# Does classical music run in your family?



## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Are your parents musicians? Music teachers? Do you have siblings that are opera buffs, or maybe even a second cousin somewhere who is a Wagner nut? Did you grow up hearing the sounds of Beethoven's symphonies or Mozart's piano sonatas around the house? Or does your family think you're crazy for spending so much money on classical CDs and so much time on a classical message board? 

I'm curious because my family would fall into the latter category. My father owns a record store, loves music, and knows more about popular music (rock, jazz, blues, folk etc) than anyone I know, but he is not a classical guy. I have a brother who also loves music but thinks classical music is boring, or more specifically that it can't be understood without serious theoretical knowledge. My mom was a published ethnomusicologist, but she was always more into blues and folk music. Beyond my immediate family, no one cares much for music at all. The one exception is my uncle, who is a brilliant classical guitarist and put me onto some of my first favorites in classical music. 

So does the love for classical music run in your blood? If not, where do you think your fascination with all this great music comes from? One last question: if you have children, are they fans of classical music like you are? What have you done to help instill an interest in classical music into them (maybe you just let them be...)?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Nope, mostly not. My parents preferred German Schlagers, my brother and his wife sometimes play classical music, their son likes opera (on CD), but also not too much.

I've always loved music more than anyone else in the family. From around 1970 until about 1985 that was exclusively pop/rock (which I still love), but with the coming of the CD and a downward trend of pop/rock in the mid 80s, I decided that I needed to explore classical. Glad I did.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

None of the family or relatives are into Classical, or even classic bands/groups except ABBA. I was one of the typical Asians the parents would put into piano lessons.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

My grandmother was a music teacher and I started listening to classical records (on my own) passed on from her to my parents, but stored in the basement and never really listened to by them. As a child, although my parents generally supported my classical music interest, I also remember my father frequently telling me to turn the stuff down. So far, I appear to be the last in the line of classical music listeners.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

I grew up with Slade and T-Rex. Quite how I got to where I am is anybody's guess, but it had something to do with forming a band in early teens to get girls. My parents knew nothing of music, but supported me for which I will always be grateful.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Does classical music run in your family? *

No. Rather, my _family_ does the running -- _away_ from classical music. Alas …!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Yes, it was a constant feature in my home. I tried my best to avoid it, but I could not.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

My father liked to listen to opera. Or maybe I should say he liked certain sopranos (Callas, Tebaldi) and listened to them sing 19th century Italian repertory, mostly Verdi and Puccini.

My mother complained that she found such music "depressing". My brother despised it as a teen, now plays it for me in the car when we're together. I can't help saying to him, "You don't have to".

No one in my family has much musical talent. Those of us who tried an instrument were very limited and gave it up.

I have always been attracted to classical instrumental music wherever I have heard it. It took me longer to like opera. I regret that there was no overlap between my opera listening and that of my father so that we could have bonded over it.


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## Guest (Jul 26, 2019)

No. My father had a large record collection with three classical records, Beethoven's 5th, the famous van Cliburn recording and the Dorati 1812 overture. The other 99% were Sinatra, etc.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm the only member of my family - and that includes parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins - to have pursued classical music in any depth. My younger sister does enjoy a good bit of it, however. No one in the family objected to my pursuit of it, although my father sometimes complained about having to hear it when he thought my choices insufficiently tuneful and happy. Evidently swooning to Isolde's "Love Death" wasn't something he could comprehend a boy of fourteen doing.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

None of my immediate family listens to classical. But I have an uncle who passed away before I was born who had a collection of classical 78s that my dad kept, like Shostakovich's 5th, Bernstein's Fancy Free, and Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije/Scythian Suite. I think that's pretty up to date for a classical music collector in the late '40s. Apparently he was the one with the artistic temperament. I seem to take after him. And no, paternity is not in question.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

Bulldog said:


> Yes, it was a constant feature in my home. I tried my best to avoid it, but I could not.


And now you are possessed.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Bourdon said:


> And now you are possessed.


Yes, but it didn't spread to my three adult children. Two of them want nothing to do with classical; the 3rd doesn't care much for any type of music.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

I was brought up in a family without classical music.I remember that my mother once opened the door of my chamber and said that she could not underdstand that I liked the music.In fact we both were surprised for different reasons.I never liked the yeah yeah yeah...wich was more normal than my music from a distant world.I never had the feeling that I was a kind of elitist,I just loved the music.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Interesting, I expected more here to come from families of Classical music people. This begs the question, if it wasn't family who introduced you to Classical, who or what was it?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> if you have children, are they fans of classical music like you are? What have you done to help instill an interest in classical music into them (maybe you just let them be...)?


I haven't done a thing concerning music. What I have done is instill a sense of pride, loyalty, ethics, and moral character in them.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

As far as family influences are concerned, classical music only runs in my jeans.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

My cousin is a classical choir vocalist and a graduate of the Eastman school. She is now retired but was active with vocal groups in Europe and Israel where she has lived for many years. At one point in the 1970s she worked with Leonard Bernstein. I still haven't gotten the details about this, but my wife and I may visit her in Tel Aviv next year so I hope to hear the story first hand. But my immediate family is not musical at all so I pretty much had to find my own way and learn about music on my own.


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## Bourdon (Jan 4, 2019)

I sung in a boys-choir and got familiair with gregorian chant.At school we had one hour in the week music lessons.There I heard Beethoven,I was just a receptiv young man.There is a railway station were they started to play classical music,not to entertain the public but to drive away the noisy kids and IT worked.:lol:


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Bulldog said:


> I haven't done a thing concerning music. What I have done is instill a sense of pride, loyalty, ethics, and moral character in them.


Given that your children are not interested in classical music, do you regret not having done anything in that regard? Or are you not interested in keeping the tradition of classical music alive in the younger generations?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Nope. And it probably would keep a therapist quite busy if I unloaded. It's been a source of anger, frustration and regret all my life. Dad did listen to that "easy listening" back in the '60s - but that's as close as it came. Mom played piano - pop/movie hits was about it. But I had an ear for the classics early on, saved my money to buy a decent audio system. Drove them all crazy. Later in life when it was clear I had a talent for music, and was making money and a reputation doing it, I still remember, painfully, my mother saying, as I was on my way to conduct a concert, "I suppose it's more of that long-haired crap." Yeah, really supportive environment.


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## Fredrikalansson (Jan 29, 2019)

I seem to be alone in my love of classical music. Both my parents sang in a choir at one point, but no love of the music seemed to stir in their hearts. My Dad loved jazz and nothing else. My mom liked anything as long as it was made no emotional or intellectual demands. I discovered classical music in my mid-teens and wanted to learn an instrument, but no way would they they support me since I was "only going through a phase". Fifty years later and I'm still going through the phase.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

Baron Scarpia said:


> No. My father had a large record collection with three classical records, Beethoven's 5th, the famous van Cliburn recording and the Dorati 1812 overture. The other 99% were Sinatra, etc.


My dad had a weirdly sized LP of the 1812 overture that he got from Quaker Cereals - the cannons in the music were to remind you that Quaker Puffed Wheat was "shot from guns".

And Van Cliburn was a national treasure to have won a competition in the Soviet Union. It would be un-American not to have something of his.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

flamencosketches said:


> Given that your children are not interested in classical music, do you regret not having done anything in that regard? Or are you not interested in keeping the tradition of classical music alive in the younger generations?


What could Bulldog have done? Pushing one's kids into something often has the opposite effect that was intended. I see a lot of sad-eyed children dragged to classical concerts.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

flamencosketches said:


> Given that your children are not interested in classical music, do you regret not having done anything in that regard? Or are you not interested in keeping the tradition of classical music alive in the younger generations?


No regrets at all and no interest in keeping the tradition of classical music alive in the younger generations. I'm not into interfering with the musical preferences of others.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I have traced musicians in my family, albeit mainly on an amateur level. That's not unusual, since past generations - of whatever class - tended to play instruments. In the world before television, there where people in my family who played, although it would be popular tunes of the day rather than something like Beethoven. Some of their musical diet in terms of listening was classical, although they didn't have the means to pursue it beyond basics. Those raising families in the past times would put the necessities before anything else, and things like books and records - let alone concerts - where not as affordable as they are to what can broadly be called the middle class today. Playing an instrument however had practical use, and a rudimentary ability to play and read at least some music wasn't unusual even among ordinary people.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

My dad is an alright singer and guitarist, and he knows basic theory; my mom just says she has a good ear, but that's about all you could say for her. It was nothing that made them anticipate having a saxophonist-bassoonist, then tubist+alto, then oboist+tenor. They have saintly tolerance for late-night practicing and their passengers doing theory homework in the car on the way to class. No one else in the family was ever near serious with an instrument or singing.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Only cowards run in our family!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

My parents were passionate about classical music and it was always playing in our house. Wagner worked particularly well as a soundtrack to my young life - probably because it was loud and went on for hours. 

They were not musicians although my mother was a bad and frustrated amateur pianist with a tiny repertoire. My brother became a musician and still plays in a major London orchestra. I never got on with playing an instrument but devoured records so that I had built up a huge repertoire of music that I knew every note of as a listener by the time I was 18. I went well beyond my parent's tastes with a lot of listening to modern music (Bartok, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Shostakovich, Britten ... but also Maxwell Davies, Messiaen, Birtwistle, Stockhausen). I then more or less stopped listening to classical music - I spent most of my time with friends and our music was rock - until I returned to it some six years later. Even then it took me quite a while longer to return to modern music. 

So I was started off by my family and grew up with music around me. Some form of music has always been important to me.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

My grandad was a semi-pro trumpet/cornet player but his repertoire was jazz/swing. I have no idea if he liked CM but suspect he would have liked some. My love of CM is definitely unique in my family.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Bulldog said:


> No regrets at all and no interest in keeping the tradition of classical music alive in the younger generations. I'm not into interfering with the musical preferences of others.


Understood. In any case, it sounds like you took care of the important part of the job, more than some parents can say. I don't have kids, and maybe there's nothing that can or should be done to influence their musical preferences. You'd know much better than I. I just recall spending time in my dad's record store as a kid, hearing all kinds of great music, and then later growing to really love music of all kinds. It's hard to say if I would have come to love music the way I do without that early exposure, but I reckon I probably would have anyway.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

My mother and sister played piano and my dad occasionally sang at the piano. None of them liked classical music; I learned that on my own. My dad liked country music, my mom sang in church choir, and my sister and her husband became DJs and liked dance music.

My mother (dead 8 years) liked to attend an opera, vocal or choral music concert with me but usually fell asleep. She wouldn't play anything I gave her. I once bought her a cassette of Messiah choruses to play in the car. She left it on the dash and the sun melted it. 

I don't discount my parents' liking music for it helped get me started. Everything I know and like about classical music I learned in school, choir, choral society or on my own.


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## ECraigR (Jun 25, 2019)

Not in my family. My father was eventually converted and can listen to standard stuff, I even think he genuinely likes Brahms, but opera and 20th century send him running.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

No, not at all. My parents and siblings found my obsession somewhat incomprehensible


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

My mother played organ in a Catholic church as a teen — until a priest tried to molest her — and sang in a choir that performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony. She played and talked about classical music with me when I was quite young. My older brother was an excellent trumpet player who took up rock guitar in a semi-professional way. My younger brother plays piano with considerable proficiency and was three credits shy of a music degree (his degrees are in computer science and mechanical engineering).


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## DBLee (Jan 8, 2018)

My father was not remotely into classical music; my mother would perhaps once a year tune into the classical station. Her parents loved classical music as well as Scottish bagpipe music.

My son developed a love for classical music at an early age. At that time, I wasn't listening to much classical, so he developed that love mostly on his own. My other two children have a certain appreciation for classical music, but I don't believe they ever sit around and listen to it on their own.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

flamencosketches said:


> Interesting, I expected more here to come from families of Classical music people. This begs the question, if it wasn't family who introduced you to Classical, who or what was it?


I've said this around here somewhere before, but what set a passing interest of Classical into a flame was a lovely young flute player who was a music major. I took a music appreciation course so I could talk to her intelligently. The young lady has long since come and gone, but that class had a lasting effect.


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## Harmonie (Mar 24, 2007)

I started getting into classical music years back largely because of my grandma. She had tapes and CDs which helped introduce me to classical music. Aside from that, I don't feel like classical music was a big part of our family beforehand. It's not that my family disliked it. My mom does listen to more classical music nowadays than before. I don't know if I have been an influence on her or not.

Both of my parents were musicians in school, but stopped afterward. My dad was going to be a band director but decided otherwise early on in college.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Yes, my mom is professional church musician and my dad loves to listen to classical music. I started piano lessons when I was four or five, I think.

Interestingly neither of my siblings got into it much at all.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

flamencosketches said:


> Interesting, I expected more here to come from families of Classical music people. This begs the question, if it wasn't family who introduced you to Classical, who or what was it?


It was a brother, who has since passed away, which introduced me to CM. 
He taught me how to hear and experience. 
Other than his influences, I had no others among friends/family who loves CM as I do. 
We are all loners, yet have found great treasures which others know not.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

paulbest said:


> It was a brother, who has since passed away, which introduced me to CM.
> He taught me how to hear and experience.
> Other than his influences, I had no others among friends/family who loves CM as I do.
> We are all loners, yet have found great treasures which others know not.


Even though you can choose your friends, it's hard to find people who are gung-ho about classical music, whom you'd want to be friends with for other reasons. That goes for partners, too.

Actually I had some such friends, but we drifted apart. No, I drifted away from them. We listened to LPs together but our tastes really didn't mesh. They had musical talent so I felt they were out of my league.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Minor Sixthist said:


> My dad is an alright singer and guitarist, and he knows basic theory; my mom just says she has a good ear, but that's about all you could say for her. It was nothing that made them anticipate having a saxophonist-bassoonist, then tubist+alto, then oboist+tenor. They have saintly tolerance for late-night practicing and their passengers doing theory homework in the car on the way to class. No one else in the family was ever near serious with an instrument or singing.


Interesting. I wonder where your dedication comes from. There must've been a few events in your formative years to guide you into a life of this kind of effort and work.

You're younger than my grandchildren and so it's like a refreshing peak into a different world to read your posts. These days I think students fix upon a career in programming because there's a lot of demand and you can make a good living (I would think that whether or not you learn to hate it is not an issue at a young age). Nursing and therapy and welding are what my grandchildren are heading for. I would rather they go into science or music because it was so much more gratifying to me. I have to bite my tongue! We're all different and we're shaped by our early happenstances.

In science you can be doing what you want to do and make pretty good money once you get a position.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

No, but I've recently had an amusing moment.

Mother asked me to come and help her paint a house that was to be rented. 
"That's about the closest I can get to being Gustav Mahler"---I said.
She understood the reference and laughed, despite not being a listener of classical music.

Hope in humanity partially restored :angel:

Edit: maybe I should explain that "Maler" means "painter" in German.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

My father was not into music at all. He was not into attending parent/teacher events at school, either. But when I landed the tenor solo in 'Rejoice in the Lamb', he was reluctantly persuaded to attend. Even if I say so myself, I sang beautifully -and with pride, knowing my father was listening to my very first foray into Benjamin Britten.

At the end of the performance, he came up to me and said, "What do you want to sing that rubbish for? It hasn't even got a tune you can whistle". Before harrumphing off into the evening. That was the first and last time he ever bothered hearing me sing anything.

This was the same father who, when I was aged 3 and was in the habit of descending into the front room in the middle of the night and starting to play the piano ("play" needing to be interpreted liberally, of course!), decided that he would sell the piano.

So no, I got no real encouragement from my family and remain the only one with any enthusiasm for serious music (though a sister likes a Vivaldi mandolin concerto). They did buy me LPs of Grieg's _Peer Gynt suite_ and Saint-Saëns' _Carnival of the Animals_, though, one Christmas. So it wasn't a _complete_ cultural desert!


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

"Does classical music run in your family?"

Nope. Not. At. All.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Mother is a piano teacher and accompanist for ballet classes/exams. I was slowly introduced to the music as I started playing it as a young adolescent, and I heard Mum playing it a bit.

What you mentioned re your family members who love music but not so much classical is very common on more generalised music forums I go on. So many people who are so passionate about music, and listen for hours every day...that know very little about classical music, or have questionable stigmas against it and never explore very far (not saying your family members are like that, although the whole 'needing theoretical knowledge to appreciate' thing (which is blatantly not true for most, myself included) is what made me bring it up). Often it feels like it doesn't exist, which shocked me at first.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Lisztian said:


> What you mentioned re your family members who love music but not so much classical is very common on more generalised music forums I go on. So many people who are so passionate about music, and listen for hours every day...that know very little about classical music, or have questionable stigmas against it and never explore very far (not saying your family members are like that, although the whole 'needing theoretical knowledge to appreciate' thing (which is blatantly not true for most, myself included) is what made me bring it up). Often it feels like it doesn't exist, which shocked me at first.


This is what my family is like. They aren't "musical" at all in the sense that they are musicians, know how to read music, have an understanding of music theory, etc. but they know almost everything about all sorts of popular music and can recognize almost any song from a variety of genre. But they've never made an effort to explore classical. My logic is, if you like music, you should at least try to get into some forms of classical music...period! There's too much of a nearly thousand-year rich heritage to neglect in favor of solely some 40 years' worth of interest.


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

Nothing on my family going back, nor my wife's, but our son was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, sang for the Queen etc., and, after ten years in the Army, is now at University studying sound engineering. You're as likely to hear Slayer or Metallica coming from his room as you are Handel or Mozart, but he's decided to make music his life.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

My mom could play electronic keyboards and we used to have dance party(chinese folk music) with parents collegues from 1992-1998. However, a few tragedies happened to some of them in 1998 and the party of music and dance dissipated completely since 1999. Now, as the money craze ravages China, and most classical music amateurs I know keep to themself like me, and we do not talk much among ourself too. I have almost no real life pal in classical music, I talk about jrock and other modern music with friends, classical music topic mostly centers about how much I have spent on new purchases recently because it is quite a novelty for them since I started buying CDs. But there are a few popular chinese websites where people share their collections and listening programs, the most representative users are wealthy oversea chinese users, they all are baroque followers too, while being open to all periods.


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

Reading this thread, which I noticed for the first time this morning, I realize more than ever how unusual my family is. I grew up in an extended family that had that middle class, mid-century American conceit that interest in "serious" music was an absolute virtue. My mother was mostly deaf, but had a deep interest in classical music. Her mother was a piano teacher and with my grandfather was a patron of symphony orchestras in the mid-sized Illinois city where they lived. My father played violin in the symphony orchestra of the mid-sized Indiana city where he grew up and later became a fine pianist and composer of avant-garde piano music. My parents were enthusiastic patrons of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. My uncle with whom my parents were very close was the long-serving principal cello of the National (Washington, DC) Symphony Orchestra and his wife was a fine cellist who could have had her own career, but became a high school music teacher. Starting when I was 8 years old, my parents took me to several CSO concerts each summer at the Ravinia Festival, which is very close to our family home so we could ride our bikes there. When I was 12 years old, my father started to take me to CSO concerts in the city. My parents had a collection of classical music LPs and they played them all the time. The radio was only ever tuned to WFMT or WNIB, the main classical music stations in Chicago, and was on all day in the background unless a record was playing. My brothers and sisters and I all took piano lessons. I soon switched to various woodwinds because I never liked to compete with my older brother, who developed into a very good pianist and harpsichordist. My parents were actually snobs who were entirely dismissive of musical genres other than classical and jazz. They were not interested in jazz, but they could tolerate it and praised it as being "serious."

My dear wife is not especially interested in classical music, but she is proud of my musical hobby, feeling it's suitably intellectual and "proper." Some of my in-laws are interested in music and we enjoy discussing classical. Our kids are not interested in classical music, but our son played violin in his high school orchestra and his younger sister plans to do the same. They listen to pop music a lot but fancy themselves sophisticated because they prefer the cutting-edge progressive stuff (son) or "classics" like the Beach Boys (daughter). My early insinuations concerning the advantages of classical music had no effect on them at all.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Dad listened to some classical music, mum didn't really like it, although she knew most of composers.


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## musichal (Oct 17, 2020)

No. Just me. Country and Pop were my parents' fare. Pop and soft rock for my siblings. I like most genres.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Mum didn't play an instrument but always loved classical music and listened to it on the radio, which is how I got my start. Dad liked lighter music and was a passable self-taught pianist, but had little interest in the classical side of things.


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

I wouldn't characterise my parents as particular fans of classical music. My dad plays guitar and harmonica at an amateur level (he took informal lessons with a lot of old blues musicians in the 70s/80s/90s) and is a radio DJ by trade. He had a handful of classical LPs when I was growing up (a set of Beethoven symphonies -- Lenny's, I think) and my mother used to listen to a Sunday morning Baroque program on the radio when she had her coffee. They had season tickets for the Atlanta opera but I've never been sure why, since they never listened to it or talked about it except when they were going. I got into it in school after my mother forced me to do a year of oboe and now I've moved to Europe and am a musicologist by profession. That'll show them!


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Sadly, most of the people in my family run from Classical Music. (My parents did at least have a number of classical records, although they rarely played records or listened to the radio.)

Edit: And looking back, I see that my joke was already anticipated.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

My mother likes some of the most popular classical music pieces (she's very resistant to try anything she doesn't already know though), and that's it. Nobody else in my family besides myself cares for CM.


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## Posauner (Nov 8, 2020)

Yes, although I am probably the only one of my siblings that listens to primarily classical.

My mom and dad are both musicians, dad playing trumpet and mom flute. Dad was a music teacher, and some of my earliest memories were tagging along with him to rehearsals. All of us kids were started on piano lessons before picking an instrument to play. Brother picked trumpet, myself trombone, and sisters played violin and cello.

Brother still plays quite a bit in community bands and orchestras. Sisters play less, but still have a basic familiarity with the classics and occasionally attend concerts.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

I was born into a musical family. My parents played in the Scandinavian Symphony in Detroit for many years; Mom, the violin, Dad the double Bb concert tuba (required two cases, one for the horn, one for the bell). 

Then the family moved to Southern California they became members of the Long Beach Philharmonic (Long Beach, Calif) and dragged us kids to the weekly rehearsals and concerts. 

My sister became a Violist, and I played the piano. We had many fun evenings at home, the four of us, playing music together for hours on end ... this in the days of yore when there was no internet, barely any television and only in black and white for shows like the Ed Sullivan show, etc. 

My sister still plays the viola and still has Moms violin which she plays every once in awhile. After 6 years of piano lessons I went on to study classical organ and became a professional church organist, which continues to this day, some 59+ years later. 

Playing the piano or organ is my gyroscope ... it keeps me from being thrown into some giggling academy somewhere ... It's in my heart, my soul and my very being. 

Kh


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It was my mother who had developed an interest in classical music, first as an expression of a path "upward" out of a working class upbringing, but it quickly grew into a real if limited interest on her part. This manifested itself in the form of albums of 78 rpm records of Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin, and later 33 rpm disks of Ravel, Debussy, De Falla, etc. I was the inheritor and beneficiary of her musical evolution. In contrast, my father had no discernible interest in music of any sort.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

My family members can tolerate classical music but only three of us, my uncle, me, and my cousin are compassionate listeners and concert and opera visitors.
I am glad that I had an influence on my younger cousin, who is now very passionate about classical music. I took him to few concerts and explained the background of each piece before the concert and he is very much into classical music now. He loves Mahler in particular.

I discovered classical music on my own when I was ard. 10 years old or so watching VPO’s New Years Concert on TV and loved it. Then started saving my pocket money and bought one LP after another and so on.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

My uncle, although a well known jazz pianist (played with Harry James, Art Tatum was his mentor), and arranger for many famous vocalists of the 40's and 50's, was also a big fan of classical.

Our extended family used to hang out at his Studio City house several times a week, where, on any given day, one might run into; Buddy Rich, Rosemary Clooney, Mel Torme, and others of that era. 

That being said, he would, while practicing on his own, regularly play many classical piano pieces. Although I wasn't a fan at the time of a lot of what he was playing, listening to his skill while playing them was certainly a big influence on my future taste in music.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Mum often scolded me for listening to classic too loud and asked me do I listen for myself or for neighbors...Truth be told it was both...Sometimes I just wanted to shut down the noise, both inside and outside.


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## BlackAdderLXX (Apr 18, 2020)

Nope. No classical in my family. I grew up classic rock all the way. I guess the movie The Four Seasons introduced me to Vivaldi and the movie Amadeus introduced me to Mozart's Requiem. But it wasn't until I went to college that I started listening to classical in earnest as a music student. I've been a fan ever since, though I have only gotten as serious as I am now since the world ended. 

My kids listen to a little in the car with me, but I just take it easy and let them lead. They at least are interested. My wife...not so much...


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