# How Broad is your Listening Experience?



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Disclaimer: I would never accuse anyone here of lying, posturing, or puffery (To their faces:lol

I've been thinking about this topic since the "100 Favorite Composers" thread a few months ago. I only listed 25 out of my desire to be genuine but after reviewing my list, I realized I wasn't even that familiar with all the names on my list. I've been passively listening to classical music for the majority of my 37 years but fanatically listening for the last 2. By fanatically I mean almost all the time. While sleeping, eating, cooking, working, exercising, driving, you get the point. I've watched maybe 3 movies in the last month and my television has been off since The Masters ended. It won't go on again until the World Cup begins. With absolutely no desire to brag, for it's truly nothing to brag about, I'd seriously doubt anyone here listens to more music than I do on a daily basis, but it's certainly possible that a few are quite close. This doesn't seem to be an interest which will pass or wane, much to the chagrin of my wife. I'm in it for the long haul.

This leads to my question. How vast is your knowledge of classical music and your favorite composers? Some of you here are extremely knowledgable and I feel I could ask you any question about and piece by any composer and get good insight. How do you do it or how have you done it? I realize many have been listening for upwards of 30-40 years (or more) and with that experience comes vast knowledge. Still, there is a huge difference between being familiar with a piece and being very familiar with a piece. At the rate I currently listen, I'd think I could possibly become very familiar with the majority of maybe 4 composer's catalogs each year. Even my very favorite composers (Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Bach) have more that I'm unfamiliar with than the opposite. My recent explorations have gone backwards towards Corelli, Albinoni, Vivaldi, Telemann, and Scarlatti. I currently have very little interest in anything post-Romantic but with the massive amount of undiscovered music I already own, it could be 10-20 years before I even break into the 20th century. I'll stop before this becomes unreadable but I'll ask a few final questions.

After years pass, do you continue exploring or falling back into your comfort zone?
Would you consider yourself familiar with a composer if you were only truly familiar with one style? ex. Dvorak's symphonies.


----------



## Guest (May 10, 2014)

I think musical performers have an advantage over passive listeners when it comes to mastering a composer's output. Quite simply, more of their brain is involved in both listening and performing.

For passive listeners, I suspect that both the frequency and variety of listening experiences are important. Listeners who only listen at home can absorb more if they listen also in the car or in other places. Watching a live performance can also burn music into memory more thoroughly than listening on the sofa.

Unfortunately, I am a passive listener who mostly listens at home. Also, I listen to a lot of different composers - it may be six months or more between visits to "favorite" composers such as Villa-Lobos or Berlioz or Tveitt or Faure or Bloch or Bruch. I find it interesting how my impressions of their works "evolve" between listens, but I will never master any of them.

On the bright side, I guess that means I can listen to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade for many more years without getting tired of it!


----------



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Interesting point, and the version you hear can also greatly affect your interest. Add interpretations/performances to the variety of music and and there's literally lifetimes of listening. One of my favorite pieces is Concerto 6 from Vivaldi's L'estro Armonico. It's performed at a beautifully slow pace. Recently I purchased the entire L'estro Armonico, as I only had a few of the concertos, and the finale of concerto 6 is so fast that I consider it borderline offensive. Had I owned this version first I'd probably have never listened further.


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Well, Scratchy, I listen to each one of my 2500 CDs, although some are listened to more than others, naturally ... and it took me over three years to listen to all of them. So, if you 'count' it one way, my listening is pretty wide - from the 12th century to the 21st, with lots of variety of genre including orchestral, chamber, opera, cantata, choral, concerti, ballet, solo piano, violin, lute etc etc etc.

However, if the question were "How *DEEP* is your experience, then the answer would be 'not that deep' as there are many pieces that I would not be able to recognise (and sometimes ... er, many times, not even be able to allocate to the corrrect composer). Clearly, there will be others on this site who have a better musical memory to me, many who have better musical understanding, many who have better musical knowledge and they will certainly have a better listening experience than I have. (But so what??? - I admire them and would like to emulate them)

So, am I at the end of buying? Erm .... not yet!


----------



## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

There were periods of time when I constantly listened to my CD/LP collection and made a point of attending a dozen orchestral concerts a year and seeing at least a couple of operas as well. I spent at least one night or morning a week listening to the stereo as if I were attending a concert. I quickly learned what I liked but really tried hard to appreciate music beyond Bartok or Shostakovich. But at some point, I came to the conclusion that I didn't just dislike a lot of modern music, but I actively despised much of the ideology behind it. From that point on, I've drastically cut out modern music. But conversely, I've spent more time listening to more and more "secondary" music from earlier periods. I now know the kinds of things I like (mostly late 18th to early 20th century) and I listen as widely as possible in those periods and occasionally go deeply into favorite pieces. Otherwise, there are many things that I've heard once that I think not worth a second listen (or in some cases which I regret having heard in the first place). I've also talked to musicians to learn their perspective on some works, but in the end the only tastes I have to satisfy are mine alone. Conversely, I often appreciate flawed versions of my favorites. I also read reviews with an eye to understanding how someone's opinions complement mine or help me in my quest to appreciate music from my point of view. It's a bit like wine. You can try many different things and learn to appreciate new flavors, but in the end, it's you that has to drink the stuff and pay for it in time and money.


----------



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Wonderful input, cournot. I was afraid my point would be muddled but you nailed it. I listen like I write and I write like I think. All like a pinball machine.


----------



## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

When I first started, I was very picky. Now, I keep an open mind and have favorites that span from Baroque to today. If I were asked to name as many composers as I could, I would probably name a decent handful. I've only been listening for about 7-ish years. But because I love the music so much, I like to read up on different pieces and composers. Even so, I feel like everyone on this forum knows much more than I do...got a long way to go on this wacky journey!
If you want to know more, I recommend researching background info on your favorite pieces. Why are they popular/considered great? Or why not? What was the composer's mindset? What was (s)he intending? You could also read up on composers lives. I could most easily tell someone the life stories of Beethoven and Chopin, because those are two I have read up on the most. In general, I kinda just go with the flow and pick up bits and pieces of info here and there. Like right now, I'm reading up on Busoni's opinions on musical aesthetics (which were conservative and went against the flow of atonality in the beginning of the 1900's)


----------



## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

I find that I'm very knowledgeable about my top 10 favorite composers...but other than that not so much. For like Mahler and Beethoven, not only have I listened to multiple performances of just about all of their compositions, but I've gone so far as to read up on their life history, their thoughts on each work, critic's reviews of their compositions, etc. 

My problem is mostly that only a select few works really stick with me. For example, I've listened to quite a few of Bach's cantatas, but there's only one that I can actually recall in my mind what the music sounds like. For the rest, I know that I enjoyed them, but I forget what they sound like musically and can't remember what I enjoyed about them. Does that make sense?

That's my story overall. I listen to a lot of things, but I don't remember most of those things, other than that I listened to them at some point and liked them at the time. Since I don't remember them, I often fall back to listening to the pieces that I do remember.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I normally go horizontal with my attention rather than vertical. I won't be able to tell you what type of shoes Beethoven wore during his 6th symphony premiere, but I will be able to invite you along an eclectic listening experience through all types of genres.


----------



## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

scratchgolf said:


> I'd seriously doubt anyone here listens to more music than I do on a daily basis


Hoho! Fighting talk! Challenge accepted.

edit: actually that can only really end in a stalemate

But while I listen to a considerable amount of music from as far back as possible to music written this year, and have a constant addict-like need for the new, I don't follow that up with the reading anywhere near as much as I should or would like to to have real depth of knowledge beyond the dilletantish.


----------



## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

I will add to my earlier remarks that I also listen very differently when primarily focusing on performance details (especially for poorly recorded early opera) vs. those times when I want to wallow in gorgeous sound. Unlike those who say that only the quality of the performance counts, I believe that one cannot decouple the sound from the performance. Most of the time, when listening to old recordings (poor mono from the early 50s and before) you are filling in the details that can't be heard and giving the piece the benefit of the doubt. Conversely, good sound can allow one to appreciate an otherwise second tier performance or to reevaluate a piece that you think you're familiar with. That's why -- despite the hassle -- I still go to a few live concerts a year to recalibrate my ears with live, acoustic sound. I still remember how underwhelmed I was by classical music as a boy (we didn't go to the symphony) since I only heard it on cheap radios. I was then blown away by my first live concert with a great orchestra.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I am a passive listener, the chesterfield, home gym, kitchen and bed type, with some car and outdoor tendencies. In other words, I mostly listen at home while doing things around the house; I listen some with focus while lounging on a sofa, the floor or in bed; and I don't listen very often while on the go (a man needs a break from the electronics, just to think his own thoughts), but I do indulge a little bit.

I am also not a music historian, so, while I read and research works and composers, I don't put much effort or stock into knowing the personal events in the lives of composers. I am interested in my own experience of their music.

I like a lot of classical music, spanning the periods and even cultures, but I couldn't list 100 favourite composers, since I only have about 80 composers represented in my collection. I've listened to albums and pieces by a good number of other composers on You Tube or at friends' places, but not often enough to draw any significant conclusions.

I am quite familiar with my albums, but not to the degree of being able to recognize any piece chosen at random (which is why I have slowed down my purchasing to permit the time to catch up). Of the composers in my collection, there are a handful, say two dozen, that I have put a lot of time, effort and money into over the course of many years, so I could claim to be relatively familiar with those composers. I have actively pursued all genres of their works: vocal, instrumental, chamber, orchestral, etc. Also, while many here might dispute my claim, I think I have a pretty good grasp on the major composers in Western Classical Music, as far as generally knowing who the important figures are, some of their great works, the periods in which they lived, etc., but the sheer vastness of the combined catalogues of these composers is well beyond my capacity to absorb. Also, I have only a scant to negligible knowledge of "secondary" (see cournot, above) composers and their music. Still, I think my knowledge, on the whole, given it's stated limitations, is quite substantial.

I attribute this to decades of listening and collecting and having had friends who were many times as avid as I. Also, I regularly look up works or composers in encyclopedias and scan interesting snippets of articles in order to crudely weave a fabric from these separate threads. I have thus developed a kind of personal Gesamtanschauung of music that helps me to categorize and order the new with the known, so that it is not perceived as foreign or unapproachable.

The way I absorb music has evolved over the years. I believe this must be a function of the amount of time I have invested into this hobby. Something seems to be in the process of gelling. In the last few years, I have begun to experience and 'understand' pieces much more deeply than ever before, even pieces I have known for decades. I enjoy hearing works that I have known since my youth through this more acute sensitivity, as well as new pieces, some of which become further threads in my personal fabric of music.


----------



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

One of the things I've incorporated from this site is the Saturday Symphony. I don't follow the repertoire here but select my own each Saturday. I sit with my sons and listen to a chosen symphony each Saturday evening. Thankfully, they are much more receptive than I was when my father tried something similar in my youth. My 12 year old's favorite is Beethoven's 7th and my 4 year old likes Beethoven's 6th and Schubert's 9th. I had a funny interaction recently with my 4 year old. I asked him why Schubert's 9th is called "The Great" and he said, "Because it's awesome." He then asked me, "Why do they call it Beethoven's 6th?" When I said I didn't know he replied with, "Because it's awesome!" 

At times I've felt I should slow down my buying and catch up, as Brotagonist stated, but I'm never able to though. I consider my collection to be like a library, where I can always pull a new book off the shelf and discover it for the first time. I feel like Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone but I don't need glasses. This music has become such a wonderful part of my life and the fact that it's nearly unlimited gives me comfort. As we speak, I'm listening to Albinoni, Op 2,5,7,8,9 and 10, and lounging by the pool with my boys. I also have zero friends who enjoy this music so my only chance to share with like minded individuals is a phone call to my father or this site.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I like Saturday Symphony, too. However, my listening is personal. Sitting quietly in a room with other people while trying to be absorbed in music is pretty much impossible for me. So few people have any interest in CM, either. My focus is on career and fitness, so the music is a rich and satisfying cushion to my endeavours.


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

For classical music buffs or fanatics, I think it's essential to be very broad at the outset. Then, when you've "heard enough" to make informed decisions, pare it down to your favorite composers favorite works. "Favorites" may entail as many as a couple of hundred composers and a thousand works. Numbers are not really important. What is important, I feel, is that whatever number you end up with, is manageable. IMO it's no good having countless unknown composers interfering with what's truly worthwhile. This collecting/listening philosophy does not interfere with the occasional "new discovery". Happy listening. :tiphat:


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

By comparison with the ocean of experience possessed by some people on this forum, I'd say mine's about as broad and deep as a penny.

Let me take this opportunity to thank the many members of TC who are so generous with their expertise.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

After reading this thread, I feel I belong to a Forum peopled by Olympians. Wow!!!!!


----------



## cjvinthechair (Aug 6, 2012)

SimonNZ said:


> Hoho! Fighting talk! Challenge accepted.
> 
> edit: actually that can only really end in a stalemate
> 
> But while I listen to a considerable amount of music from as far back as possible to music written this year, and have a constant addict-like need for the new, I don't follow that up with the reading anywhere near as much as I should or would like to to have real depth of knowledge beyond the dilletantish.


Yep, might just take up the challenge as well ! 
However, I do realise my limitations in terms of really 'knowing', or actually wanting to know a composer in great depth. I listen broadly, from about 1850 onwards, and am definitely getting more adventurous as I age - probably rather more time to do so too.
And as is written elsewhere, I owe a great debt of gratitude to those on this, and other forums who really, really know their 'specialist' subject(s), & are happy to share them with those of us who merely aspire.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think my listening experience is pretty broad, but I got many weaker points. One is a lot that went before late Mozart and Haydn, another is opera in general. The issue is though that if I want to get into those things, there's plenty of resources around. I still dabble in those things. If I want to go deeper, I listen and read. Going to concerts is another thing, so too watching documentaries. I think that there is a whole lot of information out there, question is what do I want to devote my time to?

I got a lot of things in my classical collection. I'm pretty eclectic. But it doesn't cover everything, not even all the essential things. With instrumental I am stronger than the vocal. I got more big name composers than lesser known ones, I'm pretty mainstream.

I agree with what Vaneyes said. I started broad and then developed a focus, or areas I can develop with a level of satisfaction ratherr than the feeling of having to do something, like a chore. If I want to go in a certain direction, I am doing it all the way baby. I will get the cd and also read things, and go to a concert of this music if its realistic. I've developed a system to prioritise my spending, time, effort.

The other thing has been to avoid burnout, so I take things fairly slowly. No rush. I don't think anyone will know everything about classical music, that I'm certain of. Not even experts, who tend to specialise in an area, or certain areas, anyway. So I just take it one step at a time, you know the fable about the tortoise and the hare? It applies to classical music, or any hobby.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I would say 'extensive,' while what I know and like and consume could as easily parallel the cliché about being "broad-minded:

_"S/He has a mind like a saucer -- broad and shallow."_

I.e. there is more that one does not know than one knows. My taste ranges from the earliest of western classical to the ink on the score just dry yesterday contemporary, with huge gaps out of both ignorance and preference. Ergo, extensive while I would have to say 'spotty.'

There are but a tiny handful of composers of whose work with which I am familiar with a fair bulk of their entire oeuvre; for the rest, I may 'know of' much of what they have written, but have heard or studied not that much.

[For a very few composers, I know a fair amount about their biography and the history of how, when and where their pieces came about. With a decent overall grasp of 'music history,' I just don't seem to want or need to connect with a lot of the biographical info or 'back stories' many another listener seems to want or need to enhance their understanding or listening pleasure.]


----------



## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

Sid James said:


> The other thing has been to avoid burnout, so I take things fairly slowly. No rush. I don't think anyone will know everything about classical music, that I'm certain of. Not even experts, who tend to specialise in an area, or certain areas, anyway. So I just take it one step at a time, you know the fable about the tortoise and the hare? It applies to classical music, or any hobby.


I like this point about burnout. On the other hand, I can be a bit OCD. I'll suddenly become attracted to something (e.g. Mahler's 2nd symphony or recordings of Die Walkure or even the sound of early Decca recordings) and then spend an inordinate amount of time listening obsessively to similar things. I find that if I pace myself when "the fever" hits that it diminishes my enjoyment. But when I let the fever die naturally, what's left is a good deal more knowledge and the safe feeling that I can come back to that area from a better foundation of understanding and appreciation. Ironically, hearing a live concert often makes me focus on extra-music considerations. I sometimes return from a good concert unable to listen to recordings because they seem like pale imitations of the real thing, so I then start to think about how different recordings are engineered.


----------



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

I went to see the Dallas Symphony perform Beethoven 9 a few weeks ago. It was a dream of mine and I was extremely excited. The performance was rather conservative, as expected, with a typical Karajan-esque pace that I just do not care for at all. Unfortunately, due to some previous burnout, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I had anticipated. Ironically, the finale ended up being my favorite part due to the power of the chorus performing live, yet it's typically my least favorite part of the symphony. They did open with two lovely renditions of Romance for Violin 1 and 2 so the night was pleasant. 

Just yesterday I was turned on to Philip Glass and I've been consuming his catalog like a raving lunatic for the last 24 hours. Absolutely love the string quartets and violin concerto and Glassworks has some beautiful piano work. Funny how that happens because Glass was so low on my list of composers to explore that I may have never gotten to him.


----------



## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Abel to Zwillich is my breadth on LPs and CDs mainly though I've some cassette tapes as well and can still play everything. 

Anything I have on MP3 is converted from CD and that's a handful of CDs worth and a 32GB SD card.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

cournot said:


> I like this point about burnout. On the other hand, I can be a bit OCD. I'll suddenly become attracted to something (e.g. Mahler's 2nd symphony or recordings of Die Walkure or even the sound of early Decca recordings) and then spend an inordinate amount of time listening obsessively to similar things. ...


I know what you mean regarding this type of music related OCD. With me its about reading say about some music I'm listening to, then some piece which influenced it is mentioned, I often want to hear that. Then if I hear that, I might bump into a thing that influenced that, or that it influenced, and on it goes. Same with composers who taught my favourite composers. Or even with soloists that they wrote for. Its endless. You know Rachmaninov has this famous quote, to the effect that music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is never enough for all the music. How true!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I've heard by now all of the recognized major composers and most of their major works, as well as many lesser composers and works, from the late Baroque to the early twentieth century. Backward and forward from those periods I'm progressively sketchier: there's too much earlier music to hope to deal with, and a lot of it sounds pretty cookie-cutter anyway, while forward from the mid-20th and into the 21st century there's so much that's aggressively novel, so much having little or no continuity with the great tradition of tonal music where my heart lies, that I'm only occasionally moved to go exploring out of sheer curiosity. But I'm always pleased when my expeditions into unfamiliar music turn up treasures, so there are plenty more expeditions planned.


----------



## cournot (Jan 19, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I've heard by now all of the recognized major composers and most of their major works, [snipped] But I'm always pleased when my expeditions into unfamiliar music turn up treasures, so there are plenty more expeditions planned.


I find that aside from acquiring the umpteenth set of Mahler symphonies or another Don Giovanni, that I derive increasing pleasure from listening to many of the "minor" composers from Britain and the East Bloc who wrote mostly tonal, expressive music. And it's also a nice plus that the Brits such as Bax, Arnold, or Lloyd (especially on Lyrita) were recorded in such good sound. I've also just begun to scratch the surface of Russian opera beyond Onegin as I'm mostly unfamiliar with operas in the Russian language. I'm surprised that having an extremely rudimentary knowledge of the language is nonetheless enhancing my enjoyment of work by Prokofiev, Rimsky Korsakov and others.


----------



## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

in metric or imperial measurement?


----------



## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

I think I can say that I am very eclectic.
My curiousity is voracious and it ranges through not only classical music but a huge lot of "other" music. Jazz, rock, electronica, folk, popular genres, experiments... (I must admit that I have troubles with metal and rap though).

This said, I think that knowledge of classical music by some posters here is, alone, 100x mine including all music genres.


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I've been listening to classical music close to 50 years now since I was about 13 and became a
classical music fan - a pretty unusual thing for kids that age unless their parents are classical
musicians or fans, which mine weren't .
I've heard music ranging from Hildegard von Bingen , Palestrina , Josquin et al to the latest works by 
contemporary composers , orchestral music, opera, chamber music, choral works, you name it .
I would say my tastes within classical are about a Catholic as they get . I'm curious to hear whatever
I can that I haven't heard before . My CD collection, while not huge , is wildly eclectic and actually lacks
many of the most famous masterpieces, not because I don't love them, but because there is so much
off-beat repertoire I was curious to hear .
In addition to Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven , Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov
and other world famous composers , I have interesting works by Myaskovsky, Stenhammar, Zdenek Fibich,
Charles Koechln, D'Indy, John Alden Carpenter , Paul Creston , E.J. Moeran , Pfitzner, Othmar Schoeck ,
Walter Braunfels, Pavel Haas , Josef Suk, Vitezslav Novak , Vassily Kallinikov, Johan Svendsen ,
Havergal Brian , Arnold Bax, Franz Berwald , Franz Schreker, Franz Schmidt, Walter Piston ,
Carl Ruggles, Anton Rubinstein , Amy Beach , Busoni, Riccardo Zandonai , Ernst Krenek, 
Carlos Chavez , Unno Klami , Goldmark , Rued Langgaard , Antonio Carlos Gomes ,Spohr,
Roussel , and many other composers you don't hear everyday in concert halls live .
Why buy your tenth set of the 9 Beethoven symphonies when you can get Yevgeny Svetlanov's
set of all 27 Myaslovsky symphonies ? To my regret, I still haven't gotten it . And so much other
off beat repertoire .
And there's still so much available I haven't heard yet . Knowing that there's so much interesting
obscure out there is both exhilerating and frustrating ! If I had the money , the room to store it,
and the time to listen, I'd have a Pentagon-sized CD collection !


----------



## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

I've listened to all kinds of stuff from In C, electronic music etc of the 1970s to rock pop, death metal ( I don't bother with the lyrics).

It's come down to mostly Baroque and the 1890-1930s. Brahms does nothing to me (in fact, I can listen to the whole piece and remember nothing), Haydn symphonies almost all fail ( I don't care for menuets). Other Haydn pieces work, Piano trios, concetos.

For the romantic period, mostly guitar music for me. I also listen to lute music.

Symphonic composers: very limited for me, Sibelius mostly. Tubin, Stravinsky (mostly smaller works, though).


----------



## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

I think the norm for people who want to learn a lot about different composers (including music students) is to become very familiar with a small number of representative pieces per composer.

And actually, I think we performers may have a narrower exposure to music than frequent listeners/consumers, because so much of our time per day is taken up with the same few pieces.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I guess it's been about ten years now - how time flies! - that I've been exploring classical music. I've gone about it as systematically as I could, since my goal was to educate myself ASAP rather than merely to enjoy myself, and I've made pretty considerable progress. 

I've heard the first few hundred or so most popular works multiple times; I wouldn't be able to identify them all correctly (especially if the quiz started in the middles of the works rather than the beginnings) but I'd recognize them. And I've been able to explore a few little sidelines that interested me as well. I've also aimed to hear the most famous recordings, though I've heard quite a bit of random recordings too. I estimate that I've explored more Medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary works than most listeners of similar experience, and correspondingly a bit fewer classical and far fewer romantic era works; about average on baroque and modern. (I guess.) 

I once hoped to be the kind of listener who would hear something and know, "That modulation there was unusual for its time because..." and whatever, but now I settle for letting other people do that work, and I just hope to enjoy it with some consciousness of what I'm hearing. Good enough for me now is something along the lines of, "Oh, that was an interesting thing." 

I guess that 10 years from now I'll know much more about music though probably not twice what I do now as my rate of expansion is slowing.


----------



## Guest (May 21, 2014)

You seem to be suggesting that the systematic approach wasn't all that efficient. I would agree. I would further speculate that the goal to educate yourself ASAP has let you down as well.

We are different people, so the pattern of my experience may not have worked all that well for you, either, but after I had been listening to music for ten years--unsystematically but voraciously--I could easily identify anything I had heard, no matter where in the piece the "quiz" started. And I noticed at one point, not sure why or how, that thirty seconds was the longest time I needed to put a name to whatever I was listening to. I could also recognize pretty well who had written a piece that I had never heard before and could date it within +/- five years of its actual date. This is not because I'm some sort of prodigy--or maybe I am--but because I simply loved what I was doing.

For me, that has always been the case. The things I loved were easy to learn and to remember. And music was what I loved the most.

Music is what I love the most. For after about 12 years of listening to mostly baroque, classical, and romantic, I discovered the twentieth century in a big way, and my rate of expansion exploded exponentially. If my goal had been to learn as much as I could ASAP, I doubt that any of that would have happened. But I really loved music. A lot. And so unsystematic voracity meant that I learned an enormous amount ASAP. Because I was simply doing something I enjoyed.

There is no substitute for love.

Your experience with classical reminds me very much of my experience with jazz. I also listened to a lot of jazz. There was a two hour show on the radio that I listened to every night. I felt like I enjoyed that, too, but obviously there was not enough love, for I always found the world of jazz to be a bewildering blur of names and dates, and I never learned anything, really, no matter how hard I tried. Indeed, after ten years, I doubt I would even have been able to recognize more than a few pieces, and certainly would not have known any names or dates.

I stopped listening to jazz altogether until I was well into post-1960 avant-garde. Then I heard a set at the L.A. Olympics Arts Festival by Ornette Coleman that blew me away. And now there's quite a lot of that kind of jazz (Coleman, Zorn, Taylor, Braxton, Borbetomagus, and so forth) that I can recognize, though I still suck at being able to identify any particular thing. But that's true for the newer classical as well. I think that my listening in the past twenty five years has simply expanded way beyond my capacity to remember names and dates. After all, in 2009, the busiest year of my concert-attending life, I went to something around 400 concerts, some days three concerts a day, some concerts with six different pieces, none of which I had ever heard.

Oh, it's fun!


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

There could be more charitable ways to ascribe the difference - 

edit: yeah, never mind, whatever. I submit my worthless POS self to your great superiority. I should probably just stop listening to music.

So you've made your point, made it repeatedly, made it well and loudly and clearly, and I've got it in my head now, and you'll never have to make it again.


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

scratchgolf said:


> This leads to my question. How vast is your knowledge of classical music and your favorite composers? Some of you here are extremely knowledgable and I feel I could ask you any question about and piece by any composer and get good insight. How do you do it or how have you done it?


I read a lot of books, too, mainly encyclopedias.


----------



## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

For three years in a row I only listened to baroque and earlier organ music; about 75% was Bach. I loved those three years.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Ha! Me too, but it was probably for less than three years. 

I played I don't know how many performances of Bach's keyboard partitas and WTC Book One on harpsichord and violin partitas and sonatas-both modern and period performances.

It was all Bach, all the time. Those were the days!!!


----------



## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

scratchgolf said:


> This leads to my question. How vast is your knowledge of classical music and your favorite composers? Some of you here are extremely knowledgable and I feel I could ask you any question about and piece by any composer and get good insight. How do you do it or how have you done it? I realize many have been listening for upwards of 30-40 years (or more) and with that experience comes vast knowledge. Still, there is a huge difference between being familiar with a piece and being very familiar with a piece. At the rate I currently listen, I'd think I could possibly become very familiar with the majority of maybe 4 composer's catalogs each year. Even my very favorite composers (Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Bach) have more that I'm unfamiliar with than the opposite. My recent explorations have gone backwards towards Corelli, Albinoni, Vivaldi, Telemann, and Scarlatti. I currently have very little interest in anything post-Romantic but with the massive amount of undiscovered music I already own, it could be 10-20 years before I even break into the 20th century. I'll stop before this becomes unreadable but I'll ask a few final questions.
> 
> *After years pass, do you continue exploring or falling back into your comfort zone?*
> Would you consider yourself familiar with a composer if you were only truly familiar with one style? ex. Dvorak's symphonies.


It's both. I am constantly exploring new pieces by composers I'm familiar with and composers I am not. I go back and listen to recordings I have that I have only heard once, or twice (I have about 2,000 classical CDs) However, I still enjoy sitting back and listening to the Chopin Nocturnes, Polonaises, Rach #3, & Variations on a Theme by Paganini (Pieces on the First 3 classical recordings I ever bought when I was 14 years old).

It's like cooking new dishes all the time, but every once in a while, you just want a simple steak or a burger: something simple, delicious, and familiar.

Or like and old shoe: A bit worn, but extremely comfortable.



hreichgott said:


> I think the norm for people who want to learn a lot about different composers (including music students) is to become very familiar with a small number of representative pieces per composer.
> 
> And actually, I think we performers may have a narrower exposure to music than frequent listeners/consumers, because so much of our time per day is taken up with the same few pieces.


*VERY* well put. I have met a number of non-musicians who have a broader familiarity with classical music than I do. Since I was a youngen' until I graduated college, most of what I listened to (classical wise) was what I was practicing at the time, so it didn't afford me the time to "explore."

Now that I'm older, the exploration is fun, and not just into unfamiliar territory, but sometimes the most fun I have is listening to an unfamiliar performance of a very familiar and favorite piece.

It's a never ending endeavor that brings so much joy and will continue to do so until the day we die. You can never learn "everything" about classical music and the deeper you go, the deeper you will want to go.

It's just like wine; you can learn how it's made, which varietals grow better in which regions, learn all about terroir, old world vs new world, drink vats of juice from the noble grape all your life, and still have copious amounts to learn about it. But most importantly, the journey is what brings me the most pleasure.

V


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

science said:


> ...
> I once hoped to be the kind of listener who would hear something and know, "That modulation there was unusual for its time because..." and whatever, but now I settle for letting other people do that work, and I just hope to enjoy it with some consciousness of what I'm hearing. Good enough for me now is something along the lines of, "Oh, that was an interesting thing."
> 
> ...


I let other people do the work as well, namely in grabbing anything I can read on music I'm interested in. I've got the All Music Guide that millionrainbows posted the cover of, for example. Even though these sorts of things all have their limitations - eg. that book doesn't cover everything, but it covers a lot of the important things - they are very good in nutting out things about music, which as I said can lead you onto other discoveries if you're so inclined. Its also got many contributors, which means you don't just get one perspective on the music, you get some (and they can be conflicting or at least differing on some points, which is always interesting and I think refreshing).

I agree with you too superhorn about this:



superhorn said:


> ...
> I would say my tastes within classical are about a Catholic as they get . I'm curious to hear whatever
> I can that I haven't heard before . My CD collection, while not huge , is wildly eclectic and actually lacks
> many of the most famous masterpieces, not because I don't love them, but because there is so much
> off-beat repertoire I was curious to hear ....


And I'd add that I listen to things that some quarters frown upon, but my main aim is enjoyment, not to be the non plus ultra listeners or something. A lot of it people would call lowbrow but I don't care, as paraphrase what Algernon said in _The Importance of Being Ernest_ more than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't listen to anyway. The middle ground area is inevitably squeezed out by online debates about what is or isn't significant, yet that's what the vast majority of listeners listen to. Its just yet another dichotomy that helps nobody, or not most listeners anyway.

What hriechgott says here about musicians is in line with that too in terms of musicians, they inevitably develop a focus:



hreichgott said:


> I think the norm for people who want to learn a lot about different composers (including music students) is to become very familiar with a small number of representative pieces per composer.
> 
> And actually, I think we performers may have a narrower exposure to music than frequent listeners/consumers, because so much of our time per day is taken up with the same few pieces.


The other thing is if you cover some core things, or a good amount of them (the "representative pieces"), it stands you in good stead as a foundation for the less travelled areas of the repertoire. If you know what happens in the warhorses, most of which where innovative in their time, then you will have some basis for what this meant for history of music as a whole. Its a big picture view, and it opens doors rather than shutting them.


----------



## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

My listening experience has been extremely broad... last spring I never heard of Morton Feldman and now I am devoting a whole month to his works.

So brave to explore the great unknown fields of classical music.


----------

