Learning to Love Classical Music

The goal of this class is to teach you to love classical music. 

I was first introduced to classical music in high school. At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about music. I had played soccer instead of learning an instrument, I never sang in the choir, and I had no idea what the little dots and lines meant on a page of music. I was the definition of non-musical.

When I reached my junior year, however, I had to take a music appreciation course from the band teacher. The band teacher was not a terribly exciting teacher – but he did know a lot about music. More importantly, he loved classical music.

I still remember him putting on a recording of one of Mozart’s symphonies. I was mesmerized. I had never heard music like that before. This was the late 1980s, so I had grown up listening to rock ‘n’ roll on the radio or cassette tapes. Unlike kids growing up in the 1950’s or 60’s, classical music wasn’t a part of our home.

In the course of the year, he introduced us to all the great composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and many more.  I met people and music I didn’t even know existed.

It was revelatory.

I next remember going out and buying a cassette tape of Mozart’s 40th and 41st symphonies. It was conducted by Rafael Kubelik and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. At the time, I had no idea who these people were. But the music was heavenly. I listened to it again and again.

That was the start of my relationship. During college, I graduated to a Compact Disc (CD) player and bought hundreds of CDs. It was then that I began to realize different conductors performed the same work in different ways, sometimes better, sometimes worse. This meant I might need multiple recordings of the same piece of music.

My library exploded. Eventually it was space that made me stop at 1000+ CDs. At this point, I was now living on my own and so could attend symphony concerts both in the US and overseas (I spent a number of years living in Europe).

By the early 2000’s, however, digital music arrived on the scene. I could have thousands of albums that took up very little space. My acquisitions continued through the early 2010’s and reached into the thousands of digital albums.

Yet I kept looking for a better listening experience. A friend convinced me I was missing out not listening to classical music on vinyl records, so I bought a vintage turntable and stereo setup. Again, it was revelatory what I had been missing. Of course, my CDs and digital albums were now useless, so I started the happy climb up the hill of classical LP’s (for Long Playing record). I’m a bit ashamed to say that my collection has already broken 1000…

I have felt for a long time that I wanted to share my love of music with students. That’s what this class is: it is an introduction to the greatest composers and the greatest music ever written. My hope is that you will find new companions for yourself for the rest of your life.

Sincerely,