Classical Music Primer

[TroyK]

Does anyone know of a good website or paper to talk down classical music to me as a ignorant, innocent?

I commented to a friend that I didn't really know much about Classical Music, but would like to explore it and he loaned me his grandfather's CD collection, which has about 75 discs in it. Is the best thing to do just listen and see what I connect with or are there things to know? There must be history and types that stratify the genre.

Any help is appreciated. Otherwise, I'll just sit and listen, which honestly I'll do anyway.

[Phil Rowan]

I wish I could find it the article I read recently about Lenny Bernstein in the NY'er mag. In it, they talk about two books Bernstein wrote that are widely used as guides to the history of classical music. Also (kind of related but not exactly), have you seen Bernstein's Harvard lectures, entitled "The Unanswered Question"? There's a short clip from it on youtube.. definitely worth watching the whole thing.

[Peter Ferretti]

If 20th Century Classical interests you, the Alex Ross Book The Rest is Noise is a must have. It reads more as a history of the 20th century through music than a book on 20th Century Music History. Quite a good read. Not to mention a killer listening list in the back.

[Jake deVilliers]

Listen first, then investigate. Make sure you hear piano sonatas, quartets and symphonies.

I love Vladimir Horowitz's 'Live in Moscow' - he was an amazing pianist and you'll need to hear Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bach - especially the organ stuff; wow, its a huge subject Troy. Just start with what you've got and follow your ears.

I grew up on Scarlatti and Bach on my mom's side and Django Rheinhardt and Beethoven on my father's. My sister was a ballet dancer so I got tons of great ballet music too. And I ended up in bluegrass.......

Load it up and let 'er rip!

[hdiddy]

IMO, emusic should be a great resource for this kind of stuff. 1 download being like 20 min worth of music. Yeehaw!

[Michael Eisenman]

Just sit and listen. Listen to your local classical radio station, too. They usually don't play anything that's too way out, and it's a good place to hear a lot of the popular pieces.

If you hear something that piques your interest, check out your local public library. It's a good place to find CDs to try out. If I hear something that interests me from a particular composer, I grab several CDs of his/her music. (Of course, I do this for jazz, too.)

Enjoy, Troy.

[TroyK]

Thanks, Michael. By the way, love your Avatar, your abs are rockin'. Call me.

[thedbassist]

If you're looking for a primer, you could start off with listening to pieces that are popular and beautiful like Barber's Adagio for Strings, Beethoven's 5th and 9th symphonies(you should listen to all of them at one point), Bach's cello suites and violin partitas, Mussorgsky's pictures at an exhibition, the Brahms symphonies and then gradually move on from there to all types of music, even atonal 20th and 21st century music like Webern, Berg. Also, Stravinsky's firebird is a really fun piece to listen to. Mahler is also a great(my favorite) composer to listen to. It's not really something you can fully enjoy without devoting all of your attention to it imo.

Btw, youtube is great place for finding almost any piece of music played by a high caliber group/player.