# How do I learn to "process" classical music?



## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

I am stuck at a place in my appreciation of classical music where I have a few select favourites, but everything else aside from those seems incomprehensible. I don't mean here that everything else is unpleasant, but rather that I cannot get a feel for the structure and flow of the music, remember absolutely nothing from it even after repeat listens, and for all intents and purposes the experience is equivalent to daydreaming about pleasant things for a few minutes to an hour or so and then moving on with my day - it's utterly meaningless and pointless.

Example: Beethoven's 9 symphonies are among the aforementioned few select favourites. There is something very accessible and easy to grasp about how the ideas in them unfold, it all seems so effortless and freeflowing. So my local philharmonic is putting a show for Brahms' 4th. Having browsed around enough to know that Brahms' symphonies were heavily influenced by Beethoven and that the 4th is considered a major work, I buy a ticket. The week before that, I download a recording of the symphony on my phone and listen to it simply as background to studying three or four times. Nothing about it makes an impression or sticks with me, though it feels nice. The same thing repeats on the concert: complete inability to follow where the music is going, it's just 45 minutes of pleasant noise. I get nothing out of it, remember nothing about it, cannot make sense of it.

Another example: a CD of Das lied von der Erde, a relatively recent recording on the Naxos label. Again, if I love Beethoven, I'm supposed to love Mahler too. Again, I've listened to it at least five times and while the whole thing sounds awe-inspiring, if it were not for the vocals and the booklet of lyrics, I would be completely lost. Nothing about this sticks with me. I can't tell you anything about it afterwards, aside from the themes that the lyrics touch upon.

The music is supposed to be written so that you don't need formal education and ear training to grasp it, otherwise classical music would be a scene where musicians play for musicians and composers only and... it can't be like that, right? But what's the difference then? Why does Schoenberg's 4th string quartet (to take a "difficult" work as an example) sound so clear and incredible and magnificent, but his 2nd and 3rd ones don't? With all of them it's impossible for me to really follow note by note what's going on and how each idea develops, yet one just sticks and the other's don't. Why is Debussy so much fun but Ravel isn't? Why do the English composers from the early 20th century "stick", but the continental Romantics from the 19th century after Beethoven don't?

It makes no sense, and it leads me to believe that I don't really grasp or genuinely appreciate my favourites either. How do you do it, how do you really get into this music?


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

I think you're so desperate to get into it that you're expectations about aesthetic enjoyment are not finding realization in the variety of works you're listening to. Just find things you like, and gradually progress. A lot of Ravel won't make sense immediately, but just try to adopt a stance of openness to the sounds. Hear it like a child, and don't _try_ to enjoy it. There is no _way_ to really get into it - and most importantly: don't feel as if it is your duty as a cultured member of society to enjoy Brahms' 4th on the first or even fifth listen. There's nothing wrong with you, and quite often there's nothing wrong with the music. The difficulty lies in your mode of relation to the music, in the space between the music and you. It seems you're not finding music meaningful at the moment, so take a break! Come back to it when you're feeling genuinely thirsty for novelty and aesthetic experience. Your experience with the Brahms 4 sounds like you were so buying into the prospect of enjoying it like Beethoven that you didn't just open yourself and listen as each sound comes to you. Sibelius said the symphony should be like a river, and while Brahms 4 might not be a symphonic river of the Sibelian variety, it helps sometimes to listen to it that way, allowing each musical idea to come as it will. The other possibility is Brahms and others just don't do it for you, and in that case you wouldn't be alone. Brahms does it for me on most levels but not all.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

To take the Mahler first - there is no rule that says lovers of Beethoven love Mahler and if you did have a hankering to listen to some Mahler Das Lied is hardly the easiest place to start. The symphonies of Brahms, also, can be a bit of an acquired taste - I love them as much as Beethoven's now but found them heavy going in my earlier days. 

It sounds like you are exploring nicely and finding what you like. That will change and deepen and broaden, perhaps. I don't have the same perceptions as you do - that is clear to me from your 4th paragraph - but I think you are doing the right thing. You don't need a trained ear or education ... as with other forms of love, you just need to trust your own tastes and interests and follow them where they take you.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I am not sure who would have said that if you like Beethoven, you should also like Mahler. I love Beethoven's works, and I like a good deal of Mahler, but they are very different beasts. (It would be just as silly to say that if you like symphonies you should like string quartets. You might, or you might not.) It would even be unwise to say if you like Beethoven you should also like Brahms, although that is a more reasonable comparison. I certainly would never suggest that someone exploring classical music should make such a leap, although there is nothing wrong with sampling a wide range and deciding what seems most worthwhile for greater exploration. (Fortunately, youtube gives you an opportunity of sampling a large number of works with little risk other than time, as long as one accepts that these are not necessarily the best sound or performances.) 

One problem in starting with Beethoven is that you have begun at or pretty near the top, and few composers are going to be in that tier. If your search is to find someone else who sounds like Beethoven, that is a search likely to end in disappointment. I think that Tchaikovsky is a great composer, but he doesn't sound like Beethoven. Schubert may be closest, but even he doesn't really sound like Beethoven. If one particularly liked Mozart, there is a whole series on Chandos of Contemporaries of Mozart, but they wouldn't necessarily be mistaken for Mozart, and while often quite enjoyable on their own terms, there is a reason that none of them are as revered as Mozart. 

Beethoven is on the cusp of Romanticism, when composers really begin to develop more in their own ways and to have their own sound and form of expression. (This statement should not be read as suggesting that all Baroque composers sound alike. They just tend to act under more formal constraints and many of the lower tier composers do sound very similar to each other, particularly if one is only approaching them from the perspective of a casual listener.)


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Personally, when I got started in classical music, I read music appreciation books/articles on each piece I was interested in. Classical is a genre which requires a degree of concentration to appreciate it, and the fun is in discovering everything that's contained in it. If I can find something which already has done the hard work, that speeds the process.

David Hurwitz has a series of books like that. I have the ones on Sibelius and Mahler. He takes each piece and, step by step, gives a clear narrative on what is happening at that moment in a nontechnical way. He even includes a CD of some of the pieces which is timed to his text. Leonard Bernstein has a series of Harvard lectures which also do something similar. And Coursera features music appreciation classes without charge unless you want college credit. Benjamin Zander includes a commentary CD with his Mahler cycle which is also helpful.

There are also YouTube videos which give running commentaries on pieces. Here's one I picked out at random. Just be sure to forgive her for calling Claire de Lune a "song." 




Once you get familiar with various composers and pieces, the other pieces in that genre or by that composer start to make more sense as you know what to listen for.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_How do you do it, how do you really get into this music?_

I would suggest hearing the music as a way of getting into _your inner world_. It's not so much a matter of processing the music and its outer structure and forms, though of course that can be useful and of interest, but more so your reactions to it - what you are experiencing internally as self-discovery. That's where the magic is, and the music is what stimulates your awareness of that. And the journey can be a lifetime of adventure that can awaken your depth of feelings and expand your emotional range.

.


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## licorice stick (Nov 24, 2014)

I would never recommend that anyone getting into classical start with Das Lied von der Erde or Brahms 4 or Bach's Mass in B minor, as I saw on another similar thread. Start with Rhapsody in Blue and Bolero and Tchaik 4. It took me many years to "get" Haydn, and I didn't "get" Schumann until this year. Much of the time, Brahms 1 and Das Lied von der Erde and the Mass in B minor are still difficult pills to swallow.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I'd say try more "roots" type of music and branch out from there. You don't have to like the music to "get it" necessarily, although there is usually at least a bit that would become more pleasing. Mahler and Brahms were tougher nuts to crack until I got used to the idiom, then it becomes a collection of recognizable blocks of music, and over time and familiarity with the idioms you can know what is going on in the composer's head for entire works in a range of Eras in music. I don't recommend Schoenberg, Bartok, Prokofiev except to those that are curiouser and curiouser about music and have built up a higher tolerance towards unconventional music that wanders in different territories in harmony.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

It's really a difficult question to answer but ultimately the only way you can appreciate anything is to be open-minded and expose yourself to new things. Even if that takes you, for a little bit, outside your comfort zone. Attentive listening is also a must to gain real appreciation. You do music, and especially classical music, an injustice to use it as "background" music. 

One way to grow in your appreciation would be to take a music appreciation class where an instructor can guide you as to what to listen for in pieces. Some symphony orchestras offer classes before concerts to educate the public about the pieces they are performing. I have personally found those helpful and beneficial. Subscribing to a classical music magazine like BBC Music or Gramophone would be most helpful. I read my copies from cover to cover each month. Books can also be purchased. One I would highly recommend is called "Listen To The Music" by Jonathan D. Kramer. Another is "Classical Music - The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works". Both are very helpful.

Lastly, since you enjoy Beethoven, I would recommend the music of Carl Czerny and Ferdinand Ries. Both were pupils of Beethoven and you can hear influences within both. I would also say you should absolutely listen to John Field. He was Irish but moved to Russia and composed most of his music there. It's not likely that he ever heard any Beethoven and yet many of his ideas are similar and wonderful. There is no doubt in my mind that Field could have been as famous a composer as Beethoven had he not been isolated in Russia. Give a listen and see for yourself!


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## Andolink (Oct 29, 2012)

For crying out loud!

Just find music you like and listen to it. Stop fretting about not "getting" something in the music. There's no reason ever for music to be a source of frustration. Music is about enjoyment and nothing more. 

If you don't find something to enjoy in whatever music you're listening to then why would you think there is something wrong with you?

There isn't.

You just like what you like and you don't like what you don't like.

That's all.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Andolink said:


> For crying out loud!
> 
> Just find music you like and listen to it. Stop fretting about not "getting" something in the music. There's no reason ever for music to be a source of frustration. Music is about enjoyment and nothing more.
> 
> ...


What he said. ,


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

You don't need to "process" classical music.

You relax and enjoy it like any other music.

Why does classical music seem to intimidate so many people? If I can "get" it, anybody can!!!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Boychev said:


> I am stuck at a place in my appreciation of classical music where I have a few select favourites, but everything else aside from those seems incomprehensible. I don't mean here that everything else is unpleasant, but rather that I cannot get a feel for the structure and flow of the music, *remember absolutely nothing from it even after repeat listens*, and for all intents and purposes the experience is equivalent to daydreaming about pleasant things for a few minutes to an hour or so and then moving on with my day - it's utterly meaningless and pointless.
> 
> Example: Beethoven's 9 symphonies are among the aforementioned few select favourites. There is something very accessible and easy to grasp about how the ideas in them unfold, it all seems so effortless and freeflowing. So my local philharmonic is putting a show for Brahms' 4th. Having browsed around enough to know that Brahms' symphonies were heavily influenced by Beethoven and that the 4th is considered a major work, I buy a ticket. The week before that, *I download a recording of the symphony on my phone and listen to it simply as background to studying three or four times. Nothing about it makes an impression or sticks with me, *though it feels nice. The same thing repeats on the concert: complete inability to follow where the music is going, it's just 45 minutes of pleasant noise. I get nothing out of it, remember nothing about it, cannot make sense of it.


You have never listened to Brahms's 4th. Having it on in the background while doing something else is not listening. Listening means giving the music your full attention because comprehending requires recognizing how the parts are related - which ideas recur and how they are transformed. You need to learn how to listen and then actually do it before expecting to get anything out of it.


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## Pjotr (May 2, 2018)

I think everybody listening to classical music knows this problem. I have it too, but, as mentioned by Manxfeeder, reading about music helps. Read about it when you listen to it. And, believe me, Brahms 4th is not only "nice music". The treasures are hidden at first, but after 10 or 15 times listening to it you'll discover them. I took me weeks to discover that Schuberts late piano sonates are among the best piano works ever written. And it's not that Schubert and Brahms are lesser composers than Beethoven was. They are different though. Try Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem for instance. Music at its highest level, but for the new listener the way is long and difficult.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I often find that the booklet notes in the CD are of interest. (This is assuming that you have an actual CD. If not, there are other sources, particularly for well-known fare.)


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I suggest you worry less about "processing" the music and simply continue listening to it. I agree with licorice stick above that Mahler's _Das Lied_ is perhaps not a recommendable starting point for classical music appreciation. Too, I admit that it took me some years in my youth to recognize the genius of Bach's music (and I now count at least a dozen versions of the B minor Mass in my collection as well as at least three complete Cantatas boxes), but I took to Brahms's Fourth Symphony immediately upon first hearing when I was a teenager. So ….

I suggest sticking to exploring music. There are pieces we call "war horses", the long trusted, familiar concert favorites that folks such as I seldom turn to nowadays (because we've heard them so many times and they are so familiar), but which never really lose their luster (as I realize every time I happen to bump into one of them, usually on the radio, as they remain pieces I don't often access in my home listening sessions simply because I have so much new, unfamiliar music yet to explore). What I'm advocating here is that you seek out some of these "war horses" and begin your exploration through them. They are pieces that have attracted folks to classical music through the past decades and will continue to. I mention works such as Vivaldi's _Four Seasons_ concerti, Bach's _Brandenburg Concerti_, Mozart's _Figaro _Overture, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and _Moonlight _Sonata, Rossini's _Poet and Peasant_ and _William Tell_ Overtures, Smetana's _Mouldau_, Rimsky-Korsakov's _Capriccio Espagnol_, _Russian Easter Festival Overture_, and _Scheherazade_, Tchaikovsky's _Romeo and Juliet_, _1812 Overture_, and Fifth Symphony …. There are many such attention grabbers. The thing is, these are pieces that generally attract one to explore deeper, to branch outward to other works by these composers and other classical works in general. One will begin to take on pieces of unfamiliar provenance, and the journey begins. Sure, you won't like everything. But there will be pieces that grab you and move you onto other threads.

My own classical music journey began in earnest with my hearing of Tchaikovsky's _Capriccio Italien_, another "war horse". It moved me to explore further Tchaikovsky music, which led me onto Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann … and eventually everywhere else! What I found was that I had no initial interest in processing anything, just in hearing some of this what people called "classical" music. And soon I was acquiring multiple versions (different conductors and orchestras) to hear alternate interpretations, I was reading critical reviews in music magazines, I was reading biographies of composers, I was acquiring scores and reading through the music on the page while I listened. Before I knew it, I had practically self-educated myself in classical music to the point where I actually attempted composing a few pieces myself, including full symphonies!

Today I might design a listening session of music by Iannis Xenakis, Chopin, and CPE Bach all in the same evening, after maybe listening to Miles Davis or following the session with an album by Lyle Lovett or John Martyn. I've found that my interest in classical music pulled me deeper into jazz and pop, mainly because the musical knowledge (sophistication?) I had gained from exploring "classical music" could apply to other genres and increase my appreciation of these other genres as well. And you know something: I never once thought of it as "processing" anything, until I read your post above.

So, keep listening. Before long you too will have an honorary Ph.D. in musical appreciation. And you will never regret it.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Andolink said:


> For crying out loud!
> 
> Just find music you like and listen to it. Stop fretting about not "getting" something in the music. There's no reason ever for music to be a source of frustration. Music is about enjoyment and nothing more.
> 
> ...


Err, Boychev is asking how he can understand more about a piece to _enjoy it more_. To the question "How can I learn to follow the structure of this Mahler symphony so I can find more enjoyment in it?", your reply "Duh just listen to what you like!" is worse than useless. And it's an irrelevant truism anyway.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Boychev said:


> Why does Schoenberg's 4th string quartet (to take a "difficult" work as an example) sound so clear and incredible and magnificent, but his 2nd and 3rd ones don't? With all of them it's impossible for me to really follow note by note what's going on and how each idea develops, yet one just sticks and the other's don't. Why is Debussy so much fun but Ravel isn't? Why do the English composers from the early 20th century "stick", but the continental Romantics from the 19th century after Beethoven don't?
> 
> It makes no sense, and it leads me to believe that I don't really grasp or genuinely appreciate my favourites either. How do you do it, how do you really get into this music?


The short answer is that it can take time. Sometimes decades before certain pieces click. You can always come back to Mahler and Ravel later on. Same with other Schoenberg quartets. And try different recordings when you do. I started out 35 years ago loving Beethoven, Debussy, Mussorgsky, etc. Now I'm listening to all kinds of composers, and stuff like opera, and string quartets that I never got into years ago. Just remember that the music doesn't change, but your brain, tastes, and life does. Enjoy what you can to the fullest now, and your appreciation will expand over time.


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