# Your Classical Music Story



## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

This is the thread (if there isn't one already) where you can talk about how and why you began listening to classical music. Perhaps you always liked it. Maybe you played an instrument as a child or a friend introduced some music to you. Come share.


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## campy (Aug 16, 2012)

Back around 1969 or so my mother tried to get into classical and (mostly) opera. I listened to some of the LPs she borrowed from the library and responded to the music right away. I haven't stopped yet.

The first album I remember liking was the Brahms 2nd piano concerto with Rudolf Serkin and George Szell, which I finally added to my own collection (in MP3 form) on Monday.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Classical music was a part of the sound in my home when I was growing up. It was almost entirely romantic. My parents had a record player that had the standard 331/3, 45 and 78 rpm speeds and back then, the 50's, we had records that used all those speeds. I remember the 12 inch RCA Victor records spinning at 78 rpm and lasting about 5 minutes or so. They were always scratchy and broke easily. Then stereo came out. My parents bought a console stereo which, for you young 'uns, was a piece of furniture with speakers and turntable in one. The stereo came with some free new stereo records. The one I remember most was Mozarts Haffner symphony. I remember setting a stack of 6 records on the spindle, moving a chair to right in the middle and right in front, turning up the volume all the way and being in my own world. From there it was a one way street of buying my own records, checking out records from the library, piano and horn lessons, as much music as possible in high school and a music major in college.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

To cut a long story short: two years ago I decided I should try to listen to classical music, because I knew nothing about it. I haven't looked back since, and this forum has been indispensable from the very beginning. It's almost as much part of my classical music journey as the music itself.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

I have always liked it but i didn't think that classical music was anything special.
When i started to play guitar around three years ago, when i discovered Yngwie Malmsteens music (2 years ago) and heard that classical music was his biggest influence i decided to listen to some pieces and Beethovens moonlight sonata got me hooked.

A year ago my phones musical content was ( i have 4gb memoycard)
3gb's of metal/rock etc.... 1gb of classical, now it is 3,5bg' of classical music and 0,5gb's of metal/rock.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Jani: hauska nähdä toinen suomalainenkin foorumilla... tällä hetkellä meitä ei taida olla muita aktiivisia täällä, ellen sitten ole unohtanut jotakuta. Ai niin, Huilunsoittajalla on suomalaiset sukujuuret


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

Xaltotun said:


> Jani: hauska nähdä toinen suomalainenkin foorumilla... tällä hetkellä meitä ei taida olla muita aktiivisia täällä, ellen sitten ole unohtanut jotakuta. Ai niin, Huilunsoittajalla on suomalaiset sukujuuret


joo  678910


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## EricABQ (Jul 10, 2012)

Last year I decided that I was utterly sick of everything I had been listening to for years. I wasn't interested in finding any new rock or indie type music, so I made a New Year's resolution to listen to the classical station on the commute home each day for a month just to see if I liked it. I got hooked, and became very interested in exploring different types of music and different eras. 

From there, I've discovered that I don't necessarily like a particularly broad range of what is under the "classical" umbrella. It's becoming ever more clear to me that I'm not as much of a "classical music" fan as I am a piano music fan. Concertos and solo piano seem to be what I really like, and I find myself becoming less and less interested in other types of composition. I'll occassionaly listen to Vivaldi or Bach as a pallete cleanser from the piano music, but it doesn't really hold my interest for long.


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## mwd (Apr 7, 2012)

back in the early 1950's aged about 14 I had a school friend whose parents were both amateur operatic singers. From time to time they dispatched us two boys to a local gentleman's flat for haircuts. It seemes he was a retired opera singer who had come upon hard times and whilst attending to our hair played and explained to us the content of 12 inch 78 rpm shellac discs of operatic material.

From then on I have broadened my taste for much of what comes under the broad heading of classical music. I progressed through 78's using resharpenable thorn needles, LP's with a radiogram, a reel to reel taperecorer used to tape BBC broadcast concerts until eventually I aquired my first Hi-Fi, and then on to CD's where I am quite satisified to remain. 

I naturally started with the popular repetoire, but used to find interesting things listening to the BBC so was introduced to composers like Benjamin Brittan quite early on.

However despite my original introduction to the classics I find opera and many longer symphonies still quite hard to digest. Why is this I wonder?

MWD.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

I got into music from composing, and although my listening has fed my creative work, it is composition that is the driving force behind my musical interests, and much more.

I began listening in a serious way at 12 when I started composing. Classical music had always been a part, small part perhaps, but a part of my upbringing to that stage. I think Beethoven's fifth was my starting point. Listening of itself, however, began to take off for me really with the discovery of Haydn, and more and more as he came up in my list to his current number one place. So much of his work is so engaging and so energetic, and simply so enjoyable. Really his work is the kernel from which I begin, adding Beethoven, Mahler, Mozart etc. around it. Recently Josquin and some other Renaissance composers have really sparked my interest. I have been learning piano and violin for ages, although I am afraid I practiced little (and still don't). I love to improvise at the piano at least as much as I like to listen, and recently have begun to enjoy playing Haydn piano sonatas. I suppose I am too lazy to practice.


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## Guest (Aug 29, 2012)

Neurotic reaction to personal crisis.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I have been fascinated by pop and rock music from 1971 to 1986. When the CD arrived on the scene by then, I decided that this was the right time to investigate classical music. For the next 10-12 years or so, I almost exclusively listened to classical music. Then I went back to pop/rock with a sidestep in jazz. Since a few years I am focusing on classical once more.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Xaltotun said:


> Jani: hauska nähdä toinen suomalainenkin foorumilla... tällä hetkellä meitä ei taida olla muita aktiivisia täällä, ellen sitten ole unohtanut jotakuta. Ai niin, Huilunsoittajalla on suomalaiset sukujuuret


Unfortunately I don't speak Finnish, I had to translate that statement elsewhere. My parents, my dad most fluently, speak Finnish.

I've probably told my story elsewhere on the forum, in the past. Basically, I've known classical music all my life, but got into it really deeply around 6th grade, when I was starting to get good at playing the flute, and heard Holst's Planets for the first time.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

This started off as a "classical music story" but ended up a brief yet convoluted personal musical history with audio examples.

My dad was a big fan of Bach, Mozart and Respighi, I recall, he also loved Zappa. My mum doesn't really like music that much these days, mostly thinking of it as distracting noise, but we've had cassette tapes and CDs of Mozart, Vivaldi, Chopin and others for as long as I can remember. I keep meaning to get a tape deck so I can listen to them again. Anyway, the point is that I heard and enjoyed it a lot as a kid, others would make fun of me at school because I could recognise Beethoven pieces and stuff when they were played (one of our teachers tried desperately to encourage music appreciation with little success). Then I started listening to trad jazz and dixieland type music under the influence of my grandfather, and became fond of Charlie Parker. I miss those days, because you could walk in to a Woolworth's (now closed down) and pick up a stack of 20 ultra-low budget CDs on obscure labels from Italy and France for something like £15, anything you liked; jazz, blues, classical music, folk music, anything. These days you're lucky to find much other than "The Best of B.B. King" (which I bought for £2, and yes, it was overpriced) and spurious "jazz greats" compilations by obscure scat divas who made a couple of singles in the 40s and then disappeared - or worse, Kenny G.

Around 10 or 11 I got in to my "rebel" phase and started listening to pure, unadulterated *****. The likes of Wheatus, Lil Bow Wow and Korn, if you're in need of some frame of reference for this ghastly misstep. Something that's important to mention here is that a good many days of my life back then were spent playing Tony Hawk's Skateboarding (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the yanks) and on that game's soundtrack, by some stroke of luck, was Primus' song Jerry was a Race Car Driver, which intrigued me to no end (and is still one of the best songs ever written, deal with it Schubert). A few years later, after much searching, I finally found Sailing the Seas of Cheese, the album which contained the much coveted song. I wasn't too impressed at first, but after a few listens I started to realise that it was as good as, no, better than Korn! It might not seem like much to you, but at age 13 this was something of a revelation, having exposed myself somewhat religiously to crap.

At some point all this Primus nonsense reminded me of Frank Zappa, I don't know why, because they really are nothing alike, but let's just go with it. My mother refused to buy Zappa records, saying "it's a mess, why would you want to listen to that?" but then agreeing to buy Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. Mum logic! Eventually she relented and purchase Hot Rats on CD, which was an immensely thrilling experience for me at 14 years of age. Many other albums soon followed, and at the time of my first job in 2007 (when I was 17) I was also snatching up all the Zappa I could find on vinyl, sometimes spending upwards of £100 a session. A little before I got that job, I had been reading up on Zappa's influences after thinking "what the hell did this guy listen to to come up with this stuff?" I got my answer; Stravinsky, Bartók, Webern and Varèse (I was under the impression all blues sounded like Eric Clapton at the time, so I avoided the rhythm and blues stuff he talked about, but my love of blues and other folk musics of the world is a whole other story), and so set about getting my stuff together. Listening to Chailly's complete Varèse (imagine putting on a CD and hearing that come out of the speakers as a 16 year old effectively raised on MTV - old MTV, mind you, I don't care for "Cribs" or "Date My Mom") for the first time was one of those mind blowing experiences that is so mind blowing that your mind is actually tethered shut by the immense energy at work and thus you do not realise that your mind has been blown. From there I kept on exploring and have gradually worked my way back through the ages to the point where I enjoy music from baroque to modern times (and older traditional/classical music in some countries, especially the ancient Piphat ensemble music of Siam), though significantly (disproportionately, some would say) biased towards the turn of the 20th century onwards.


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