# What is the first classical music you can remember hearing?



## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

What is the first classical music you can remember hearing?


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Minuet in G. *grimace*


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

When I was a preschooler I listened often to a 78RPM recording of Dvorak's Humoresque. It's hard to be sure after all these years, but I'm guessing the violinist was Heifetz.

It was another 12 years or so before I bought my own first classical recording - Mozart's Four Horn Concertos Jones/Ormandy/Columbia after I got interested in the horn from a high school concert I attended.


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

How can I remember that? It was probably 60 years ago.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

1812 overture when I was 10 in my class at primary school in 1977. Our teacher brought in an LP and played it on a portable player.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

An answering machine commercial that offered vanity messages, one of which was "Nobody's home" sung to the opening notes of Beethoven's fifth.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Oh gosh, I found it:






_Everything_ is on youtube.


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## opus55 (Nov 9, 2010)

Beethoven. Probably symphony No. 5 overheard outside my uncle's room when I was 6-7 years old.


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## Conor71 (Feb 19, 2009)

Im not sure but the first Classical I remember was the music from the film Picnic At Hanging Rock - I recently found out this was the slow movement from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto


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## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

There is mostly fuzzy memories:
-radio: Finlandia?
-russian LP with Klami piece
-record store and library: bach and some organ and brass music

It was not till HS I heard soundtrac music in a film: RV 483 for Bassoon. Fist LP was that


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

The Grand March from Aida, Dad was a Verdi fan, it sure had an effect on me I do not like opera.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The first orchestral piece I heard in it's entirety was Kodaly's Hary Janos Suite at High School which we explored during our Music GCSE course. Then I remembered being introduced to the whole of Beethoven's 5th which was played over the school theatre PA when we were painting the backdrop for the drama group's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Prior to that, I remember a music teacher at my previous school playing and singing Schubert's Die Forelle ('The Trout') and Der Lindenbaum ('The Linden Tree') songs and getting us to join in - in English.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Almost certainly the first exposure to classical music that I remembered would have been in the form of cartoons:


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

My grandfather used to play Beethoven's 5th symphony when I rode with him in his car.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

There is video evidence of me hearing music since I was a baby. Some of the main ones I remember (from the video, not from real memory :lol are Nimrod (Elgar), Finlandia (Sibelius), Minuet (Boccherini), Intermezzo (Mascagni), and the Sabre Dance (Khachaturian) (I was dancing to that one), among a few others. So, I was already watching my own baby movies when I was 3 hehe, so I reheard all that stuff, and liked it.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

The first work I remember was Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. We would go most years to see the ballet at Lincoln Center in New York. I remember generally enjoying the work, but I certainly did not find it beautiful until much later as an adult.


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## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

This is the piece that was on my first baroque LP. Not the best playing. I bought some Janacek (Mladi) and Honegger that year, and some other Nonsuch and Turnabout LPs, but it was generally baroque.


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## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

I remember having an electric keyboard that my aunt gave me when I was little. It only spanned about one octave and had very horrible instrument types to choose from that sounded like various animals being assaulted. :lol: It came with some interesting preset tracks to listen to though, and one of these was _Les Patineurs Valse_, or The Skater's Waltz, by Waldteufel. That waltz is very nostalgic for me as a result and brings back many memories of me scaring my sister in the crawl space with the horrifying sounds that the keyboard made.


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## Dimboukas (Oct 12, 2011)

Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, the third part with Dubravka Tomšič. My mother used to listen to it and I was around 4 years old. I remember that when a variation of the theme was played, I thought the CD player had broken down!


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

''we wish you a merry christmas'' in a musical card.


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## crmoorhead (Apr 6, 2011)

Who knows? I remember my mum buying us a cassette of Peter and the Wolf, but I had probably been exposed already via TV. There were also pre-programmed classical pieces on our electrical keyboard - one of them was definitely "Brahm's Lullaby".

The first time I really listened to a classical piece on purpose was Saint-Saens Danse Macabre, easily recognisable as the themetune to Jonothan Creek.  It was a YouTube video of a version for piano and violin that I watched over and over again. Soon, an obsession was born. My first classical CDs were a compilation of pieces composed by Saint-Saens and a compilation of piano pieces.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)




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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

1812 Overture. I really do not like it much today at all. As with any music, you can only hear a piece so often before it becomes numbingly predictable.


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## Toddlertoddy (Sep 17, 2011)

Beethoven's Fifth. Our elementary school had a 10-minute period where we would silent read with some kind of classical music provided by our music teacher.


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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

I remember it distinctly. It was a classical CD that my grandmother bought and played for me when I was three—my first exposure to classical music. I was spellbound and listened to it day and night. On it was Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Chopin's Minute Waltz, "Tuileries", "Chicks in Shells", and "Limoges" from Pictures at an Exhibition, and Wedding Day at Troldhaugen by Grieg. That was probably the most life-changing time of my life.


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## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

Ode to Joy from Beethoven's 9th.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Mozart Symphony No.40 1st movement and I love(d) it.

It was the alarm of my clock around 17 years ago


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## Arabella (Jun 5, 2012)

I think Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)

My dad listened to classical music all my childhood, so I have no chance of remembering the first I heard, but the I think the first classical music I really noticed and wanted to play myself was Grieg stuff like In the Hall of the Mountain King, Morning Mood etc.

We also had this on video tape. Listening to it now, I can tell they've actually made 4 hands arrangements.





It's a little weird because last night I searched up this film after suddenly remembering it. I probably hadn't seen it for 20 years. And now this thread comes up.  The one where the cricket is dancing I don't think I've heard since back then, which is a little strange since the other pieces are so famous. I had to read through the comments to find out what it was. (An Ecossaise from op. 72)


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## Merve (Jun 7, 2012)

The earliest piece I *remember* hearing is Mozart's piano concerto 21 mvt 2. It was used as background music to a story casette I listened to all the time when I was about 5 years old. The story it played in was "the little prince". To this day I can't listen to that concerto without being transported back to that time.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Stargazer said:


> My grandfather used to play Beethoven's 5th symphony when I rode with him in his car.


Presumably Liszt's realisation for solo piano rather than the original orchestral work.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

My parents had a few 78s which I ruined as a small child. One of them was _Morning _c/w _Anitra's dance _from _Peer Gynt_. I can't say it has left me with a life long aversion to (or love for) Grieg.

Somewhat later, my father acquired a Ferguson reel to reel tape recorder and recorded stuff off the radio. I particularly remember Nielsen 3 and 5, and some of the Shostakovich quartets (3, 8 for sure) and symphonies (eg 5). Now, that experience _did _leave me with a primordial relationship to these works.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

The first classical music I can actually remember hearing, Mozart: Horn concerto no. 1 in D major. I was I think eight years old.

My earliest interest in classical music based on what my parents have told me: Nigel Westlake's reworking of the second half of the second movement of Saint-Saëns' third symphony as heard in the movie "Babe." When I was three I would apparently mime a violin while singing the tune. It has since then become my favourite symphony.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Tchaikovsky's Swan lake. I listened to the main theme on tv (actually in a japanese cartoon named Dr Slump by Toriyama, I was then 8- 10 years old, I don't remember) and found The Swan lake suite on cd at my village's library. But a lot of tunes remained in my mind from tv (Carmen's toreador, Also sprach Zarathustra, Nutcracker, La donna e mobile, La traviata's drinking song, The ride of the Valkyries...).


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

My dad listened to classical music (WCLV) when I was growing up and every summer we would go to Blossom Music Center to hear summer concerts by the Cleveland Orchestra. I can remember being _very_ young, singing in a hospital for someone, and saying that I wanted to be an opera singer when I grew up. I honestly at that time did not know there were other kinds of singing 

I remember being very fond of _The Mikado_.


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## dmg (Sep 13, 2009)

My father had mix tapes of Mozart's chamber works - I found them in his tape collection when I was very young and listened to them out of curiosity.


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## Steve M (Sep 28, 2010)

I remember as a very young child listening as my mom played Dvorak's New World Symphony on our old phonograph player.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

Delibes flower duet on the moomins


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