# Do you remember your first piece of classical music?



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

When you look back at your childhood, which piece of classical music do you remember hearing first? You've probably heard several pieces as a kid but there's only one which you distinctively remember as ''the first''. You probably also remember where you were and what you were doing.

For me it's Beethoven's 9th. I was 6 or 7 at school and our multi-tasking teacher was trying to teach us how to sing the adapted lyrics. I remember being mesmerized by the hymn... It was at a time when I didn't know what the term ''classical music'' meant. I simply remember having a piano at home, which I wasn't allowed to touch, with three scary looking statuettes on its top.

After my encounter with LVB's 9th I learned that one of those statuettes represented him, the others being Bach and Mozart (naturally).

That was my introduction to the world of classical music.


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I remember hearing Peter and the Wolf as a child. Later in my late teens, I remember Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Beethoven's Fifth being some of the first classical works I liked.


----------



## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

This, which is a remake of this, which is a cover of this.

Also, A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

My fifth grade teacher tried to get us interested in classical music. She played the Ritual Fire Dance a lot. It brings back images of a wooden desk with long-forgotten names scratched on it which made it difficult to write anything on paper.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Obviously, there was some unavoidable exposure as a child, either on tv or the radio, and our elementary school class attended a concert with the local philharmonic orchestra, but I don't recall any of the works (Hall of the Mountain King, likely, and more), but, that said, the first pieces I recall getting into were:

Ligeti Lux Æterna
Varèse Déserts
Stockhausen Opus 1970
Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire
Xenakis Orient-Occident

I cannot pinpoint exactly which one was first, since they all kind of happened at the same time, but it might have been the Ligeti, since it appeared in the Kubrick film at the same time I was starting to get into classical music.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

You had a piano in your house and you weren't allowed to touch it?!

Does that qualify as child abuse?

My first classical music may have been excerpts from Prokofiev's _Cinderella_, accompanied by a narration of the story on a little golden 45rpm record. Or, less interestingly, it may have been my grandmother sitting at the piano and hacking away at Suppe's _Poet and Peasant_ overture, which I later learned to play myself.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

My sister had piano lessons in the late 1950s . I remember her struggling through the Mozart Sonata Semplice in C (K. 525?) about 4 million times. I have disliked most Mozart to this day.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

For me, it was the _Polovtsian Dances_ on 78, with an artist's illustration showing somewhat stylized Polovtsian nomad warriors with their Mongol caps and furs and daggers and bows and arrows, all leaping and bounding in their enthusiasm in coming to grips with the fated Prince Igor. Made a big impression, both musically and visually, on a 4 or 5 year old. Also _Peer Gynt_, _Peter and the Wolf_, _Warsaw Concerto._


----------



## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

I'm not exactly sure. I have a feeling it could have been Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite, because every year at my grade school the 4th grade class has a Christmas play version of the story that uses Tchaikovsky's music. The younger grades sat closest to the stage, so I got to see all of the dancers up front with the beautiful music.

If not that, I know for sure that I loved the Bach/Stokowski Toccata and Fugue in d minor from the beginning of Fantasia. That segment was the part I remembered best as a child. While the Sorcerer's Apprentice is fun, and the Pastoral Symphony has sexually confusing imagery, and the Night on Bald Mountain is scary, I always loved watching the abstract shapes and clouds and colors during the fugue.

Funny enough, I didn't even know Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was in that film until years later when I started getting into his music. I guess as a kid it didn't captivate me, which makes no sense because children are inherently violent and primal. At least I was.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Cosmos said:


> I'm not exactly sure. I have a feeling it could have been Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite, because every year at my grade school the 4th grade class has a Christmas play version of the story that uses Tchaikovsky's music. The younger grades sat closest to the stage, so I got to see all of the dancers up front with the beautiful music.
> 
> If not that, I know for sure that I loved the Bach/Stokowski Toccata and Fugue in d minor from the beginning of Fantasia. That segment was the part I remembered best as a child. While the Sorcerer's Apprentice is fun, and the Pastoral Symphony has sexually confusing imagery, and the Night on Bald Mountain is scary, I always loved watching the abstract shapes and clouds and colors during the fugue.
> 
> Funny enough, I didn't even know Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was in that film until years later when I started getting into his music. I guess as a kid it didn't captivate me, which makes no sense because children are inherently violent and primal. At least I was.


I wasn't violent and primal. You had evil genes. 

It took me a while to identify the Stravinsky in "Fantasia" too, but that's probably because I was distracted by the dinosaurs and volcanoes. Hmmm... Maybe that's how I sublimated my primal violence.


----------



## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

I was exposed to alot more pop music when I was a kid than classical music. The earliest classical pieces I remember hearing as a kid were the popular bits of Beethoven's fifth, Bach's toccata and fugue in d minor, and Tchaikovsky's nutcracker suite.


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Manxfeeder said:


> My fifth grade teacher tried to get us interested in classical music. She played the Ritual Fire Dance a lot. It brings back images of a wooden desk with long-forgotten names scratched on it which made it difficult to write anything on paper.


Your description sure brings back memories of my own (pertaining to the old wooden desk). Thank you.


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You had a piano in your house and you weren't allowed to touch it?!
> 
> Does that qualify as child abuse?


It sure does! It was the most horrible thing... The piano was reserved for my older brother and sister, I was 10 and 14 years younger than both respectively, thus I was considered a hazard for the piano.


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Weston said:


> My sister had piano lessons in the late 1950s . I remember her struggling through the Mozart Sonata Semplice in C (K. 525?) about 4 million times. I have disliked most Mozart to this day.


Funny story... Thanks for sharing! My older sister too had piano lessons but fortunately for me she was too lazy to practice.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

My parents always played classical music, but the one thing I do remember that they bought me a second hand turntable andthe L.P of Beethoven 5 Th piano concert. ( Kempff)

I was and are still fascinated by that piece .


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

The Gould set of The Well-Tempered Clavier, recorded onto cassette from the LPs borrowed from the public library. I was 12, maybe. I had no idea who he was.


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

ribonucleic said:


> The Gould set of The Well-Tempered Clavier, recorded onto cassette from the LPs borrowed from the public library. I was 12, maybe. I had no idea who he was.


Little did you know that your first encounter with music was the best pianist of the 20th century.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I remember about 1950. We lived in a very small house my father had built. On Saturday mornings, when my father didn't go to work, he'd often play music in the living room in the morning. I could hear the music through the bedroom wall while I was waking up. It was often Beethoven's Pastoral symphony. That's my earliest musical memory.


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

KenOC said:


> I remember about 1950. We lived in a very small house my father had built. On Saturday mornings, when my father didn't go to work, he'd often play music in the living room in the morning. I could hear the music through the bedroom wall while I was waking up. It was often Beethoven's Pastoral symphony. That's my earliest musical memory.


Did it sound like that?


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

No, but I remember my first piece of...


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I couldn't possibly tell you which was my first piece as my grandfather had a 78rpm player and a collection that went back to the early 78s and I loved to play them whenever I was there, which was often. There were recordings by Caruso, Melba, Gigli, Moisewitch and many others. Most were classical but there were also some more popular things. I even remember some pastiche called the _1918 Overture_


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Gouldanian said:


> Did it sound like that?


No. Gould hadn't recorded a note yet! It was a set of Bruno Walter 78s, with a cover that had trees growing in from each edge, upright at the bottom, sideways on the left and right, and inverted from the top.


----------



## Guest (Nov 28, 2015)

I'm trying to dredge my mind for incidental music that I might have heard as a child (early to mid 60s). There was a kids programme called 'Zoo Time' that used _Peter and the Wolf_ as its theme. The only two classical records in the house were Dvorak's 9th and Holst's Planets.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

In my early teens I collected pop music. The one piece of classical I had was a 7 inch EP with Solti conducting the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But then I had a brainstorm and sold all my pop records and started collecting classical. The first I bought were on the old Decca Ace of Clubs label which were Katchen playing the Tchaikovsky 1 with Liszt's Hungarian Fantasy; also Boyd Neel conducting Handel's Water Music. Start of a very long (and pleasurable) journey!


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mussorgsky's Pictures at an exhibition in the Ravel orchestration. 

It was in music class at high school. It did not inspire me to check out classical music, but it was one of the first classical CD's I bought almost 20 years later, and it remains a favourite.


----------



## Jeff W (Jan 20, 2014)

This was the first one for me. Hopefully everyone can tell what it is!



Spoiler



It's Beethoven's Fifth!


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

A few 45rpms in the house:

- Beethoven´s _Pathetique_ sonata played by Kempff;
- Suppé ouvertures;
- Sleeping Beauty, excerpts.

First item bought (except from a lot cassette tape recordings I did from radio programmes):
- Mozart 40+41/Karajan, EMI, cassette tape.


----------



## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

As a child at school I had to listen to the Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra which put me off classical music for a long time.

My first reliable memory of hearing a piece of classical music and actually quite liking it is an advert for Castrol (late 60s/early70s?) in which a drop of oil slowly ran down the central stripe of a Castrol oil can to the accompaniment of the opening horn call from the 2nd movement of Mahler's 7th. Funnily enough, 30 years later, the 7th was the first Mahler symphony I bought.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> My fifth grade teacher tried to get us interested in classical music. She played the Ritual Fire Dance a lot. It brings back images of a wooden desk with long-forgotten names scratched on it which made it difficult to write anything on paper.


The Ritual Fire Dance was among my first pieces too - it was in my family's 78 collection. I can't say which was the very first, but others in the collection that I remember are: Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Bolero. I used to dance round our living room in the pink gauzy skirt that Mum made for me as a Christmas present - I thought I was the cat's pajamas.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> I remember about 1950. We lived in a very small house my father had built. On Saturday mornings, when my father didn't go to work, he'd often play music in the living room in the morning. I could hear the music through the bedroom wall while I was waking up. It was often Beethoven's Pastoral symphony. That's my earliest musical memory.


Lucky kid. All I probably heard coming through the wall was "How much is that doggie in the window."

By the way, what have you done with your hair?


----------



## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

I watched Disney's Fantasia as a kid a handful of times and enjoyed it, though not so much for it to have a lasting impression in terms of the specific music. My first classical music CD was a "Best of" Tchaikovsky CD, my favorite piece being that sad little tune from Swan Lake. Chopin was also an early-and-lasting favorite.


----------



## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

It's hard to say exactly what was my first, given that I've been listening to classical music since I was 3. I do however remember listening to opera early on and Track 1 on a number of opera compilations I had at the time was *Largo al factotum* by Rossini. I like to think of as the ceremonial first piece of classical music I ever heard, but I can't be absolutely sure that it was.


----------



## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Mahler, Symphony no 1, 1st movement, beginning... with Concertgebouw Orchestra - Bernard Haitink
This was the original cover:


----------



## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

TxllxT said:


> Mahler, Symphony no 1, 1st movement, beginning... with Concertgebouw Orchestra - Bernard Haitink
> This was the original cover:


Great first piece! :guitar:


----------



## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

gallinari with the no look pass


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Stavrogin said:


> gallinari with the no look pass


I don't know what it's called the emperor and why everyone assumes that it was composed for Napoleon... It's LVB's 3rd symphony that was dedicated to NB. Such a misconception...


----------



## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Probably one of those classical music for pregnancy albums. I don't know, I was still a fetus then.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Gouldanian said:


> I don't know what it's called the emperor and why everyone assumes that it was composed for Napoleon... It's LVB's 3rd symphony that was dedicated to NB. Such a misconception...


Because his English publisher gave it that name saying something like "this is the emperor of concerti"


----------



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

Mine was a choral work called 'The Creed' by Grechaninov, which may have been from a Readers Digest box set but I can't be sure as I was still only a nipper. I don't know whether 'The Creed' was a stand-alone work or part of a larger one as ironically Grechaninov is one composer which still goes under my radar. Back then I couldn't read the name Grechaninov properly either. 

As I recall, the first multi-movement work I heard in its entirety was the Háry János Suite which was the featured work in our weekly music lesson in the third year of high school. Even though it took nearly a quarter of a century before I got into CM properly and in due course hearing the work again I could still remember sections of it such as the Viennese Music Clock and the ominous march depicting the approach of Napoleon's army.


----------



## sabrina (Apr 26, 2011)

It may not be the first...still I think it is. It was Beethoven Egmond overture conducted by Karajan. I recorded it with a cassette player and I listened to it until I learned it by heart. I was 14 years old :lol:


----------



## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

I listened to 2 LPs my mother had: One was Copland's _Rodeo_ and _Billy the Kid_. The other was Ravel's _Bolero_, _La Valse_ and _Ma Mere L'Oye_. I thoroughly enjoyed the Copland and was dazzled by the Ravel. I still am.


----------



## cort (Feb 24, 2013)

I heard operas at the house but the first piece of classical music that really grabbed was Mendelssohn's violin concerto played by Nadja Sonnenberg I think it was when I was about 17 I guess. After that it was all over....


----------



## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

ribonucleic said:


> The Gould set of The Well-Tempered Clavier, recorded onto cassette from the LPs borrowed from the public library. I was 12, maybe. I had no idea who he was.


Nice, great place to start. For me it was his mortal enemy Horowitz playing Mozart's 23 piano concerto in A, still one of my favorites from the Mozart PC's.


----------



## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

Agree with some previous opinions: I don't necessarily remember the first "classical music" piece I heard.

The real point being, several years ago, sitting and browsing my media player, rotating the old list, I stop upon Debussy, who has one piece there in my collection, from a (now admittedly) weak compilation album, the wonderfully mesmerizing _Reverie_ sitting there alone, which I click to play. And I let it play. Entirely. And I have a multitude of emotions and memories that I could not begin to relay for personal reasons. But those sort of passions bent me and set me off toward a direction in music and artistic interest that let me spill forth here.

So that would be my answers: *Debussy*, _Reverie_.


----------



## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

I remember the first album I used to hear, it was a DG tape, Chopin's polonaises by Pollini. I was 5 or 6 years old then. There was no much classical music around me, but for some reason the tape was there and I remember that I loved that sound.
Two years ago I bought that same cd and it was nearly magical to hear it again. I still love that sound.


----------



## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Grieg, Peer Gynt Suite number 1. I didn't remember what it was called and had to Google "classical music about morning", which was all I could remember about the name of it. Nice tune. It was played at infant school assemblies as we filed in and sat down. The other one was Peter and the Wolf, which I didn't like. I've always had a problem with instrumental music which is supposed to be descriptive of something highly specific, because I can never visualise whatever it's supposed to be or concentrate for long, and feel like I've failed- perhaps my attention span was ruined by the three minute pop song! In fact, I was highly suspicious of "classical" music until John McCormack sneaked it in under the radar. I don't remember which of his recordings of art music (as opposed to the more commonly heard Irish songs or drawing room ballads) was the first to become a favourite, but it might have been the aria "Champs Paternels" from Mehul's Joseph, which I played obsessively on an old LP transfer. (Edit: I think it was more likely to have been "When other lips" from Wallace's opera Maritana on 78- but it's not "classical" if it's in English _and_ you can understand the words, right? ) Enrico Caruso was the first classical artist (that I actually knew was an opera singer) to be a favourite, thanks to a randomly discovered 78 of "M'appari" from Flotow's Martha- and that probably pre-dates the McCormack 78s I acquired, but until the McCormack revelation I think I still thought of opera as something forbiddingly "classical" and thus not to be openly enjoyed by the likes of me!


----------



## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

My grandmother always sit me at the piano bench beside her since I was just a toddler, and shared with me both classical and non-classical tunes. Frankly, I don't remember which was the 'first'. However, I do recall the one she played more often when i was a small child, so there is a good chance it was also one of the firsts. She was a huge fan of French music (her mother was French, and she raised my grandmother speaking in French only with her), and was particularly fond of playing Satie's _Gymnopédies_, especially this one:


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

My father had an LP classical record collection and they were always lying around on the carpeted living room floor. 

Not sure which one I reached for first but Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites, Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto and Haydn's Surprise Symphony were early favorites of this inquisitive 6 year old.


----------



## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Shostakovich's 5th Symphony (I. Moderato)

I was 4 or 5 and the TV would show snippets/facts of WWII with the Moderato playing in the background. That movement is tattooed in my brain for all time.


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Morimur said:


> Shostakovich's 5th Symphony (I. Moderato)
> 
> I was 4 or 5 and the TV would show snippets/facts of WWII with the Moderato playing in the background. That movement is tattooed in my brain for all time.


That's an intense piece for a child!


----------



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I cant say with 100 % accuracy but it may have been




 In an ''getting to know nature'' tv shows...


----------



## Vronsky (Jan 5, 2015)

As far as I remember, the first piece of classical music I've ever heard was Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons). But, the first piece that really got me interested for classical music was Shostakovich's Second Piano Trio.


----------



## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Probably Eine kleine Nachtmusik.


----------



## Herman (Nov 12, 2015)

Yes, my first piece was a waltz by Chopin (Op. 64 No.2). Then I fell in love with classical music.


----------



## Herman (Nov 12, 2015)

Herman said:


> Yes, my first piece was a waltz by Chopin (Op. 64 No.2). Then I fell in love with classical music.


I was fourteen years old. It was a nice spring afternoon.


----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

I have absolutely no clue, but my mom says that one day when I was very little I said that I wanted to hear Beethoven and she had absolutely no idea where it came from. I don't remember the incident and I don't know where I might have first heard about Beethoven, even though I just about never listen to his music I liked it a lot when I was little.


----------



## Andolink (Oct 29, 2012)

I don't remember my first piece of classical music but I've been told what it was and my reaction to it:

My mother, while in late pregnancy with me, (this would be something like December of 1957) attended a performance of Leo Delibes' ballet Coppélia and related how she was experiencing me rhythmically kicking her all through the performance. 

Not sure if that means I liked what I was hearing or if I was protesting, but anyway...


----------



## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

I haven't the foggiest idea what I heard first. In fact, it's odd to me how many people here actually can remember this.


----------



## Guest (Dec 3, 2015)

Lukecash12 said:


> I haven't the foggiest idea what I heard first. In fact, it's odd to me how many people here actually can remember this.


Well, that's rather the point, isn't it? What is being reported is what is being remembered, not necessarily what is first heard. It would be odder if people reported what they _couldn't _remember!


----------



## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

MacLeod said:


> Well, that's rather the point, isn't it? What is being reported is what is being remembered, not necessarily what is first heard. It would be odder if people reported what they _couldn't _remember!


Thing is, I think back and draw a big huge blank. There isn't even a guess I could give. With that said, I have a deplorable lack of memory regarding anything when I was 9 or younger, so what is "odd" to me may simply be my own oddness.


----------



## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

No, I can't remember either. I would certainly have been very young. We lived with my paternal grandparents until I was about 2 years old, and my grandmother had a collection of 78s. I really can't remember what most of them were, but suspect there would have been some 'light classical' amongst them. She certainly had a record of Victor Borge sketches and pastiches which I can still recall.


----------



## Guest (Dec 3, 2015)

Gouldanian said:


> When you look back at your childhood, which piece of classical music do you remember hearing first?


It seems there are those who are trying to remember what they first 'heard' (I can't possibly tell you what I first heard, since it was likely that I heard music long before I was consciously able to listen to it) and those who are trying to remember what they first 'listened' to. Which did you intend?


----------



## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

MacLeod said:


> It seems there are those who are trying to remember what they first 'heard' (I can't possibly tell you what I first heard, since it was likely that I heard music long before I was consciously able to listen to it) and those who are trying to remember what they first 'listened' to. Which did you intend?


Guess I wasn't being clear enough. I can't remember either of those two. There is no way I could even approximate for you what I first actively listened to.


----------



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> It seems there are those who are trying to remember what they first 'heard' (I can't possibly tell you what I first heard, since it was likely that I heard music long before I was consciously able to listen to it) and those who are trying to remember what they first 'listened' to. Which did you intend?


No, the question wasn't whether you remember the first piece you ever heard (because that's impossible), the question was: do you remember the first piece that you recall hearing consciously.

I must have heard tons of pieces before I was consciously able to understand what that sound that was coming out of the stereo was. But at a certain point there's a piece that you surely remember as the first one you hear while realizing that you are listening to it.


----------



## TwoPhotons (Feb 13, 2015)

I remember my sister practising endlessly for her piano exams and out of all the pieces I heard her play the earliest I can recall is "The Orphan Girl" by Granados. I must've been around 4-5 at the time.


----------



## Ferrariman601 (Oct 10, 2015)

My first was most likely Mozart's Divertimento in D, K. 136. I remember I got a CD player/radio for Christmas one year and it came with a sample CD - that piece was on it. I think I was about 7. When I became an official classical aficionado many years later, I went on a hunt for the piece, as I couldn't remember the name, only that it was by Mozart. After looking through all the K. numbers, I eventually found it.


----------

