Snupes suggested that I start a thread in which I write about classical music and do reviews and stuff, so here goes. I reckon I'll be mixing it up between reviews and general articles to keep things interesting, and I'll try to avoid being didactic about it, that is to say I'm not going to try and create an overall guide that is going to take you from beginner to expert in increments, because that simply isn't going to work. No, don't let this first post fool you, I may be writing a general introduction today, but next time I could be reviewing Stockhausen's
Licht, so don't get too comfortable.
I have no idea how regularly I'll update this and I doubt many people care, but here's another project to add to the way-too-many I'm already working on!
Getting StartedClassical music has a pretty bad reputation among a lot of people, it's elitist music for snobs, or worse background music for studying and relaxation, either way something to be handled at a considerable distance and even then largely ignored. This needn't be true today, where actually getting it and listening to it is so easy that there's practically no reason not to, unless you're deaf, in which case I apologise. However, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy to explore, after all, you're talking about a tradition which spans the best part of 1000 years, from early Gregorian chant through to live electronics and beyond. New listeners generally either find themselves swamped by trying to listen chronologically to the entire western canon, or they pick up a 100 Greatest Classics compilation featuring tunes excerpted from larger works, decontexualised and thereby stripped of value. Hopefully, this post will help you, the curious newcomer, get a basic idea of how to start and where to go.
First off, it's probably best to acknowledge and accept that there isn't really a good place to start. Whether your first listen is Beethoven or Berio, you're only hearing one piece that represents a very small chunk of the overall history of classical music, not to mention that different people have different musical backgrounds, and what hooks one person can completely bewilder and scare off another. Unfortunately there isn't a formula for what you'll like based on what you already like, and there's little in the way of 1:1 between classical music and popular music. For this reason, it is best to try a little bit of this and a little bit of that, see what works for you and what doesn't.
Having said that, and I assure you there is more than a little personal bias in this suggestion, it's hard to go wrong with the transitional period from romanticism to modernism, the
fin de siècle. It is an especially vibrant period, as Wagner's popularisation of chromaticism, resulting in the blooming of German late romanticism, had brought the next generation of composers to consider tonality and form in new ways, from Mahler's increasingly dissonant and structurally expansive symphonies, to Debussy's neo-modal tritone based works, and eventually Schoenberg's Second Viennese School and so-called "free atonality." You don't really need to worry about what any of those terms mean right now, but what I'm getting is that this period has enough going on to suggest a general direction for the newcomer to go in, whether looking back towards the contrapuntal rigour of baroque and the formal simplicity of early music, or forward towards the turbulent and expansive mid to late 20th century and beyond, or even both.
However you decide to start, know that while classical music is very broad and dense, with hundreds of hours of great music that you can spend a lifetime exploring in full, it needn't be chosen over other kinds of music in an oft succumbed-to false dichotomy. It also needn't be a chore, which is easy enough to avoid by not setting the whole thing up for yourself as a Herculean trial for you to endure. Listening projects can be fun once you've gotten a handle on the tradition and know at least in brief your likes and dislikes, but as a beginner the minute you start thinking to yourself "I'm gonna get the
Schubert Edition and listen to all 60 discs!" is the minute you set yourself up for a miserable experience — Schubert is a great composer and all, but seriously: don't. There's also very little need for a beginner to worry about hearing multiple performances of a given piece — chances are, you aren't going to notice the difference at this stage, and on top of that you'll likely sour yourself on comparing performances, which, once your ear is more experienced, is going to be very rewarding for you.
Lastly, I'd like to talk about taste. In classical music we have the western canon, this is basically the agreed upon list of "best" or "most important" works, mostly determined by critics, musicologists, and music historians. It sounds impressive, and indeed there are many hours of great music to enjoy within its confines, but it isn't the be all and end all of great music, nor is it something you should feel intimidated by. Just because a bunch of dudes you've never heard of think all this stuff is hot shit, doesn't mean you have to agree — don't let them dictate your taste to you. By all means use it as a guide, but don't ever let it tell you what it's okay to like or dislike, trust your own ears first and foremost — there's no shame in liking, for example, Satie more than Beethoven.
So that about wraps it up. I could go on for thousands of words about all sorts of stuff that doesn't really matter to you at this point, but just like I don't think it's a good idea to build a foreboding mountain of music for yourself to climb, I have no interest in filling your head with so many ideas that you are just as clueless about classical music as you were when you started reading. I hope this post gets you interested in exploring this great musical tradition, and I hope you find these
selections an enticing introduction to it.
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