How did you discover the delights...

[Herzeleide]

... of Western Art Music?

I'll tell you all how I did when I have more time.

[Florestan]

I wasn't lucky enough to grow up with classical music, and if I had I would probably have rejected it in favour of punk, being a rebel.

But as I got older I got more and more bored with pop music forms. You can only hear the same things over and over again so many times before it starts to become tedious.

I also began to find intense aesthetic and emotional experiences in 'classical' music that nothing else could evoke. Some of the first works that had this effect on me were Samuel Barber's violin concerto, Rachmaninov's Vespers, Thomas Tallis's Mass for Four Voices and Bach's St John Passion.

I must admit I was always a bit of a goth so it wasn't a huge step.

[nightfish]

Classical music was never big in my family. I had heard some of the most famous pieces though, like the 1st movement of Beethoven's 5th and excerpts from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as a child. I can remember that I liked it.

But it wasn't until I was about 18 that I started to seriously check out classical music.

I read Classical Music for Dummies, and fell in love with a couple of pieces on the CD that came with the book, including La Mer by Debussy and prelude and fugue in C-major from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Book 2 by J.S. Bach.

Today I'm studying musicology, I just had to learn more about this incredible art!

[Florestan]

Come on then, Herzeleide - don't keep us in suspenders.

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by nightfish

Classical music was never big in my family. I had heard some of the most famous pieces though, like the 1st movement of Beethoven's 5th and excerpts from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as a child. I can remember that I liked it.

But it wasn't until I was about 18 that I started to seriously check out classical music.

I read Classical Music for Dummies, and fell in love with a couple of pieces on the CD that came with the book, including La Mer by Debussy and prelude and fugue in C-major from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Book 2 by J.S. Bach.

Today I'm studying musicology, I just had to learn more about this incredible art!

Ahhh, La Mer!

It's so magical.

So Classical Music for Dummies is worth a go? I sometimes feel like I've gone about it all wrong, being an autodidact. And I'm not snobbish about music. Well... I try not to be.

[birabiro]

There was a wonderful restaurant near our home that served cheese, wine and classical music - Laurette Goldberg performed several times a week. I snuck in (underage and sat behind her) - she eventually gave me lessons.

[Kuhlau]

Almost every kind of music imaginable was enjoyed at home when I was growing up. Rap and soul were stablemates with rock and dance music, and jazz was especially well represented. But there was no classical music ... unless the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing sappy, string-soaked versions of Dr Hook's Greatest Hits counts as 'classical'. My exposure to this genre was therefore through films, TV and arrangements in popular music - the early works of Kate Bush spring to mind. But aside from that, nada. So I grew up developing a taste for rock music, which dominated my listening from ages 13 to 19.

However, at just 18 years old, I started tuning in to a local radio station, which had a programme of light classical works on Sunday afternoons. I found myself unable to miss a broadcast, and before long, was buying my first classical music CDs. It started with a four-disc set of the 'Best of ... ' Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky. Of these four great composers, Bach grabbed my ear first, then Beethoven. Mozart left me cold for almost 15 years - but the man whose music turned the key for me was Tchaikovsky.

His Piano Concerto No. 1, 1812 Overture and Act IV Finale to Swan Lake had a transformative effect on me. I went out and bought the complete music to Swan Lake, plus a few more complete works (Ravel's String Quartet in F and Faure's Requiem among these), and while I continued listening to other types of music for many years after these early experiences, all genres bar classical were eventually ousted from my regular listening by the time I reached 33.

Now, with roughly 3,000 recordings in my personal library and many hours of listening, discovery and pure delight behind me (and many more ahead of me, I sincerely hope), I can't imagine my life without 'serious' music. Somehow, the four-minute pop songs that used to mean so much to me now pale when I return to them - I'm waiting for the development to follow the exposition. And where is the cadenza, and the coda?

I am, in a word, hooked.

FK

[Philidor]

My grandfather played organ for the Methodists on the beach at Whitehaven. There were coal mines stretching far out under the sea, so the beach was the closest the women could get to their men. They figured -- rightly, in the days before the mines were nationalised -- that their men needed all the praying and hymns they could get. He played Bach, Beethoven and Schubert on the piano at home. My mum then played and it echoed down the generations to me.

[micrologus]

My mum played the piano: Schubert, Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart etc.
Every sunday we had to listen to opera music on the radio. The first LP's were all 'classical music'.
Of course I prefered the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and all the great tubes of the 60's and 70's. And then there was the 'folk revival'!
Nevertheless I began to listen more and more to classical music.

[haydnguy]

I took a "music appreciation" course in college and became interested in it as a result of that course.

Our professor asked us to listen to a piece of music. It didn't sound too interesting on the first hearing. Then he told us what to listen for in the piece. When I heard it the second time, I heard what he mentioned and was immediately curious and attracted to it.

Unfortunately, I was too interested in girls, popular music, and other things to make the effort to learn about it at that time. I never forgot it though and always planned to become a fan someday.