Ten years ago, in April of 1998, I decided to start listening to “classical music.” I had been an avid fan of, well, for lack of a better term, hard rock for the past fifteen years or so. I had a 300 CD collection ranging from AC/DC to Z (Frank Zappa’s sons). Stuff put out from the mid-60’s (Jimi Hendrix) up until the mid-90’s (Foo Fighters) and a pretty wide sampling of everything in between. But I started feeling very dissatisfied with the music scene. I had been playing guitar in various bands from ’86 to ’96, and for the two years after that, absolutely nothing particularly interested me.
Without any prompting I made the decision, quite out of the blue, to thoroughly immerse myself in classical music. I already had sixteen classical CDs that I never listened to: two each of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart that I bought to be ‘avant-garde’ during my early band days, and a 10-pack of CDs I received one Christmas – each highlighting a particular fairly well-known composer. So, I started to listen to them with fresh ears.
That lasted a week or two.
Then, I made a shocking discovery – I went to my local library and noticed they actually had CDs there! I was floored. I began borrowing two CDs at a time, recording my borrowings in a word doc (nerd alert), and noting what I liked and what I didn’t for future potential purchases. Using this method, I became competently knowledgeable and acquired a 200-plus CD collection I’m quite proud of. I encourage anyone who wants to do anything similar to investigate their library – it's free, and the resources are vast.
I also listened to WQXR, the local classical music station, and jotted down composers and compositions I might want to hunt down. A couple of books along the way helped guide me further. More than a few were wordy and stuffy; I liked the more frivolous ones (except those For Dummies books – I can’t stand them). One was written by a dude like me, a convert from rock whose book was premised on the fact that if you like certain bands, you’ll like certain composers. It was something like, “If you love Aerosmith, you’ll like Mars Bringer of War by Gustav Holst!” I felt most of his recommendations were random, but his heart was in the right place. I eventually gave the book away to a friend in a fit of evangelization.
So, in the spirit of the unremembered author of the unremembered book, here’s a top 10 list of the best stuff to listen to if you’re new to the genre. At least, these worked for me getting me hooked. Search them out if you’re unfamiliar with them; I think it’ll be worth your while.
In no particular order,
Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
The Planets by Gustav Holst
Les Preludes by Franz Liszt
Symphony No. 9 in Em by Antonin Dvorak
La Mer by Claude Debussey
Symphony No. 4 in A “Italian” by Felix Mendelssohn
Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky
Symphony No. 2 in D by Jean Sibelius
Ma Vlast (including The Moldau) by Bedrich Smetana
Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin
Without any prompting I made the decision, quite out of the blue, to thoroughly immerse myself in classical music. I already had sixteen classical CDs that I never listened to: two each of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart that I bought to be ‘avant-garde’ during my early band days, and a 10-pack of CDs I received one Christmas – each highlighting a particular fairly well-known composer. So, I started to listen to them with fresh ears.
That lasted a week or two.
Then, I made a shocking discovery – I went to my local library and noticed they actually had CDs there! I was floored. I began borrowing two CDs at a time, recording my borrowings in a word doc (nerd alert), and noting what I liked and what I didn’t for future potential purchases. Using this method, I became competently knowledgeable and acquired a 200-plus CD collection I’m quite proud of. I encourage anyone who wants to do anything similar to investigate their library – it's free, and the resources are vast.
I also listened to WQXR, the local classical music station, and jotted down composers and compositions I might want to hunt down. A couple of books along the way helped guide me further. More than a few were wordy and stuffy; I liked the more frivolous ones (except those For Dummies books – I can’t stand them). One was written by a dude like me, a convert from rock whose book was premised on the fact that if you like certain bands, you’ll like certain composers. It was something like, “If you love Aerosmith, you’ll like Mars Bringer of War by Gustav Holst!” I felt most of his recommendations were random, but his heart was in the right place. I eventually gave the book away to a friend in a fit of evangelization.
So, in the spirit of the unremembered author of the unremembered book, here’s a top 10 list of the best stuff to listen to if you’re new to the genre. At least, these worked for me getting me hooked. Search them out if you’re unfamiliar with them; I think it’ll be worth your while.
In no particular order,
Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
The Planets by Gustav Holst
Les Preludes by Franz Liszt
Symphony No. 9 in Em by Antonin Dvorak
La Mer by Claude Debussey
Symphony No. 4 in A “Italian” by Felix Mendelssohn
Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky
Symphony No. 2 in D by Jean Sibelius
Ma Vlast (including The Moldau) by Bedrich Smetana
Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin
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