Classical Music

[Crataegus]

So I've noticed that classical music tends to get very little love on radios or in popular culture now a days, but as a person who derives an almost obscene amount of pleasure from it, I want to have a little survey.

First, if your answer to the poll question is 'I hate classical music/never listen to it.', put any reasons you have as to why.
Second, if your answer was 'I like some of it/certain pieces.', list a couple of the certain pieces that you enjoy.
Third, if your answer was 'I love most classical music/listen exclusively to it.', list your favourite pieces, but without repeating a composer (just to broaden the scope of any discussion we get from this).

And if you're so inclined, why not try listening to some of the pieces people mention that you haven't heard before? If you like it, post your results. It can never hurt to try new things, right?

 

[Crataegus]

I guess I'll go first.

I almost exclusively listen to classical. It's not because I actively dislike popular music, I just find it doesn't do the same things for me.

Now, for favourite pieces....

Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues (op. 87)
Bach's Violin Partita no. 2 in D minor (BWV 1004)
Beethoven's String Quartet no. 15 in A minor (op. 132)

 

[B_Hickboy]

I like Russians - mostly Moussorgsky, Kalinnikov, and Tchaikovsky, but they're technically Romantics. I also love Mozart, Purcell, and Handel. But they're more Baroque than Classical.

I guess I fucking hate Classical music.

 

[Crataegus]

Well, you know, if you want to be all technical about music periods, I'm pretty firmly opposed to Classical. :tongue:

Romantics, Renaissance, and Baroque for me, but as most people don't bother with the technical names for the music periods, I stuck with the term 'classical'.

 

[B_Hickboy]

Well, I don't know much, but I know what I like.

Pete Townshend The Who - 1993 Mayfair Theatre, 2 songs - YouTube

 

[ConanTheBarber]

Eighty percent of my listening is of classical music.
I listen mostly to pianists. Favorities? Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Glenn Gould, Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich, etc. (And then there MANY good younger pianists ... Kissin, Trifonov, etc.)
Also like chamber music.
Ditto for symphonies.
Opera? Hmmm. I like many individual arias, but I find most operas tiring to get through completely.

Classical music is, sadly, losing ground.
It's not that there aren't a lot of young people interested in studying it. There seems to have been little or no fall off of that kind of interest. But the audiences are dying. Average age at concerts is getting pretty high.
There was even a period when the Berlin Philharmonic had no recording contract. That's the Berlin Philharmonic, kidz ... maybe the greatest orchestra in the world.
When I was young, display racks in the bigger record stores seemed pretty evenly split between classical and popular music. Now, you're lucky to find a rack or two in some distant corner of a store.
Fighting this would be fighting the wind ... but it saddens me.

Art is being a bit cheapened on all fronts.
Really literary writing is losing ground.
Nowadays, you're an eccentric if you like poetry.

Aaargh. I was born in the wrong century, I guess.

An example of a piece I like: Brahms Rhapsody in B minor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Dd_6ko4Wc

 

[Crataegus]

The slightly depressingly silver lining though, to classical being out of vogue, is that those who do like it can usually find it for ridiculously cheap prices.

I recently bought a copy of the complete set of Beethoven string quartets. Nearly eleven hours of wonderful music, and all for only 13,99$.

Now that the internet allows more fringey stuff to bubble up from the background, I'm getting a bit more optimistic about the future of it. I kind of have to be optimistic about it, as I write it :indifferent:.

Who knows what the future will bring though. If we can get past the rather...well...awful music that dominated the majority of classical music in the 1900s (apart from a select few die-hard Romantics, the 1900s were bad for dying whale music, as my friend calls it), and into some stuff that gets a wider group interested, perhaps there's ultimately hope. Tipping at windmills and all that, I know, but damn it, I'll keep on tipping! :tongue:

 

[hot-rod]

Classical music is my favorite. I love most kinds of music, but never learned to appreciate opera. It's noise to me....lol. My favorite thing is listening to great pipeorgans...Charles Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, etc. I like European organs the best. It's in my blood, gotta have it to live.....lol. Classical music is good for the soul.

 

[Catchoftheday]

I never listen to classical music, I don't dislike it I just never listen to it

 

[D_Olga Steponyatova]

I am a fan of classical music and it's all I will listen to if the radio is on, but I'm an utter pillock when it comes to naming composers or concertos. My own music collection is a hodge-podge of genres, but classical is always in the mix.

Sidenote: I loosely use the term classical as I'm not quite sure where composers fit into medieval, baroque, and classical.

 

[Enid]

i love classical -- i tend to love baroque, romantic, and twentieth century stuff.

baroque
vivaldi, bach, scarlatti
classical
mozart
romantic
rossini, schubert, berlioz, schumann, chopin, liszt, verdi
twentieth century
debussy, ives, bartok, copland, satie

but there's more that i like, those are composers just off top of head.

 

[pcghabsy]

I find "classical" to be quite a misleading term too. But I understand the extended meaning, and I love it. Some of my favourites are Bach, Rossini, Satie, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Mozart, Handel, Holst, Debussy, and uhh, I could go on forever, plus Beethoven.

As a side note, try making love to Rossini's works sometime!

Another side note - I love rock music influenced by the above - structured like classical music. Mostly progressive rock. (Again that's a blanket term!)

 

[B_Hickboy]

It shows I got good taste, like Charlie the Tuna.

 

[ggsitc]

I listen to classical music more often than anything else, with a preference for Baroque. I also play the organ and love Bach (of course), though I am not good enough to play most of his stuff well ... :sigh1: And to second hot-rod's comment about organs, there's nothing like a thundering, big pipe organ played well, and I am lucky enough to help maintain one of those thundering big monsters.

I like most classical music, but the dissonant 20th century stuff gets a big pass from me. I concur with the opera views already expressed, I like the music in most operas, but to sit through one, eh not so much.

 

[crescendo69]

I've played classical music most of my life, but am now kind of bored with most of it. I prefer jazz.

I can listen to some Mahler symphonies or a bassoon work.

 

[erratic]

I'm big on classical - though I agree it's a ridiculously broad category.

Some favourites are Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Handel, Faure (who I've really just discovered recently), and Dvorak.

 

[SprinkleMe69]

I admit it. I have a collection of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Tchaikovsky.

 

[701757]

95% of the music I listen to is Classical. Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rach, Mozart, Brahms etc are my favorites, so pretty much anything from the romantic era.

I like Russians - mostly Moussorgsky, Kalinnikov, and Tchaikovsky, but they're technically Romantics. I also love Mozart, Purcell, and Handel. But they're more Baroque than Classical.

I guess I fucking hate Classical music.

Classical music isn't the classic era. Classic era existed not only in music but in painting and literature. Classical music encompasses all between Medieval and Renaissance eras and Modern and Contemporary music.

 

[B_Hickboy]

95% of the music I listen to is Classical. Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rach, Mozart, Brahms etc are my favorites, so pretty much anything from the romantic era.




Classical music isn't the classic era. Classic era existed not only in music but in painting and literature. Classical music encompasses all between Medieval and Renaissance eras and Modern and Contemporary music.

How many instruments do you play?

 

[701757]

How many instruments do you play?

Just the one, piano. But I've been playing it since I was 5. And you?