'Getting' classical music

[Mario]

I wonder if it requires an open-mind from the new beginner?

My very first piece of classical music I listened to was a friend of mine’s LP of Erich Kleiber with the Concertgebouw and Beethoven’s 5th on Side A and Mozart’s 40th on Side B.

I was 18 years old.

It didn’t make any impression at all.

But somehow, I don’t know why, I thought, let’s give it a try, so I listened to LvB’s 5th again, and again, and one glorious summer Saturday afternoon, the might of one of the greatest geniuses hit me like a thunderbolt.

He hasn’t left me alone since.

I persevered.

I wonder if people “new” to our music, give up after the first hearing.

Mario

[french frank]

I wonder if it requires an open-mind from the new beginner?

I'm always a bit wary of attributing it to 'an open mind'. That always seems like a bit of self-congratulation from those who do have 'an open mind'. Tastes are diverse in so many different experiences in life - people, food, hobbies &c it would be surprising if people dididn't have 'likes' and 'dislikes' (both could be analysed further). In the past 80 years or so, the prevalence of 'popular music' has expanded from the original two western strands of popular(of the people) and elitist (of the toffs). The quantity and diversity of popular music has simply crowded out 'elitist'/classical music to the point where for most people they neither hear it nor think of it. It isn't necessary to them. Why should anyone be interested in expanding their horizons? Classical music is absent for most people. If it crops up anywhere, some people who chance to hear may be interested, hooked, some won't be, but already it's becoming a minority taste, niche music. Publicity that labels classical music as 'elitist', 'not for people like me' will stamp out curiosity for a lot of/most people.

I am exactly the same, mutatis mutandis: I have no interest in contemporary pop (not for people like me), nor in electronic music, and only marginally so in new composition. I've found my niche.

What the musical world, industry, broadcasters feel needs to be done about this vis-à-vis classical is … I don't know what. But the signs are it's "Follow the masses'.

[Mario]

But the signs are it's "Follow the masses'.

Hence the need to cultivate an open-minded approach, no?

You know, I don't consider myself fortunate in having an open mind, and certainly do not congratulate myself on it.

Rather, I think being open minded is the norm, and not being so is erm, not.

This does not mean not having the desire to explore implies something inferior.

Mario

[RichardB]

I've found my niche.

But that's almost a definition of not having what Mario calls an open mind! Or, perhaps, no longer having one, since what you seem to be saying is that at a certain point one's preferences might be set in stone and there's no changing them from then on. Why should anyone be interested in expanding their horizons? Well, for some of us, expanding one's horizons is one of the central reasons for an interest in music. It's not something you "ought to" do because it's good for you in some vague way, it's something that emerges from the musical experience and is valuable in itself. More generally, surely in most walks of life having an open mind is preferable to having a closed one.

[french frank]

Rather, I think being open minded is the norm, and not being so is erm, not.

I think we don't see eye to eye on that! I would say that I am very adventurous (open-minded) and inquisitive about some things but not about others. People will differ in what they are "open-minded" about and what they're not. And they will differ in the extent to which they are "open-minded: some people very, others not at all. So I'm not sure that I would agree that there is a 'norm'.

There are all sorts of ways in which people are put off classical music - not by design but by consequence. Using classical music to disperse unruly groups, being told how snobbish classical music audiences are towards newbies, being told that classical music audiences want to keep 'ordinary people' out, more column inches in the press about ('familiar') popular music and little about classical music (which in any case is uninteresting because it's about something which is totally unknown. Anyone for Romance Philology?).

To RichardB: I'm saying people might have an open mind about some things, but not others. No surprise that you have an open mind, want to expand your horizons in … music.

I may add that I followed your link on Kagel's Transición on Youtube and listened to it (for a while).

[cloughie]

My view is leave well alone. Maybe ‘I know too much to argue or to judge’, maybe I know nothing - but I do know that music and musical tastes are very personal.

[ardcarp]

I'm pleased to see so many ways people became hooked. In my case, the beginning of 'getting' music seemed to happen by three earth-shattering epiphanies (OMG it's not meant to sound so pompous!) 1. Sitting in on a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's Octet at home with my father and 7 friends. 2. Visiting Lichfield Cathedral with my parents and from the west end hearing the sound of the choir floating from their stalls in the distance. 3. Joining the local parish choir (aged 7) and at the first practice-night singing along with I am Alpha and Omega by Stainer.

Two later obsessions were (a) standing on the kitchen table and 'conducting' Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and (b) working out how to harmonise Wagner's so-called Love Theme from Tristan in several different keys. I stuck it on the end of every piano piece I learned. It drove my family mad.

[Keraulophone]

I believe great music gives us a glimpse of God - but accept that view may have gone out of favour since about 1727. In his book Real Presences, George Steiner, though, sets out his belief that great Art does connect us to the ineffable spirit.

The eminent music critic and cricket writer Neville Cardus ends his autobiography (1947) by declaring: "If I know that my Redeemer liveth it is not on the church's testimony, but because of what Handel affirms." He reveals in the book that he found his Kingdom of Heaven in the arts, but admits that his rationale was shaken when he came to understand the late string quartets of Beethoven.
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[gurnemanz]

Music offers me beauty, shared experience and celebration of the human spirit and is probably one reason why I have no need of organised religion or a supernatural deity.

Discovering new music of all kinds is constantly rewarding and I wouldn't want to sit in a niche.

[MickyD]

My parents were of very humble stock, but my Dad had quite a collection of classical records, most of them 'standard' works, but he played some of them every Sunday afternoon after lunch. He certainly wasn't any kind of intellectual, but obviously classical music had grabbed him at some point in his life and he genuinely took pleasure from it. Thanks to him, all that rubbed off on me until I went my separate ways from the old warhorses and discovered the even greater delights of earlier music.

By the time I was 16, I was completely hooked on all Radio 3 had to offer whilst school friends were heavily into rock, which I never really got. Though my background was very ordinary, I was immediately labelled as posh, which couldn't have been further from the truth! Funny how you get stigmatised. I also have another member of my family who has this weird, almost cap-doffing attitude of 'your music is not for the likes of me' and he doesn't even try to give it a listen. I find that very sad.

[ardcarp]

Funny how you get stigmatised.

That happens in a different way too. Because I've always been associated with 'church music' (for want of a better description) and because I guess it amounts to 90% of what Mrs A and I now sing...not to mention our daughters....some people think we must be a deeply religious family. Well, we're not. As Gurnemanz hints above, there is a certain spiritual dimension to music*. But organised religion doesn't come into it. If asked, I usually reply that I'm on the atheistic wing of agnosticism.

* Certain choral and/or viol pieces never fail to produce tears, for instance Eccard's 'When to the Temple may went' and Byrd's Lullaby. Is that spiritual?

[Bryn]

That happens in a different way too. Because I've always been associated with 'church music' (for want of a better description) and because I guess it amounts to 90% of what Mrs A and I now sing...not to mention our daughters....some people think we must be a deeply religious family. Well, we're not. As Gurnemanz hints above, there is a certain spiritual dimension to music*. But organised religion doesn't come into it. If asked, I usually reply that I'm on the atheistic wing of agnosticism.

* Certain choral and/or viol pieces never fail to produce tears, for instance Eccard's 'When to the Temple may went' and Byrd's Lullaby. Is that spiritual?

No half-measures for me. I am a non-proselytizing atheist but love a good Mass or Requiem. If, on rare occasions, I feel constrained to attend a religious service, for some social reason or other, I will sing along with gusto in the hymns, so long as I know them.

[cat]

I’m ostensibly a late getter of classical music, as up to my mid 20s I listened only to rock, drum and bass, techno etc

However I think I always got classical, I just didn’t listen to it. That contrasts with jazz, which I can listen to but very obviously don’t “get”. Or maybe I just don’t like it.

I say classical but perhaps I mean early music, there’s a lot of post-Haydnish stuff I don’t get, or don’t like. But when it comes to Bach and earlier I can enjoy listening to anything all day.

Not really sure what my point is.

[ardcarp]

I hope I've got catholic tastes in music. I sometimes wish the Early Music Show set its boundaries to end at the late Renaissance...which would mean we'd get a lot more really early stuff such as Perotin - Dunstable - Josquin - and of course the Eton Choir Book through to Tallis and Byrd. It makes me want to weep at how many Mss of that ilk were chucked away, or at least failed to survive the Reformation. There is the odd re-discovery, e.g. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/...sic-discovered

And I suppose some remote monastery in Galicia or some such place may yet yield a treasure or two..

Bach and Handel used to be, in my youth, thought by many to be 'early'. And EMS sometimes strays into the real Classical period. Wrong programme!

[hmvman]

...That contrasts with jazz, which I can listen to but very obviously don’t “get”. Or maybe I just don’t like it.

Same here. Although there's a lot of jazz I like I don't really 'get' it or understand what's happening.

Maybe something for a different thread...