Are You Obsessed with Classical Music?

[prémont]

I doubt that. It's probably different.

I have often a more or less shallow listening experience and sometimes I have deep, captivating ones.

That a performer is closer to the music, doesn't mean he better grasps it. He's busy performing, he's a medium in order for us to fully appreciate the music, which may happen or happen not. Think of it as a cooperation.

Listening to music is not just 'passive'.

Well put.

[LKB]

I am obsessed with classical music.

I don't believe that fact makes me in any way unusual, as in my experience everyone obsesses about something. 

[Karl Henning]

Exactly my point: an active enjoyment of music is more satisfying than a passive one.

I doubt that. It's probably different.

I assure you it's true. To give only a trivial example, there are some pieces I don't much enjoy in passive listening, but of which I find it gratifying to participate in a performance: Carmina burana, Messiah, e.g. Also, most of Britten's church-adjacent choral music.

[Karl Henning]

Listening to music is not just 'passive'.

I accept that, but it is comparatively passive.

[Karl Henning]

TD: I'm unsure how to answer the question. Is someone who composes music "obsessed" with music? It may depend on the composer or, as in my case, I wonder if obsess is at all an apt word.

[DavidW]

Looks like without this continuous and exclusive focus on classical music, our lives would be devoid of meaning and purpose.

I somehow missed this absolutely bizarre sentence.  We all have lives. We're here just because we can talk about this niche topic with others that also care. And this is a community that has been home for many of us for decades.

I took a hiatus from the forum for several years and did not devolve into an existential crisis in meaning or purpose... I just continued living my life!

I think there is nothing bizarre or unhealthy about listening to music and sharing with other people that like the same thing.  I also don't feel like I need to learn an instrument to absolve myself of some sin of being just a filthy listener.  We can all appreciate music however we want, and all are welcome whether they be listeners, performers, composers,... and whatever Greg is  

[atardecer]

My experience aligns with those emphasizing active enjoyment of music over (relatively) passive enjoyment.

Playing pieces at a pro-level is not necessary. The essence of music is an idea. The music in it's audible manifestation is acting as a symbol that points the way to something else that is more substantial - the actual essence or idea. Any performance no matter how masterful is only an approximation. By participating in music actively one can get closer to the essence.

As an example I've been playing through Ravel's La vallée des cloches lately. My playing is slower and not masterful like the pros, yet I get substantially more enjoyment this way. I feel I get closer to the core of the music compared to listening to any recording.

[atardecer]

I think some people obsess too much about minutiae in music performance nowadays. As Beethoven said mistakes are insubstantial, the feel is more important.

Nowadays many act like only top level pro-performances are valid musical expressions. I don't agree. I think it is possible for an amateur to move someone profoundly with their playing and that is what music is about.

I'm fine with pros polishing and working the pieces as much as they want, that's great. It doesn't give them a monopoly on playing music. I think it is completely possible for a listener to be more moved by an amateur playing a piece (particularly the many works that are not highly virtuosic) compared to a pro, because music is not about only technical accuracy or precision or polish. There is an element of rhythmic feel and phrasing that some possess inherently.

[Luke]

I don't mind being obsessed. And as everyone I know also thinks I am, there wouldn't be much point arguing anyway. I have a permanent absorption of and in classical music which inflects how I see the world itself, I think - I'd be hard=pressed to define exactly how, but I've always felt it. I can't really imagine it any other way and wouldn't want to.

However, earlier posts in this thread conflated 'obsession with classical music' with 'obsession with collecting/comparing recordings' as if that were true for all of us. Subsequent posts have pushed back against that idea somewhat and certainly it is true for me that my obsession is less with comparison of the various ways I can hear a piece than with what I could maybe call the Platonic ideal of the piece itself - the composer's ideas, as presented in the score, from which those recordings all derive. It is these notes, their history, their sources, their behaviours, the people who conceived both of them and of all their interrelationships, the places and societies from which they sprung etc. etc. etc. which obsess me above all. Though I am interested in recordings and their comparisons, and can sometimes be passionate enough about a particular one to mention it here, I would rather talk about why  Janacek's String Quartets are so unutterably fantastic (say) than about which quartet plays them best.

[Karl Henning]

would rather talk about why Janacek's String Quartets are so unutterably fantastic (say) than about which quartet plays them best.

A phrase I learnt from PG Wodehouse: rem acu tetigisti

[Luke]

I'm going to have to look that one up, Karl!

By the way, I wouldn't want to give the impression that I'm not interested in comparing recordings at all. Just this week, for instance, I have been quite caught up in comparing recordings of the Bach cello suites. I already had about five or six different versions, which I know is not a lot around these parts but I think would be thought of as excessive by the general population, but this week I got hold of four more. Nevertheless, I'd still rather talk about the notes which all the versions have in common than about what divides the different interpretations.

[Luke]

I have now looked it up, Karl 

[Mandryka]

I would rather talk about why  Janacek's String Quartets are so unutterably fantastic (say) than about which quartet plays them best.

But in that case you won't know how unutterably fantastic they are until you have heard Quartetto Energie Nove play them (partly a question of edition, reinstated passages etc.)

[Spotted Horses]

Though I am interested in recordings and their comparisons, and can sometimes be passionate enough about a particular one to mention it here, I would rather talk about why  Janacek's String Quartets are so unutterably fantastic (say) than about which quartet plays them best.

I find it very illuminating to listen to a different recording of a piece every time (more or less) I listen to it. There is a bit more of the concert-like experience because you don't quite know what to expect. I try to exclude "best" from my vocabulary when talking about a particular recording, and try to communicate some meaningful attribute I enjoy (or perhaps don't enjoy) about a particular recording/performance. And I agree with your allusion to the "platonic ideal" of a piece, which I feel can be approached by mentally distilling the essence of the music from individual performances.

[Harry]

Not an obsession, but very important. I also listen to inordinate amounts of a variety of metal genres, but classical music is probably more important to me.

I'm fortunate to work from home, so can spend a large part of my working day accompanied by music. Aside from that, I have dreadful tinnitus and can't work in silence.

Good old classical music.

Yes the same for me!

That gives me great sadness to hear, Tinnitus is a dreadful affliction, and no cure is available.

[Luke]

But in that case you won't know how unutterably fantastic they are until you have heard Quartetto Energie Nove play them (partly a question of edition, reinstated passages etc.)

Of course, I want to hear them played well and with understanding and, given my interest in the notes themselves, clearly I want to hear any textual revelations such as you describe. But then I want to think and talk about how, and why, these marvelous pieces are what they are, never mind who is playing them. I'm more interested, for example, in the fact of Janacek's extraordinary use of ponticello writing in these quartets - how and why and where he deploys it - than in whose ponticello is 'best'. And this is in spite of the fact that the issue of how the ponticello is done in these pieces - the degree to which it is used, how much of the original, fingered pitch is left to be heard - is actually truly transformative and makes a massive difference between different readings.

Of course I have my favourite recordings of the quartets, and also those I dislike (above all for misreading the score). But questions of harmony, form, motive etc etc trump questions of interpretation for me.

[Cato]

Somehow, in my sporadic and quick visits in the last few days, I have missed this topic!

A phrase I learnt from PG Wodehouse: rem acu tetigisti

I have now looked it up, Karl 

I missed a chance to show off and give my $5.00 lecture on Latin catch-phrases!  😇

Older members might know that from my earliest days (2 1/2 to 3 years old) I was instantly attracted to the Classical-Music pastiches by Carl Stalling heard in the great cartoons from Warner Brothers, along with their counterparts from Universal with the musical efforts of the lesser known Darrell Calker.

I knew from that age that there was something better in the cartoon music than in the ditties my mother played from the dying days of the Big Band era, and then later, 1950's rock-'n'-roll.  (My father, despite his mother being a fine pianist, had practically no interest in music.)

The first piece I identified with a composer was Smetana's Moldau, again courtesy of a children's program, which played the music with film of rain clouds forming, then of droplets hitting leaves, the raindrops forming puddles, then draining into streams leading into a river.  A Moldau Music Video, so to speak.

So, yes, proudly obsessed!  (Looking at a score, I will easily microanalyze 32nd notes, until I take a deep breath and step back and tell myself to move on!) 

Early childhood obsessions: Wagner, Bruckner, Beethoven, Dvorak, von Suppe,' Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others, followed closely by Mahler, Schoenberg, Scriabin, Alexander Tcherepnin, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Louis Vierne, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Busoni, Hindemith and many others, among the more recent ones Karl Henning and Luke Ottevanger.

[DavidW]

However, earlier posts in this thread conflated 'obsession with classical music' with 'obsession with collecting/comparing recordings'

I'm also amused by the idea that the professional musicians here are "obsessed."  I should go to the physicsforum and ask if they have an unhealthy obsession with physics! The very question brands professionals with the same stamp as dilettantes. 

[Roasted Swan]

But in that case you won't know how unutterably fantastic they are until you have heard Quartetto Energie Nove play them (partly a question of edition, reinstated passages etc.)

They are pretty darn remarkable performances!!

[Florestan]

I'm also amused by the idea that the professional musicians here are "obsessed."  I should go to the physicsforum and ask if they have an unhealthy obsession with physics! The very question brands professionals with the same stamp as dilettantes. 

Well, yes, I forgot to specify in the OP that the question is not addressed to professional musicians; otoh, I should have thought it was obvious. I don't have any data but I suspect professional musicians are less likely to spend an inordinate amount of time listening to recorded music, they are too busy playing or writing it.