When did you start listening?

[The Diner]

5/17/1969

9:17 AM

[Sadko]

I started in my teens, the path went something like:

Beethoven -> Verdi -> Schubert -> Mozart -> Bach -> Chopin -> Schumann -> Bruckner ->Mahler ->  Wagner -> Prokofiev -> Stravinsky -> Rachmaninov.

An earlier special thing was an LP of my grandmother: Chopin - Études - Pollini. She had only a  handful of records, and this was the only one I liked, even as a child. (And it is still my favourite recording of the etudes.)

[Bogey]

I started in my teens, the path went something like:

Beethoven -> Verdi -> Schubert -> Mozart -> Bach -> Chopin -> Schumann -> Bruckner ->Mahler ->  Wagner -> Prokofiev -> Stravinsky -> Rachmaninov.

An earlier special thing was an LP of my grandmother: Chopin - Études - Pollini. She had only a  handful of records, and this was the only one I liked, even as a child. (And it is still my favourite recording of the etudes.)

Cool.

[mahler10th]

5/17/1969
9:17 AM

lol

[Bogey]

lol

John, can we get your features when you started listening to classical?

[Sadko]

5/17/1969

9:17 AM

Are you a Taurus? :-)

[Mr. Darcy]

Thanks for this thread! It's always inspiring and instructive to hear other people's stories, especially as I try to raise my toddler on the classics.

Since I can remember, I was raised on a steady diet or country, pop, and rock: Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and a bunch other hillbillies; but especially The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young. In the very late 70s and early 80s, my Dad became an "audiophile." I'm not sure he really cared that much for classical music, but he liked the "idea" of caring about it and of being a so-called discriminating listener. I remember being entranced and impressed by all the lights and meters on the equipment, the huge floor-standing speakers, and my Dad's growing LP collection that featured the earliest Telarc digital recordings (I wish I had ALL of these things now!). I really remember that Maazel recording of Stravinsky's Le Sacre, a bunch of Bach, Holst's The Planets, and some Mozart. My Dad would get drunk and really crank it. He'd then read/slur the liner notes to me (for some reason, I especially remember his articulate explanation of the namesake of Mozart's "Haffner" symphony...). He also had one of the earliesr CD players, and I do remember neighbors coming-by to listen to a Gerwshin recording (also on Telarc, I believe). Anyhow, I guess it just kind of sank in. I remember in grade school or high school we had some sort of music appreciation class and they played Stravinsky's Le Sacre (probably from Fantasia). I remember everyone giggling and frowning. But I also recall accurately pounding-out those rhythms on the floor, and my teacher asking me about it in front of the class. I was embarrassed that I couldn't express myself at the time (or why I even had to explain why I liked this sort of music), but I think I just mumbled something like "music is music" which, in hindsight, is probably the coolest (and Alban Berg-est) thing I could have said.

I dated a bunch of musicians (not simultaneously) through college (including a flautist in the local symphony!), and each one turned me on to something new. And, of course, I was always buying CDs and exploring new music. I still have those CDs that seemed so special at the time but that now are a little embarrassing: foremost in my mind is a Karajan/BPO disc of Albinoni, Bach, Gluck, and Mozart which I now find dreadful. But I still listen to others that, for whatever reason, were major turning points in my listening habits at the time and which I kind of mapped onto: a Barber and Copland disc by Michael Tilson Thomas; Salonen/LAPO's Mahler 4; Salonen/LAPO playing Bartok; Bryon Janis playing Chopin; Heifetz playing Brahms, Sibelius, and Bruch; Bernstein's VPO Brahms; Bernstein's Ives; Szell's Slavonic Dances; Colin Davis's BSO Sibelius; and the CD version of that Le Sacre my Dad used to play on LP.

Sorry for rambling and any grammatical/spelling errors--I'm just trying to finish these thougths before the wife returns from the gym and wants to watch Top Chef. Final though,t though: I still listen to all kinds of music--more than my Dad ever did. And I feel sorry for friends and family who are "only classic rock or pop" kind of folk. Listening to classical music has been (and will continue to be) a never-ending source of pleasure, variety, discovery, and intellectual stimulation. There's always some new avenue to explore. I'll be kind of heartbroken if I'm unable to impart these opportunities to my daughter. But I do think exposure, exposure will do the trick, much as it did for me. I dunno--music had just always been music. OK, time for Top Chef...

[abidoful]

Sorry for rambling and any grammatical/spelling errors--I'm just trying to finish these thougths before the wife returns from the gym and wants to watch Top Chef.

[Sergeant Rock]

I'll be kind of heartbroken if I'm unable to impart these opportunities to my daughter. But I do think exposure, exposure will do the trick, much as it did for me.

I'd like to think so but in my experience it doesn't work that way. Of course one has to be exposed to music at some point but exposure by itself doesn't seem to matter. I grew up in a large family (eight of us). My four younger sisters and brother were exposed to exactly the same music I was exposed to: weekly music appreciation classes in elementary school, classical music broadcasts on television, ballets, Bernstein's lectures. They heard my mother play Chopin, Schumann and Rach on her piano every day. They heard my grandfather sing Wagner. They, like me, played instruments and were in the high school band. But I'm the only one who acquired the classical bug, the only one who goes to concerts, listens to classical music.

Thread duty: I recall hearing and enjoying classical music when I was a child but it wasn't until I heard Ride of the Valkyries on the car radio when I was thirteen that the passion emerged in a big way. Luckily my father's best friend was a Wagnerian and had a great stereo system (we had a really cheap, crummy record player with a tinny built-in speaker) so I heard the bleeding chunks in fine sound. When I was sixteen I began to work weekends at a restaurant. I bought a record with my first paycheck: Elgar and Vaughan Williams, the beginning of the collecting mania that took over my life    Still have that first LP:




Sarge

[Florestan]

I must have been in my very early teens when I accidentally caught on radio a pot-pourri of classical music "hits", featuring, AFAIR, Grieg, Gershwin, Bizet, Tchaikovsky --- of course, at that time I had no idea about them, but somehow the music gripped my attention and everytime it was aired I felt delighted.

A few years later during a music class in secondary school the teacher spinned a recording of Grieg's PC (I ignore completely who was performing) and I instantly recognized the beginning of that pot-pourri. The next thing I've heard, in the house of one of my father's friends and at my father's request, was Tchaikovsky's First PC followed by Ravel's Daphnis & Chloe. A few weeks later, in another father's friend house, I've heard Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and Chopin's Polonaise op. 53. The final blow was watching Zefirelli's Carmen at cinema, with Domingo and Julia Migenes-Johnson. It must have been around 1985 and I was 13. Ever since, 90% of my listening time is "Classical" music.

[drogulus]

     It started in my early teens in 1962.

     

I bought a record with my first paycheck: Elgar and Vaughan Williams, the beginning of the collecting mania that took over my life    Still have that first LP:




Sarge

     
     Now that's a good start! These are the Mercury recordings, and that's my favorite Enigma with the organ at the end.

     

[Sid]

I started listening to classical when I was about 6. My parents were listeners as well. They liked the classics like the 3 B's, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Vivaldi, Chopin, Wagner, etc. I started collecting tapes & cd's when I hit my early teens. My interest in classical waned in my 20's, I became a convert to jazz. Then in my early 30's I started collecting again & going to concerts (I'm 34 now). It's always an interesting journey with classical, though I do like other types of music as well...