Re: Classical for Beginners

I'm just a newb ... but I'm pretty disappointed in the way that discussion ended up going, too. :(

I actually enjoy reading sugarkang's post, because that is exactly what I'm doing when my friends asking me for recommendations.

As a guy who has 5000+ classical CDs, I've been there many many times.

 

And I figure it is no use to stress on the beginners in finding how great the interpreters are.

The great works will prevail with adequate performers.

If you have to love Beethoven's 9th symphony from only Furtwangler's interpretation, then Beethoven is not that great anyway.

Also, why deprive the listener's right of deciding which interpreter is great in his/her ears?

 

 

Besides those technical detail in composition, people will know what they like what they don't once they listen to the works.

Beginners are not deaf.

All we need to do is to pick a performance with fine sound and adequate interpretation, and let the works speak for themselves.

As long as the listener can find one or two works enjoyable from his/her sampling, we can expand from there.

 

To start a habit, one starts with enjoying it, not with writing a thesis.

 

Maybe we could tempt him back by writing an inaccurate synopsis of his post

Intended as a "guide for beginners" I think what it said was :
Don't be (like me) put off for years into listening to this sort of music by a load of people who come across as pretentious jerks. (As it happens this was the uncontroversial bit of the post ).

Don't let yourself get intimidated by all the talk about different recorded versions of a piece feeling you have to like a recording that sounds as though it was made in a frying pan with a load of sizzling and spitting bacon. (The bit that drew most comment).

Don't respond on this thread if you're already into this sort of music and have hence presumably negotiated the obstacles I mention. (Another controversial bit).

I have been seriously studying recorded music for over 25 years now. I know exactly what it's like to be a newbie, because every time I tackle a new form of music, I have to start from scratch. I know what does work and what doesn't.

It doesn't work to take the same approach that you take with contemporary pop music. Current music is spoon fed to you by huge advertising machines. Their job is to create an image in your head to associate with the music. Once you figure out what image you associate yourself with, emo, hip hop, electronica, etc, you go out and find the music that fits your taste... the same vanilla ice cream you loved when you were 15 every day of your life until you die.

Other kinds of music don't work that way. No one is feeding the music to you and promoting it. You can't associate yourself with the style, because it may be a style that existed 300 years ago. It isn't about finding the music to fit your taste, it's about broadening your tastes to encompass more kinds of music.

When I was in college, I listened to the same music my friends listened to... Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel... And one day I heard a song on the radio from 1933 that changed my life... Cab Calloway's Some of these Days. I heard energy and excitement in that song that I had never heard before. So I went to the record store and bought a Cab Calloway record and took it home and devoured it. A couple of days later, I went back to the store and asked for a salesperson who knew about jazz (record stores had people like that back then) and asked him what I should listen to if I like Cab Calloway. He gave me a list of a dozen names and I was off and running.

I found out that the music I had discovered was called Harlem Jazz, and I listened to it like a demon for about six months. Then I went back to the jazz guy and said "I like Harlem Jazz. What should I listen to next?" He pointed me to 50s Jazz. That led me to Latin Jazz, which led me to Cuban Mambo, which led me to 50s Easy Listening, which led me to Pop Vocals... Over the span of about a decade, I wandered through the world of recorded music like an explorer mapping out one area and then moving on to the next.

Today, I have 10,000 records and 10,000 CDs. I know a little bit about an awful lot of stuff. When I started, I knew a lot about a little... basically progressive rock. The difference is like night and day.

Here is what I've learned. This is exactly the information I would have loved to have been given when I started out...

Music is a language, and if you aren't fluent in it, music falls into two categories... Stuff I know and stuff I don't understand. (If you are really inexperienced, you call that stuff I like and stuff I don't like.) The only way to approach new music is on its own terms. Don't apply criteria for current pop music to classical. They are two very different animals.

The way to learn a new musical language is to be fearless when it comes to experimentation. You can't be afraid of making a mistake. The best way to do this is to find someone who knows a LOT about the kind of music you want to explore and put yourself into their hands. Ask questions like, "I have a hundred bucks. What CDs should I buy to find out about modern jazz?" Get the list and go out and buy it. Don't look it over and pick and choose. If the person you are asking knows his stuff, he is giving you gold plated breadcrumbs to follow. Follow them.

When you get the music in your fists, start seriously listening. Don't background it while you goof on the Internet or doze on the couch. Sit up straight and LISTEN. Think about the structure of the music, the blend of sounds, the emotions, the energy. Then do some googling and read up on the performers, composers and social context of the music. Then listen seriously again and think about everything you know about the music and try to understand it. This is not easy at first. You have to push "like/don't like" out of your head and focus on "understand". But once you do understand, it will make learning the next kind of music much easier. Classical music has taught me things about Cuban Mambo, and Country Music has taught me things about The Blues. When you gain fluency in one language, it makes learning the next easier.

Most people on Internet discussion boards don't know a heck of a lot about what they are talking about. There is no proficiency exam for posting on HeadFi. But there are a few people out there who *do* know a great deal. It isn't hard to spot them. Ask a couple of the right questions and you can easily sort out wheat from chaffe. When you find someone who knows a lot more than you do, ask them for advice... Then FOLLOW IT. Don't go asking a dozen people who may or may not know and look for a consensus. When you've followed that expert's advice and listened to the music and absorbed it, go back to that person and tell them what you've learned. They'll share their take on it with you and that will lead to your next step. I've been down this road more times than I can count, and I've never been disappointed or wasted my money on a CD that was a steaming pile. Experts are the shortcut. Use them.

It doesn't matter where you start out exploring music. The journey is more important. As you learn, you'll realize that music branches out like limbs on a tree infinitely. The more you know, the more there is to explore.

I'm always happy to talk with people about music. I'm happy to guru people through music I know, and I'm always looking for gurus to turn me on to new music. My mind is open about things i havent heard yet. THAT'S how you get started with a new kind of music. If you see me offering hot tips on great music to explore, it's because I've been down that road and I want to help others get to the same place. All you have to do is ask.

I think perhaps a helpful tack to take with beginners would be to say, "Anything by these performers is generally good. Orchestras: X, Y and Z. Violinists: A, B, and C. Cellists: D, E and F. Pianists: G, H and I" and so forth. That way, beginners know which names to look for without having to put too much thought into it.

 

There, everybody happy now? 

I've found that only a very rarefied few performers and composers can safely be said to always be good. For instance Dutoit is wonderful at Ravel, but I wouldn't choose him for Mussorgsky; and Karajan is great with a lot of things, but Bach is not one of them. As great as Wagner is, his Symphony in C is pretty awful; and some of the Beethoven overtures are pretty unimportant to an understanding of Beethoven.

It's better to give a few specific recommendations that cover the range of the subject, rather than to suggest a random approach. Someone really knowledgable in the subject can come up with a good representative sampling. Someone else who knows their stuff might come up with a different list, but they'll both do the job of providing a good jumping off point.

So what do you think such a guide should look like?  I think the list of things to listen to is pretty useless, without a frame of reference. It's like when someone wants some help on headphones, they're always asked, well, what sound signature do you like, what do you listen to now. A classical exploration guide based on those lines could work pretty well (with some footnotes on performances).

 

 

Hmm. If I want information I'd always rather go looking for it. If it comes to me too easy I'll suspect it of being the work of someone with some vested commercial interest or (worse) some bleedin' zealot

Reminds me; wonder what the op on that other thread thought of that recording of the Rachmaninov. Perhaps we can look forward to another thread "Classical for Beginners (How I started hating it again)". Oh well

I would start the search from composers, not performers. Performers in classical are not as much THE thing as they are in popular music – well, at least not before you actually can hear and understand the subtleties in the music first. I can fluently listen Koopman, Gardiner or Suzuki conducting Bachs cantatas. For me it's the composition that comes first, after that interpretation - which might not differ that much from artist to artist anyway. I know there are people that think totally different.

 

For a person that wants to experience classical music it might be useful to take a quick tour of history. Start from, say, Palestrina and go trough Monteverdi to Buxtehude, Bach, Handel and Vivaldi. After that you can continue with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to get used to the classical period. Schubert should be rather easy to understand after Beethoven and the romantic era is deepened with some Schumann and Brahms (there are many, many others too). Debussy, Stravinsky and Shostakovich will guide you further towards the the start of modern music.

 

 

The period of time affects the composing style more than the composer himself (yes, there are exceptional innovators too). It's very good to know what kind of music they composed for example around year 1800 - this will give you plenty of guidance to move further. After you've got the big picture you can explore the more esoteric composers of your favorite style. Like Geminiani and Galuppi if you happen to like baroque.

 

Sometimes you might notice you like some instrument much more than others. I for example fell in love with organ and at that time it didn't matter so much of which period my organ music was coming from.

 

 

 

 

 

One major problem with a wiki article on this subject would be various classical-music "snobs" practically arguing with each other over the merits of certain composers, performers, conductors, etc. So realistically I don't see a wiki page happening.

 

With that said, here's my version of a "Classical for Beginners" primer:

 

The 4 main time periods (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern/Contemporary) provide an easy convention: Baroque was simple, methodical, and very "mathematical". Classical became more complex-sounding, Romantic was sort of a return to passion & expressiveness, and when Modern first started out it was mostly an experiment - dissonant, atonal-type music.

 

There are also different types of works in classical music, as not everything is necessarily a symphony or concerto (though those two types are the most prevalent). There are also sonatas, cantatas, arias, and so forth (these words can be Googled, I won't bother with definitions). Classical music ranges from everything in between a solo piano to a full-size symphony orchestra.

 

I'd say the key differentiator between classical works are the time periods and composers. Some composers started in one era and lived into the next and produced some transitional work - examples of this being Vivaldi (Baroque to Classical) and Beethoven (Classical to Romantic). Each era had its own distinct style.

 

My advice to beginners is to seek out a time period first, and then to narrow down by composer. As I said in the other thread that was closed, today's film soundtracks have some similarities to classical music. Allow me to state some parallels here:

 

- Fans of epic-style music (like Lord of the Rings for example) will definitely want to start with Romantic & Modern. Specific composers that come to mind include Wagner, Mussorgsky, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Dvorak, etc. There are so many more.

 

- Fans of intimate-style piano music will probably like Chopin (specifically his Nocturnes), Debussy, late Beethoven, Brahms, etc.

 

- Most of the really famous operas were composed in the Romantic era by composers such as Verdi, Bizet, & Puccini. Oh there are plenty more, but those guys together probably have the most instantly recognizeable operas.

 

Most of the other types of classical I'd consider fairly niche-y and not very accessible - Baroque takes some getting used to (look for orchestras that perform on "period instruments" for an authentic sound), and some of the Modern stuff went pretty crazy on the atonality & dissonance. I won't bother covering Mozart either because he did so many works (that could be a book in itself) but Mozart is definitely essential. I'd consider Mozart's divertimentos the gateway into his genius. Maybe start with the classic Eine Kleine Nacht for Mozart, can't go wrong there.

 

I'd definitely also recommend listening to your local FM radio classical stations, as they can cover a very wide range in a short amount of time, and they often say what they're playing right after a piece is over.