I voted no, although in principle I’m interested in classical music, and I acknowledge its value. The thing is that actually I’m afraid of exploring it. Let me explain: listening to and reading about music has been my favorite pastime as long as I can think back, but my interests began with rock and pop. I expanded on that, going further to folk, blues, country, soul, punk, electronica and various other subgenres. To summarize, my interests are rather broad and basically consist of popular music from about 1920 to today. With increasing age, more disposable income and easier access to music, I’ve vastly expanded my collection in the last years, but there are still many gaps to fill.
But there are two genres I deeply respect and know that I’ll like a lot of it, but shy away from because I fear that I’d become overwhelmed by the additional bulk of interesting stuff: classical music and Jazz. It’s just that beside my musical interests, I have a life to live.
Maybe when I’m really old, retired and haven’t spent all my money on pop records instead of investing in a pension scheme, I’ll catch up, but I doubt it.
With that definition, it’s probably not relevant to me right now.
I don’t dislike classical music, but I don’t seek it out. I don’t know what the classical music station in town is (or even if there still is one). I don’t go to listen to concerts or performances. I haven’t bought any classical music in years (even longer if you don’t count rock/classical hybrid music). I used to go to the opera (I even have some CDs lying around) but I haven’t done that in a while either.
Classical music simply hasn’t caught my attention recently.
I don’t listen to it often, but I do love going to concerts and Classical Music ones actually tend to be at hours a morning person like me can be awake. My great-uncle was a musicologist specializing in the Baroque period - helluva guy in general, one of those people who seem to have enough enthusiasm to sell it in chunks, yet who are also great at listening. I miss going to his concerts and conferences because his explanations had a way of putting the music in context which I’ve not encountered anywhere else.
My appreciation of classical music skyrocketed when I began actually practicing/performing the stuff as a vocalist (choruses/choirs and very occasional solo singing in every sub-genre from a cappella early music to 20th-century opera).
It’s wonderful stuff to listen to, but IMHO you get so much more out of it once you’ve actually tried to do what the performers are doing. Of course, that’s true in every musical genre or art form, not just classical music.
Tip for newbies: Before getting into singing, i started working on my classical music appreciation by listening to some modern minimalist compositions, in particular the work of Philip Glass. Now, I know Mozart and Beethoven fans may shriek at the thought of it, but whatever else you may think about Glass’s music, the “repetitive structures” aspect does make it potentially more approachable for listeners who just aren’t used to that much aural complexity.
If you’re a classical music enthusiast already, you may tend to forget how much the stuff comes across to the unfamiliar ear as just a BIG WALL OF SOUND, which quickly becomes boring and/or repellent to listen to. Trimming away the complicated orchestral harmonies and counter-themes and so forth can help a novice get a better sense of what this art-music aesthetic is supposed to be about. (Early music can accomplish the same thing.)
Why the hell not? It’s music ain’t it? Art music is able to achieve, in many cases of the exemplars, more freedom than many other kinds – composition becomes an art, and always has been through its heyday, and is thereby possible to add yet one more layer of nuance to a simple performance from a leadsheet or some such. I say this as a jazz and rock performer who struggled mightily a month ago to get down “The Minute Waltz,” and will always struggle to perfect (enough) basic recital-level pieces. I say that b/c I’m not some hot-shit performing ace, just a regular musician who got hip to classical when I was a preteen, and never got to playing concert-level repertoire (got pretty damned good, though ;))
Yes. I minored in Music with a concentration in music history 1600-1900 in college.
Right now I’m working on listening to the entire works of Franz Liszt. Leslie Howard recorded his ENTIRE piano catalog, including all the obscure pieces of manuscript he left laying around that nobody’s played in the last 150 years!