What Started You in Classical Music/What Piece Did you First Listen to?

[Sergeant Rock]

I think several Baroque composers including Corelli have done variations on that theme.

Yeah, Corelli's "La Follia"

Sarge

[Sean]

My thanks Sarge; don't know if that was a Youtube link but I can't access it out here- I can access Naxos though and I'll try there, thanks.

[Sean]

Found it here...

[Sean]

The sarabande is in the Fifth suite, the Harmonious Blacksmith movement in the Fourth-

[Sergeant Rock]

The sarabande is in the Fifth suite, the Harmonious Blacksmith movement in the Fourth-

There is a sarabande in the E minor Suite #5 HWV 438 but that is not the sarabande Jay F was talking about. You need to find the D minor Suite HWV 437 (sometimes called Suite #4...but it gets confusing because there is another Suite #4 from an earlier set of eight Suites). The HWV number is key: find 437 and you'll finally hear the sarabande we're referring to. Can you access Amazon clips from China? If so, listen to clip number 13 on this page: http://www.amazon.de/Harpsichord-Works-Vol-Sophie-Yates/dp/B00001T6KZ/ref=sr_1_sc_7?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1370867581&sr=1-7-spell&keywords=handel+harpsichord+suite


Sarge

 

[Sean]

Profuse apologies, I got those the wrong way round- the famous Sarabande which indeed I've no problem identifying is in the Fourth suite as numbered by Naxos anyway, in D minor HWV437; the somewhat less memorable Blacksmith's in the Fifth.

[Sergeant Rock]

Profuse apologies, I got those the wrong way round- the famous Sarabande which indeed I've no problem identifying is in the Fourth suite as numbered by Naxos anyway, in D minor HWV437; the somewhat less memorable Blacksmith's in the Fifth.

Finally, we're on the same sheet of music (pun intended  )

Sarge

[snyprrr]

The first Classical I ever heard, when I was pre-9, was an LP of Dvorak's 9th. The Big Melody probably lurks in everything I do?

[Xenophanes]

This would take me back to my early childhood as most of the music we heard was classical.  Some things I remember from then are:

My mother played a lot of things on the piano.

Saturday Afternoon at the Opera

Ravel's Bolero--it must have been shortened to fit on a single side of a 12 inch 78 record. Halvorsen's March of the Boyars was on the other side, but we didn't play it much.  My brother and I surely wore this one out. In retrospect, it must have driven our mother crazy.

Victor Borge

Von Suppe's Poet and Peasant Overture

Deems Taylor's Through the Looking Glass

Franck's Symphony in d was one of my mother's favorites.

Brahms Symphonies 1 & 3 were also among her favorites.

Rachmaninoff's 2nd Symphony

Some Caruso, Gigli and Pinza recordings. I liked the singers, and eventually learned to sing pretty well.

As I got older, I heard other things, but still, when I grew up, the varieties I knew were fairly narrow. I didn't know most of the major symphonies, concertos, chamber works, and piano sonatas. The first time I heard Messiah was when we performed it at the university.

[EigenUser]

I started thinking about how weird my patterns in music are. You'd think that most people would start with "normal" stuff like Mozart, Bach, etc. and (for instance) work their way up to Schumann, then Brahms, then Wagner, then Mahler, then maybe Schoenberg/Bartok/Stravinsky/Shostakovich, then maybe Ligeti and beyond. I seem to be working backwards. In high school I was first attracted by the savageness of Stravinsky's Rite, the bleakness of Shostakovich's 8th SQ, the "cheerful aggressiveness" of much of Bartok, and the "fun" of Gershwin. Oddly, I also loved Mendelssohn (I was downright obsessed with the octet ) and I could never reconcile this with the rest of my musical interests.

Then, two years ago, I discovered Ligeti through "Clocks and Clouds". It was one of the most profound things I have ever heard in my life. I had heard of him before and I had heard "Lontano" on YouTube (because it was in "The Shining"), but I guess it didn't stick .Each work of his took genuine effort on the part of the listener (as Jeffery Smith put it in the listening thread -- the "what exactly is he doing here?" thing), but there was so much top-notch music to revel in once that was settled. It was like musical surrealism -- but I discovered that "it isn't as weird as it sounds", if that makes sense. That is, it becomes more evident upon several listenings that his music is based on tradition.

Schoenberg caught my attention with "Verklarte Nacht" (recommended to me by a math professor of mine) and then I discovered his "Chamber Symphony No. 1". A good friend of mine recommended Messiaen two years ago. It took me a while, but he's a favorite now. When I joined GMG it was hard not to fall under the infectious enthusiasm of Gurn and the gang at the Haus. Thus, Haydn became a favorite, too. His music is sincerely cheerful; it sounds like Haydn was a genuinely happy person. Most historical accounts seem to concur.

I need to give Mozart another shot at some point. Sometimes I wonder if I like the idea of disliking a "great" more than I actually dislike his music. I mean, it's my loss. Similar to what Simon Rattle said about Tchaikovski, Mozart seems to be doing fine without me.

Now, I have been appreciating Mahler a lot this past week. Instead of approaching his music from the perspective of Brahms and Wagner, I've been using the "secret entrance": Schoenberg (namely, the first chamber symphony and VN).

[johnshade]

Rodzinski`s  LP of Brahms First Symphony.


JS

[Pat B]

I started thinking about how weird my patterns in music are. You'd think that most people would start with "normal" stuff like Mozart, Bach, etc. and (for instance) work their way up to Schumann, then Brahms, then Wagner, then Mahler, then maybe Schoenberg/Bartok/Stravinsky/Shostakovich, then maybe Ligeti and beyond.

I doubt most people actually follow that plan. It's too easy to be exposed to things in a different order!

[Ken B]

I doubt most people actually follow that plan. It's too easy to be exposed to things in a different order!

Yeah. For me it was Tchaikovsky, but within months I was listening to Gregorian Chant, Mahler, Mozart, Stravinsky. Driven largely by what was in the cut out shelf at the local record store, and on Vox or Seraphim.

[jochanaan]

I started with The Great Masters (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and so on), but what's different about my "pattern" is that I didn't stay in the past.  In fact, when going to live concerts, I'm much more likely to select something I've never heard before...