I am 40 years old, and my musical tastes run pretty much the way you might expect. I listen to rock music in the car. My CD collection runs the gamut from AC/DC to Zeppelin. I can sing aloud to Billy Joel all day, bang my head to Def Leppard and party to Jimmy Buffet. If you tie me down, pull off my socks and tickle my feet, I’ll even admit that I enjoy some of Barry Manilow’s stuff, most of Neil Diamond’s and have been know to happily bellow out the lyrics to Pac-Man fever at inappropriate times. All this is fairly “normal” for someone of my age and background. But…what about classical? Dear God, I loves me some classical music.
I dozed off reading a book earlier. When I woke up, I knew I wasn’t going to get back to sleep for at least a few hours. By and by, I wandered downstairs, put on my headphones, and for the last hour or so I have simply reveled in an orgy of classical music. The music of my generation can be sad, meaningful and triumphant. None of it holds a candle to classical music. With modern songs, the lyrics (and there are some brilliant lyrics) carry the song. With the old stuff it’s the music.
My listening night:
I started with a 20th century piece, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. I had tears in my eyes. Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess seemed to be a good follow up, but it didn’t make me any less weepy. I figured I needed to get a little more upbeat, so I tried Bach’s Toccatta and Fuge in D Minor on for size. God! What a song! I have no idea, not one single clue, how to play an organ, but I was playing air organ the entire time. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy seemed to fit well here, so that’s where I went next. The version I had was vocal, and that lead me to opera. Ahh, opera. I know less about opera than I know about organs, but I know I love it. The only Italian I know is “spaghetti”, but that didn’t stop me from putting on Pavorotti singing I Pagliacci, and that made the tears flow again. My God! My fucking God! I have no clue what he’s saying but the passion! The beauty of the music! Jesus, it reaches right down into my soul and wrings it out to dry. Being in opera mode, I felt compelled to watch one of my favorite YouTube clips, Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma on Britain’s Got Talent. I absolutely revel in this story of an amateur with a fucking boatload of raw talent going on a show designed to showcase what the modern world reckons as “entertainment” and knocking them dead with an old fashioned aria. I finished up on the lighter side with Johann Sebastian’s Minuet in G minor, Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheeba, Mancini’s Baby Elephant Walk and even Fucik’s Enter the Gladiators. (or as I always think of it, The Clown Song).
So what’s the point to all of this? Nothing really, simply that classical music has the power to reach me at least on a level that modern music can not compete with. It’s majestic. It’s moving. It’s wonderful. It’s…it’s…ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!!!, in a way that modern music can not hope to match, and I’m awfully glad I have it in my life.
One of the best days of my life was playing Mozart’s Requiem with a community orchestra, our concert was in a big chapel with wonderful acoustics. Oh, and Copland’s Appalachian Spring was amazing, too (that one’s easier, didn’t have to do so much air-violining). My all-time favorite used to be Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring, but my kids developed such a passion for Fantasia that I had to listen to it 87,231 times and that kind of killed it for me. For now, anyway.
If you have any access to a keyboard, you can learn to play Toccata and Fugue, at least one hand’s worth.
I took a music appreciation class during my last semester in college as my ‘social’ elective. It was required for engineering student to take one liberal arts type class in a futile attempt to make us well-rounded people. That was my introduction into classical music.
The class was mostly full of freshmen and sophmores looking for an easy way to bring up their GPA. They were fooled. The instructor took his job seriously and you had to pay attention and put in the listening time to do well in the class. I would hear the other students whine before class about how hard it was and I would chuckle to myself a little because it was still the easiest class I had that semester.
I still am a humble beginner when it comes to listening to classical music. I often recognize a piece, but won’t be able to tell you its name or its composer. But, I do enjoy it so. I bought a ten disk box set called “The Top 100 Hits …” that has been perfect for my occasional listening. Like the OP says, there are pieces that have the ability to lift the spirits.
Dallas has a good classical radio station. I remember driving to work one morning and hearing a (Hayden?) trumpet concerto and during the trumpet solo, I woke up and took notice because there was obviously something special about the trumpet player. At the end, the annoucer revealed that it was Wynton Marsalas. No wonder.
Smetna’s Moldau resonates with me for some reason. I can picture myself floating down a river that grows wider and deeper as you go.
I love the infectuous rhythm of the Brandenburg Concertos.
I think I’ll plug up the iPod and get to work now.
First of all, I agree - truly wonderful classical music can be transporting.
Secondly - if you are curious as to why this is, I strongly recommend the book Music, the Brain and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain (Amazon listing). It is very detailed in describing brain function, so you have to be interested in going there, but it is very well written, accessible to the layperson (that’s me!) and sheds a lot of insight as to why our brains respond to the “deep harmonic structures” of classical music in a way that is different from other sounds and music genres…
I started with The Swingle Singers doing Bach with a jazzy angle. Then I came to realize it’s better with violins and horns than with a handful of jazz singers going, “budda budda ba ba.”
Some folks listen to classic rock stations, where they hear the same 80-song playlist over and over. If you simply expand your definition of oldies by a century or two, you’re open to a vast variety of music. Most of it is better than hearing Bob Seger doing *Turn The Page * for the fourth time this week.
I fail to see the playlist angle. Most indie college rock stations have playlists as deep or deeper than the average classical station. I’d like to hear more Baroque and early music myself rather than the same 80-song Romantic and Classical selections over and over.
Hit Parader magazine started out back in the 40’s, with popular lyrics & a few articles. (Nowadays, it serves the Metal crowd!) In the 60’s, a few of the writers were very hip. Record reviews covered obscure folky stuff as well as the current rock heroes. Occasionally, they reviewed classical records.
I wasn’t exactly a virgin. I’d learned from Leonard Bernstein on TV. Our elementary music teacher exposed us to some of the good stuff. And mom bought a Classics collection at the grocery store–one LP a week!
But, on the strength of the Hit Parader reviews, I purchased recordings of Debussy’s La Mer–& Orff’s Carmina Burana. As we said back then, they blew my mind.
And it’s not just the full orchestral effect. (I like early music, too.) Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s overblown Pictures at an Exhibition was an FM radio standby. (One of the long ones the DJ’s could put on when friends dropped by with something to smoke.) But Sviatoslav Richter’s solo piano version of the piece is one of the supreme recordings of all time.
There’s lots of wonderful music out there. Thanks for the reminder! (And I’ll probably be pulling out some old LP’s this weekend.)