and math, though I've studied both. At some intellectual level I am "bored" by the notion of a definitive answer. 1+1=2 and that's that. But what is "Love", or "Hope", or "Justice", or "Beauty", or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Ravel's String Quartet.

I have revisited the Beethoven Fifth and the Ravel Quartet many times over the years, and I still remain unsettled as to what they are all about. Which in my way of thinking about philosophical ideas is a good thing. A known answer becomes rather dull in comparison. I need not ponder 1+1=2; it hits the wall and stops there.

What I deeply appreciate about math is the notion that when one thinks of a mathematical concept or equation, say the Pythagorean theorem (a²+b²=c²), whoever they are and wherever they be the thought they have is exactly the same at any time of day on any given day. Not so with the Brahms Fourth Symphony. No one who approaches that work will have exactly the same idea about it or feeling for it's meaning that anybody else has. Nor with great philosophical questions, either. They do not lend themselves to solutions and a single "frozen idea". Which is what I deeply appreciate about Music and Philosophy.

But don't suggest that these "fluid ideas" are less intellectual than "frozen ideas." There is beauty in the laws of Physics, but also in the sounds a score by Schubert can produce at the hands of an artist. Music might appeal greatly to emotions, but it in no way empties the mind or appeals to a vacant intellect. Most of us at this Forum suspect that there is a great intellectual component to the music we discuss here, which we determine for reasons not easily expressed to be more intellectual than those sounds appreciated moreso by the teenie boppers and other such followers of Taylor Swift and New Kids on the Block....

The word "genius" is often overused and often inappropriately assigned to persons of great popularity or a bit of marketing cleverness. But few of us will doubt that the word does not apply to folks such as J.S.Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, Schoenberg …. We honor what they did, create music, as profound intellectual achievements.

I realize that if I had my druthers, I would stake everything to finally behold the "theory of everything," what physicists sometimes term "E8 Theory" or "TOE". Yes, this idea haunts me. What could it be?

But, I also realize that a brief moment after learning that theory I would be at the wall, in command of a definitive answer, and I would still find pleasure in turning back to the music of Bach and Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Bartok to hear what I might hear. With music, as with other "fluid" intellectual pursuits, the joy is in the searching for an answer, even when one knows no definitive answer is possible to find.

I treasure having a brain. And I treasure feeding it intellectual stimuli including music. And maybe especially music.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

I think for most people, listening chronologically is a bad idea. (Unless maybe it's in reverse chronological order.)

Unless you live in a bubble, you've accumulated a lifetime of exposure and some level of understanding of the music that's all around you (even if you are a young person, that's likely a lot). Where we are today is the result of centuries of evolution and trends in music. Music from a thousand years ago will sound pretty foreign if you make that big of a leap, and I think it's better to approach it knowing (and hearing) the whole history of the music, which involves sampling from different eras.

So, I really think it's best to just listen to what interests you (which may include chant), but there's no special virtue in proceeding chronologically.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Reverse alphabetical. Start with Zemlinsky and work slowly back to Albinoni or Ades.


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## Ekim the Insubordinate (May 24, 2015)

My exploration of classical music, if mapped out, would probably look like a cat walking across the room - the most random and bizarre course you could possibly imagine.

Really, I got interested in it over a decade ago, and had a good friend who was very knowledgeable. I told him what I knew I liked, and he gave me some recommendations of where to go next. This went on for a while, but then I moved and lost contact with him. So I went online and found recommendation lists, and just worked my way through them. Then I discovered the wonderful classical music CD collection at a local library not far from where I live, and would try all kinds of different things - admittedly, sometimes for no other reason that I thought the cover art on the album looked cool (I discovered SOOOO many great recordings on the Hyperion label this way).


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## chorallawyer (May 3, 2020)

I'm in a similar boat in terms of how do I listen chronologically. I'm debating between chronologically exploring a composer then moving forward (ex. start with Mozart then move onto Beethoven). while also moving back because I definitely want to explore early music too. Alternatively, I was thinking of starting with the rankings across here on TC that lead me to join the forum in the first place.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

I started with Britten (because I sang him in a school choir). Then you find out he was a pianist and a conductor. What did he conduct? So then you start listening to Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Bridge, Grainger, Elgar, Schumann, Bach. What did he play on the piano? So then you start listening to McPhee, Vaughan Williams, Copland, Debussy, Tippett, Holst, Wolf, Schubert and Purcell.

And for each name you get introduced to by Britten, there's an equivalent story: who did Haydn know, like, listen to? Who did Vaughan Williams know, like, listen to? and so on. That lot will get you about 400 years of music history under your belt!

A similar effect was had when I got hooked on Maria Callas. Start listening to her, and you get introduced to the music of Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Bellini, Ponchielli, Gluck, Bizet, Wagner... soon, you'll have most of the 19th century operatic repertoire under your belt!

You just need to find an entry point, basically. Find someone in whom you have an interest, and follow _their_ interests. That someone could be a composer or a performer, conductor, violinist... whatever, really. Learning about classical music is a journey: you just need to start somewhere and be prepared to be taken along from that point.

And, PS: get to know your composers by first name, not surname only. Helps you think of them as friends and people, not marble statues in a museum! (So *don't* do what I just did in the first and third paragraphs above! It's _Benjamin_ Britten, _Joseph_ Haydn and so on!!)


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

I cannot do that. I do not like early music much. I get tired of the Baroque or Classical sound if I listen to it nonstop. Sometimes I need dissonance (Schnittke, the modernists), sometimes I need beautiful tonality.

I think one should be introduced to classical music through the *warhorses*, then maybe enbark on a survey of a composer or even a chronological survey.


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