How did you "discover" classical music?

[Bonehelm]

I was hooked to the dancing girls

Right, like we really needed to know that.

[Mozart]

Right, like we really needed to know that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktVhGWzvmV0 

[Superhorn]

   My family wasn't particularly musical, although they did enjoy listening to classical music on occaision, but I discovered this kind of music on my own, when I started borrowing classical Lps out of my public library, which had an extensive collection, and got hooked for life as a teenager.
  I had already learned to play the French horn in elementary school, and played it all through high school college, graduate school, and afterwards, having studied music and education, musicology and horn at Hofstra, Queens college, CUNY and Stony Brook, SUNY.
  I went on to play horn in numerous orchestras, concert bands, opera companies, chamber ensembles etc on a freelance basis, and was a substiture music teacher at various public schools on Long Island, and auditioned(unsuccessfully) for orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Washington National, and New Jersey symphony among others, as well as performing in countries as diverse as Australia, italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, Fiji and Samoa, and wrote music criticism for the student newspapers at Queens college and Hofstra.
  I was forced to abandon paying the horn because of a physical disability several years ago, but have been involved with programs to foster the appreciation of classical music for the elderly and infirm, and other disabilities such as Cerebral palsy, and have been doing such programs in New Rochelle, NY, and previously at United Cerebral Palsy on Long Island.
  I am hoping to expand my programs to wherever possible and to try to motivate more people, of any age from teenagers to older people ,to make classical music a part of their lives, and have conceived of starting an orginazation to attempt to do this by going to the people.

[Dundonnell]

   My family wasn't particularly musical, although they did enjoy listening to classical music on occaision, but I discovered this kind of music on my own, when I started borrowing classical Lps out of my public library, which had an extensive collection, and got hooked for life as a teenager.
  I had already learned to play the French horn in elementary school, and played it all through high school college, graduate school, and afterwards, having studied music and education, musicology and horn at Hofstra, Queens college, CUNY and Stony Brook, SUNY.
  I went on to play horn in numerous orchestras, concert bands, opera companies, chamber ensembles etc on a freelance basis, and was a substiture music teacher at various public schools on Long Island, and auditioned(unsuccessfully) for orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Washington National, and New Jersey symphony among others, as well as performing in countries as diverse as Australia, italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, Fiji and Samoa, and wrote music criticism for the student newspapers at Queens college and Hofstra.
  I was forced to abandon paying the horn because of a physical disability several years ago, but have been involved with programs to foster the appreciation of classical music for the elderly and infirm, and other disabilities such as Cerebral palsy, and have been doing such programs in New Rochelle, NY, and previously at United Cerebral Palsy on Long Island.
  I am hoping to expand my programs to wherever possible and to try to motivate more people, of any age from teenagers to older people ,to make classical music a part of their lives, and have conceived of starting an orginazation to attempt to do this by going to the people.

Well done What you are doing is really superb! I wish you the very best of continuing success with your programs

[Harry]

Mwahhh, Classical music discovered me.......

[Haffner]

Classical Music: "Man On The Silver Mountain" Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow
Opera: "Child in Time" Deep Purple

[Josquin des Prez]

The high point of Baroque is George F Handel J. S. Bach

Fixed.

[karlhenning]

It'll kill the Corkster.

[Dr. Dread]

I was out walking in the woods, minding my own business, when a Pavarotti disc fell on me head.

[Franco]

I remember a grocery store my mother went to offered a classical LP with a purchase over some amount.  They were packaged in green boxes with gold writing and one I remember that completely captivated me was Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade.  I must of played that a hundred times, and was very interested from then on in whatever else she brought home - which ended up including all the most standard rep - but still, for a kid growing up in Louisiana, it was like a candle in the darkness.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

The high point of Baroque is George F Handel...

No love for Bach?

No doubt Handel is great but there's greatness aplenty in both composers.

[jwinter]

When I was a kid our local department store had a rack of $3.99 cassette tapes that usually had a good selection of the old Columbia Great Performances (the ones that looked like old newspapers, like this one, which I played so much I wore it out):



By various methods of guile I managed to convince my grandmother or mom to buy me one now and then.   Thus I cut my teeth on a lot of Szell, Ormandy, Bernstein, and Walter -- could have done a lot worse, I suppose   

Those old covers still make me smile; I've managed to reacquire most of the performances on CD in various guises, but if you look in my iTunes, you'll find they all have the old Great Performances cover art; just my way of being eccentric...

[Josquin des Prez]

No love for Bach?

No doubt Handel is great but there's greatness aplenty in both composers.

In retrospective, i believe what james meant is that Handel represents the high point of the Baroque as a style, Bach being a bit, erm, unorthodox. I think.

[Jay F]

I got tired of listening to rock on CDs, and had a number of friends who preferred classical music. So I would join them record shopping on weekends. I learned which labels were which, and would buy whichever ones were on sale at Tower and other, local, record stores in DC. I hardly listened to rock or pop for about ten years, eventually determining that I preferred rock on LP.

Now, it's as if I inhabit two completely separate musical worlds. I have different rooms, even. I'll go for a year or two without listening to one or the other very much at all. I've been listening to classical nearly exclusively for close to a year, and it shows no sign of abating. I have a few pop LPs and CDs I've bought so I wouldn't be caught short ("new" LPs can go OOP pretty quickly), but they've sat unopened (for over a year in a couple of cases).

[Opus106]

Today, Jan. 26th, is the third anniversary of my "discovery", so to speak, of western classical music. I would not say I was totally unfamiliar with it or the characters involved. For example, I knew that Mozart "composed Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star when he was 12"* when I was about the same age. Even though I liked this Viennese Classical sound (heard via TV commercials and such), I didn't bother following it up. I swear it wouldn't have been easy as it is today to do so.

Three years ago to the day I'd been to an open/public quiz, which is a very popular pastime in this city. The answer to one of the questions asked was about Mozart writing from memory Allegri's Miserere, which he had heard at the Sistine Chapel. It was then I gave a thought to listening to this man's music. Thanks to the Internet, I found an internet station. And I've been spending a lot of money ever since.  0:)



* I know it's utter rubbish, and that's why I put it within quotes.

[Cleo Telerín]

My grandmother forced me to study piano when I was little. I'm not sure I liked it... the teacher (our neighbors' daughter) had to chase me for a while through the yard before we could start, then I would kick the piano hard. I think I became fond of listening to music when I was 10, through those Clásicos populares CDs. Discovering Prokofiev's 6-7th piano sonatas and Liszt's works was subsequently a major turning point.

[Iago]

My maternal grandparents took me to Tanglewood when I was 6-7 years old. Heard/saw Koussevitsky conduct the Boston Symphony in an all Tschaikovsky program. The R&J Fantasy Overture, Excerpts from Swan Lake. and the Pathetique Symphony.

      That did it. Hooked for life. And I'm now 73 yrs young.

[Diletante]

The background music of Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" did it for me. I think it was the third time I watched it that I paid more attention to the music and thought: "Hey, that music sounds good!". Before that, I couldn't care less about classical music.

[Opus106]

The background music of Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" did it for me.

Wow. That film has pulled in a LOT of people! I have had it burnt on disc for quite some time now, but I've yet to watch it.

[B_cereus]

Ahh, I'm sure someone has made a topic of this before, but I can't help asking it.

What got you into classical music?

Are you a musician?

Did your parents listen to classical music?

Did a certain music course in college inspire you?

Are you a music educator?

being introduced to it at an early age; music lessons.

not professionally

uh huh.. my mother took me with her to operas as a kid

no

no