The noted Austrian critic Hanslick (noted primarily for his warfare with a young composer named Wagner) once wrote: “Music is a language that we can use, that we can understand, but that we are unable to translate.”
I need to buy a couple of blank business cards, type this quote on each of them (do they even make typewriters anymore?), and carry a bunch in my wallet. Especially after yesterday’s post.
For a long time, believe it or not, I listened to what everyone else in my peer group listened to. Probably for a good twenty years. Me and my group of friends all listened to the same type of music: classic rock (this was the 80s, when new music, to us, was basically garbage, so we had to look back a decade for something listenable). Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, The Who, Pink Floyd, etc, etc, etc. As I got more seriously involved with playing music, I was exposed to different things that you don’t hear on the radio: Zappa, Husker Du, various metal before metal was acceptable. But it was still a fairly narrow range.
Then, in April 1998, after eight years of grunge, I got sick of it all. There was nothing out there that interested me. I literally found myself in CD World, perusing the aisles, looking up and down the racks, for an hour straight, and nothing – absolutely nothing – jumped out at me. I went home depressed.
So I decided to jump headfirst into classical music. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care what any one else thought. And that made a significant impact on me, in retrospect. Over the years I’ve amassed a 200-CD collection and a fair amount of knowledge. I also made forays into jazz: Coltrane, Davis, Monk, Evans. Lately I’ve been listening to and buying chorale music.
I need to buy a couple of blank business cards, type this quote on each of them (do they even make typewriters anymore?), and carry a bunch in my wallet. Especially after yesterday’s post.
For a long time, believe it or not, I listened to what everyone else in my peer group listened to. Probably for a good twenty years. Me and my group of friends all listened to the same type of music: classic rock (this was the 80s, when new music, to us, was basically garbage, so we had to look back a decade for something listenable). Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, The Who, Pink Floyd, etc, etc, etc. As I got more seriously involved with playing music, I was exposed to different things that you don’t hear on the radio: Zappa, Husker Du, various metal before metal was acceptable. But it was still a fairly narrow range.
Then, in April 1998, after eight years of grunge, I got sick of it all. There was nothing out there that interested me. I literally found myself in CD World, perusing the aisles, looking up and down the racks, for an hour straight, and nothing – absolutely nothing – jumped out at me. I went home depressed.
So I decided to jump headfirst into classical music. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care what any one else thought. And that made a significant impact on me, in retrospect. Over the years I’ve amassed a 200-CD collection and a fair amount of knowledge. I also made forays into jazz: Coltrane, Davis, Monk, Evans. Lately I’ve been listening to and buying chorale music.
I don’t know why; like Mr. Hanslick notes, it just ain’t something that’s translatable.
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