October 4, 2017 in Classical Music

Classical music. How do you get in to it? Where do you start? Personally I started collecting Classical records when I was sixteen – my parents didn’t like me listening to pop music: so I listened to the pop group Abba in secret -and bought classical records starting with Tchaikovsky which I blasted out at top volume to my parents discomfort and dismay! Indeed, the music of Tchaikovsky is very accessible with big tunes and colourful orchestrations – so maybe it is a good place to start?

A historical roadmap to classical music

However, its probably quite helpful to begin with a historical roadmap as each period of classical music history reflects the styles and culture of the day. The music that has lasted and is truly ‘classical’ however, transcends just these stereotypes and speaks to each age. By the way, the word ‘classical’ is a broad church of a word as demonstrated by the successful radio station Classic FM. Classical in the narrow sense of the word then, covers a relatively short period of musical history from around (1750–1820) and involves three main composers: Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. This is called the ‘Classical Period.’ Other periods of classical music are the Baroque, Romantic and Modern.

Heavy?

Why do some perceive Classical music as ‘heavy’ or difficult though? It’s certainly not because its un-melodic. Indeed, classical music uses much of the same harmonic and melodic language that popular music does and pop music has borrowed much from these musical roots. I mean, even getting into ‘pop music’ requires an understanding of the different genres just like any language: blues, rock, heavy metal, jazz and so on.

Novel or short story

In my opinion, the supreme achievement of the Classical composers is their ability to develop music ideas to sustain the interest of the listener longer than the typical three minute duration of the average pop song. Prog-rock musicians have of course tried – in my opinion mostly unsuccessfully! Classical music therefore, tells a story but it’s a novel like Lord of the Rings rather than a short story by Raymond Chandler. It has characters or themes that contrast and develop but I’ll be explaining all that later.