Do you come from a Classical Music Family?

[Karl Henning]

Most assuredly, and we're all nuts. 

(* chortle *)

[Karl Henning]

I didn't have classical background. My dad listened to jazz and my mother listened to "nothing". I found classical music by myself at age 25-26 encouraged by my best friend who played violin and talked about how cool classical music can be.

Nice!

[Karl Henning]

Neither of my parents were into classical music at all. To the extent they listened to music (which wasn't often), it was mainstream stuff for people of their age in the 1980s (Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Julio Iglesias, Barbra Streisand.)

My "background" is comparable, adjusting the names for the 1950s.

[Rosalba]

I just wanted to say thank you for all the replies.
I am reading them with great interest - every time I've come on GMG, there seems to be a new one, which is lovely.
My best wishes to all.

[joachim]

My parents were not interested in classical music (my mother a little, having had a violinist sister in her school when she was little, but she knew very little. My father, in good French, only liked the accordion -musette and songs from the 1930s/1950s).

My love of the classical was revealed when I was 13 (I explained it on another topic), first with Beethoven, then with Mozart, Haydn...

[VonStupp]

My parents weren't really interested in any music that didn't come from the jukebox. I did have an architect cousin living in downtown Chicago who attended the Chicago SO & Lyric Opera of Chicago regularly (still does). I remember him bringing opera broadcasts to holiday gatherings from his Beta-Max collection. My grandparents were Swedish folk dancers that I always found amusing.

Despite my parents disinterest in classical music, they placed me in a regional boys choir at an early age. This is what exposed me to a wide variety of classical music (plus a lifelong love of Britten) and afforded me to travel across five continents before age 18. They might have been ambivalent or apathetic about the music, but they never had to force me to be a part of it and I never felt my desire wander from performing as a young person.

VS

[Crudblud]

Not particularly. My mother kept cassettes and later CDs of Beethoven, Dvořák, Chopin, and others in the house because I think she felt instrumental music (there was also some jazz, Charlie Parker being the one I distinctly remember) was the best thing for a child to hear. In fact, according to her, she played Dvořák's Ninth for me when we arrived home from the hospital after I was born. My father apparently liked Bach and Respighi, although I don't remember him playing anything by them when I lived with him. Outside of immediate family I think there is/was little to no appreciation for classical music at all, and, except for my uncle on my mother's side and my grandfather on my father's side, nothing beyond a casual interest in music generally.

[Mountain Goat]

My parents always listened to classical music (still do!) so I was surrounded by it for as long as I can remember. In fact it wasn't until I started school that I realised there was any other kind of music. My parents' tastes are mostly limited to late Baroque to mid-Romantic - Bach to Brahms, outside of which only Sibelius, Rachmaninov and early Stravinsky get a look in. It wasn't until I left home to go to university that I started to explore beyond that, spurred on by having heard Nielsen's 3rd symphony on the radio and being totally blown away by it.

[steve ridgway]

Despite my parents disinterest in classical music, they placed me in a regional boys choir at an early age. This is what exposed me to a wide variety of classical music (plus a lifelong love of Britten) and afforded me to travel across five continents before age 18.

That was very good of your parents, well done!

[steve ridgway]

It wasn't until I left home to go to university that I started to explore beyond that, spurred on by having heard Nielsen's 3rd symphony on the radio and being totally blown away by it.

I wonder if many classical musicians only discover 20th century music when they get to university.

[Autolycus]

My family had little interest in music. I had basic piano lessons but was never pushed into it.

This was the era before heavy duty pop on the radio. Something like Children's Favourites would include light classics or lollipops as part of the general scene. Classical Music was in the background and there were many tunes used forTV programmes - Holst's Mars for Quatermass springs to mind.

I had a transistor radio and listened to the Light programme as I did my homework. Just like Radio 2 today, there was a folk night, a country night, a big band night, a jazz (eugh!) night. I loved the folk and country nights and went to folk concerts at University and later. This became the era when folk and Early Music mixed - Young Tradition doing the Agincourt Carol or Young Tradition with David Munrow on pipes and Christopher Hogwood (yes that one!) on percussion.

From there, I moved into Early Music and then into the Baroque. That's as far as I got. I play piano but like to stick with baroque or early music although I have been forced to play other music for exams.

I don't think you need a Classical Music background to get into Classical Music. What is needed is some exposure in popular culture and an interplay between different genres.

[Karl Henning]

I wonder if many classical musicians only discover 20th century music when they get to university.

Pretty much true of me, although, since I knew hardly any of the lit before I went to college, the 20^th century was simply in the queue.

[71 dB]

I wonder if many classical musicians only discover 20th century music when they get to university.

In my case going to the university didn't change much, because it was a TECHNICAL university, not an ART university teaching music. All it did for me is I met my best friend there and his music-related influence on me encouraged me to get into classical music, but before that I didn't care about any classical music, 20th century or older... 

[Klavier1]

Yes. Both parents loved classical music, and my mother was a very good pianist. She was my first piano teacher, too.

[AaronSF]

My parents were not musically sophisticated.  (I can thank my dad for giving me Patsy Cline, whom he played on the juke box while we waited for our pizza-to-go at Davis's Tap.)  My mother was quite determined that her children would move up in society from our lower-middle-class roots.  To that end she scrimped to provide us with music and dance lessons (tap, ballet, and ballroom) and she even bought us a small grand piano on lay-away.  My sisters are a lot older than me, so I grew up listening to my oldest sister play the piano (lots of Brahms and Chopin) and my second sister sing opera arias.  My singer sis was also in high school productions of Carousel, South Pacific, and Oklahoma, which at the time were fairly recent musicals. 

I wanted nothing more than to play the piano, but my father was resistant as he wanted nothing more than a typical son who enjoyed playing baseball, football, hunting, and fishing -- all things I had no interest in nor aptitude for.  He threw endless balls at me and took me hunting for rabbits and pheasant.  He taught me how to put a worm or minnow or lure on a hook and fish for catfish, bass, blue gills, crappies, etc.  I hated it all.  I begged for piano lessons for years and finally got my first one when I was 11 after my dad realized I was never going to be the boy he wanted me to be.  (Mind you, he was a very nice man who did his best.)

We also all got braces on our teeth because my mother believed no one got ahead in life with crooked teeth.  And contact lenses.  And we all went to college...a first for our family.

I'm grateful to my mother for encouraging us to go much farther than she had, even if it meant we would all leave her and the Midwest as soon as we could.

[Que]

A belated welcome to GMG, AaronSF! 

[Lisztianwagner]

Unfortunately, my family has never been very fond of classical music and has been rarely listening to it, though they have always supported this passion of mine; but actually I'm the only one of my relatives who's mad about this kind of music.
My parents have always enjoyed watching the Wiener Neujahrskonzert on TV anyway, that way I discovered and started appreciating classical music when I was a child; but I became serious about it some years later after watching a documentary about Mozart's life that made really impressed; after that, I began to dive into classical composers more and more (sometimes with suggestions of my friends), because classical music could strike fire from my heart like no other type of music before, and I even decided to start playing the piano.
Instead, I discovered my favourite composer, Richard Wagner, because I liked reading about Norse mythology and the Arthurian Cycle.