# Successful converts!



## Guest (Feb 3, 2019)

Just wondering, as militant as we are as classical music fans, does anyone ever come across circumstances where they have introduced people to classical music who later start to listen to it more and more and join you in the classical music fandom?

I have a hopeful case from a friend of mine whom I met through a Doctor Who discord server.... there's a bot on there that allows members to play music tracks from youtube through specific audio channels on specific servers so members can listen simultaneously, so after a bunch of classic rock/oz rock tunes (we are both Australian, and he listens mainly to rock music with little to no knowledge of classical at all) I put on some classical music to test the waters. A couple of days later, I end up having a conversation with him that starts like this:

*Him:* @shirime You've got me hooked on Beat Furrer
*Me:* Omg really
I can recommend some good albums
*Him:* PLZ

Of course, Beat Furrer is a terrific composer, so when I started him off with classical music a few days earlier I simply played his Piano Concerto, one of his most highly regarded works. Is there something about Beat Furrer's music that many people find especially attractive or at least intriguing? Maybe, maybe not, I can't tell and haven't done a study of it. Nevertheless, it's always a nice surprise to see someone with a sudden interest in classical music on the basis of enjoying just one piece. 






Does anyone else have stories like this to share? Or even better, is anyone else here a person who initially came to classical music from being won over by a recommendation in this way?


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Just wondering, as militant as we are as classical music fans, does anyone ever come across circumstances where they have introduced people to classical music who later start to listen to it more and more and join you in the classical music fandom?
> 
> I have a hopeful case from a friend of mine whom I met through a Doctor Who discord server.... there's a bot on there that allows members to play music tracks from youtube through specific audio channels on specific servers so members can listen simultaneously, so after a bunch of classic rock/oz rock tunes (we are both Australian, and he listens mainly to rock music with little to no knowledge of classical at all) I put on some classical music to test the waters. A couple of days later, I end up having a conversation with him that starts like this:
> 
> ...


I think this example proves there is no way of knowing what music is going to get people hooked on classical.

Looks like the avant garde community have a new convert.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I have no doubt that contemporary classical music is the busiest doorway into the classical music community.

Everyone already knows what CPP "classical music" "sounds like," and if they don't already expect to like it, playing music that seems to confirm their preconceptions cannot change anything.

The first step to creating curiosity is to demonstrate ignorance.

As a teacher, I made a point to introduce my students to works like Crumb's _Black Angels_, and I guarantee I got more converts that way than I would've by playing Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky.


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## fliege (Nov 7, 2017)

science said:


> Everyone already knows what CPP "classical music" "sounds like," and if they don't already expect to like it, playing music that seems to confirm their preconceptions cannot change anything.
> 
> The first step to creating curiosity is to demonstrate ignorance.
> 
> As a teacher, I made a point to introduce my students to works like Crumb's _Black Angels_, and I guarantee I got more converts that way than I would've by playing Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky.


That's some of the most sensible and insightful stuff I've heard in a long time. Do you think people who heard the avant garde stuff and got hooked kept listening mostly or only to modern classical, or did it expose them to a new way of thinking and allow them to explore the classics also?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

science said:


> I have no doubt that contemporary classical music is the busiest doorway into the classical music community.
> 
> Everyone already knows what CPP "classical music" "sounds like," and if they don't already expect to like it, playing music that seems to confirm their preconceptions cannot change anything.
> 
> ...


I asked before but perhaps you didn't see it (on another thread) - what is CPP?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

fliege said:


> That's some of the most sensible and insightful stuff I've heard in a long time. Do you think people who heard the avant garde stuff and got hooked kept listening mostly or only to modern classical, or did it expose them to a new way of thinking and allow them to explore the classics also?


Hard to tell. I rarely know my students after they leave high school; and because I've taught in Seoul, where the universal aspiration is to become a WASP from old New England money, most of my students are forced to know a fair bit about the classical tradition through piano and/or violin lessons.

The standard reaction is something like, "You _like_ this stuff?"

But it definitely made a difference sometimes. One student, for example, was really into old, classic hard rock--Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and so on. I thought that was pretty cool for a kid his age, so I ventured to introduce him to a few things, including of course _Black Angels_. This is a kid whose family doesn't worry about money, and within about a week he had acquired pretty much everything Kronos Quartet had ever recorded. Then he got into Stockhausen. I don't remember where it went after that. That's a very extreme success story, and I don't know where that kid is now (grad school probably, or sitting on the board of his granddaddy's company) but for all I know, he's the one who sponsored the percussion performance last year where I first heard Wallin's _Stonewave_.

(One last example of what a great teacher I was. I sometimes "punished" students who hadn't done their homework by making them listen to _Black Angels_ in their headphones until they had finished it. That kind of brutality would not, of course, have been allowed in those decadent, feminized western societies, with all their hangups about child abuse. But my students seemed to accept it as fair enough, as long as I promised not to tell their parents that they hadn't done their homework.)


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

janxharris said:


> I asked before but perhaps you didn't see it (on another thread) - what is CPP?


Common practice period.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Wasp?
.............................


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

janxharris said:


> Wasp?
> .............................


White Anglo-Saxon Protestant


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

science said:


> Common practice period.


Ta. I was aware of CPT but didn't make the connection.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

congratulation 
Beat Furrer is certainly enjoyable, I like him too, along with some other that you introduced me to - Olga Neuwirth, Lachenman, Liza Lim. I believe this kind of modern music is not as challenging as some of the 12-tone serialist dark stuff from the 1950's


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