Classical Music & You?

[gb2000ie]

This random thought just struck me today, so I'm curious, what do you guys think of classical music? Does it feature in your lives at all? Have you even given it a genuine chance ever?

B.

 

[howardjk]

Classical music

I was a piano major and have a MM. I listen to classical exclusively (much to the puzzlement of many of my gay friends). Pop music just doesn't enter into my conscious. I am usually plain old bored by it and Broadway is the worst music I know. Now I'm ducking for cover!

Seriously, if there are any classical lovers out there, send me a PM and I'll happily send you the URLs for some sites that are the classical music equivalent of this site. All free and a shitload of stuff.

 

[Tjerk12]

I love classical music. But......... you must feel the passion of the players. So not just do it right, but add something. I adore Caruso, Callas, Aafje Heynis. A bit less Pavarotti, but his duets with Sting are beautiful. On the other hand I also love the music of Sarah Leander, Hildegard Kneff and Vera Lynn. On the guitar my number one is Andres Segovia.

 

[jeansGuyOZ]

None of the poll options really apply to me. I like quite a lot of classical music, but there is some that bores me.

Some of my favourites:

Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 6
Brahms
Chopin
Quite a few Russians: Tchaikovsy, Prokofiev, rachmaninoff, Stravinsky.
My greatest love is for the two chief composers of the French Impressionist era, Debussy and Ravel.

When you get to the progressive rock era of the 1970s, the distinction between pop/rock and classical gets blurred. Yes employed an excerpt from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite; Rick Wakeman also used recognisable classical motifs in his solo recordings. The Moody Blues probably set the standard with the album Days of Future Passed, an album made with the London Philharmonic Orchestra that fits into both the classical and rock genres. Some of the dramatic free-form songs that Genesis produced early in their career would not sound out of place alongside the music of Wagner or Holst.

I don't prefer classical music to modern, or vice versa; I think there has always been great music and there has always been boring music.

 

[jw4833]

I do like Classical Music and do own some CDs. I also make a point to attend classical concerts here in my hometown several times every year.

 

[loveless92]

Not my favorite genre, but I do love my Wagner.

 

[gb2000ie]

Not my favorite genre, but I do love my Wagner.

You might be interested in a great Doentary Stephen Fry did on Wagner for the BBC - I'm sure you'll find it on the net somewhere

It's both about the music and the man, and in particular the internal struggle within Fry himself, as a Jewish Wagner lover, in coming to terms with Wagner's links to Nazism. Very moving, very informative, and very enjoyable - but then what else do you expect from Stephen Fry

B.

 

[gb2000ie]

None of the poll options really apply to me. I like quite a lot of classical music, but there is some that bores me.

Some of my favourites:

Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 6
Brahms
Chopin
Quite a few Russians: Tchaikovsy, Prokofiev, rachmaninoff, Stravinsky.
My greatest love is for the two chief composers of the French Impressionist era, Debussy and Ravel.

When you get to the progressive rock era of the 1970s, the distinction between pop/rock and classical gets blurred. Yes employed an excerpt from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite; Rick Wakeman also used recognisable classical motifs in his solo recordings. The Moody Blues probably set the standard with the album Days of Future Passed, an album made with the London Philharmonic Orchestra that fits into both the classical and rock genres. Some of the dramatic free-form songs that Genesis produced early in their career would not sound out of place alongside the music of Wagner or Holst.

I don't prefer classical music to modern, or vice versa; I think there has always been great music and there has always been boring music.

Looks like you like quite a bit of classical music there - I'd have said option 4 sounds about right. Liking classical music does not imply liking ALL classical music. I consider myself a lover of classical, but I have no time for Opera, and I dislike many composers. Do you have to love every rock band ever to consider yourself to like rock?

B.

P.S.
Looked back at my options - you're right - I should have put something between 4 and 5 - nuts!

 

[kwireboi726]

I was a music major in my undergrad and I have a very deep love for classical music. Specifically Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Mahler.

 

[richym]

I love Classical music, ok it doesn't rate over U2, or Coldplay or Pink Floyd, but it is close. Have always loved to sit an listen to it. Favourites are Beethoven's 9th and the 1812 overture (yes I know I will spell Tsicovsky wrong). I also love movie scores by John Williams. And of course there is nothing better than driving along with the stereo up loud playing Stauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra.

 

[ramypdx]

Classical music is wonderful and truly inexhaustible. In some cases, I have as many as 10 or 15 different versions of the same piece in my collection. Even though I am not a trained musician, I can hear different nuances in each of them. For me, anyway, classical music never gets old or boring.

 

[taurus2904]

I was in band throughout junior high and high school, so I got quite familiar with and enjoyed playing classical music -- albeit arranged for band. We used it during marching season as well as concerts; one field show included Firebird, which brought everyone to their feet, especially when one half of the band turned around and we hit both sets of grandstands. Ode to Joy was a favorite parade piece -- those call-and-response sections echoed off buildings and you could hear us a block away! (By the way, it wouldn't have been hard to hear us: we were 200 marching/playing members plus field conductors, color guard, majorettes and silks...we took up a whole block.)

One of my favorites to play, and now listen to, was Gustav Holst. Nerve wracking to learn since he wrote the majority of The Planets pieces while he was under the influence of heroin. You've probably heard Mars played during cinematic battle scenes.

 

[8oclockcoffee]

I seldom listen to rock or pop music or any other genre of the last 50 years or so.

My favorite music is that of Rachmaninov, Verdi, R. Strauss, Barber, Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, Corelli, Palestrina. Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, and Late Romantic or Neo Romantic. Classical Era bores me, as does Modern Era.

My favorite performers are Leontyne Price (soprano), Howard Shelley (piano), Gil Shaham (violin), Truls Mørk (cello), Nathalie Stutzmann (contralto), Trevor Pinnock (conductor and harpsichordist).

Favorite orchestras include The English Concert, Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw, and John Eliot Gardiner's Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.

Favorite choirs include The English Concert Choir, The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars, and The Monteverdi Choir.

As far as I know, there isn't all that much of my favorite music available for download on the internet, other than what I already purchased years ago. Leontyne Price, for example. There are some live performance bootlegs available through the OperaShare group on yahoo, but only her Christmas album (the best Christmas album ever recorded in my view--Leontyne Price, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic) appears on demonoid. They do, however, have lots of lossless versions (mostly flac) of Bach and Vivaldi, but I already own my preferred interpretations on CD.

I don't know squat about usenet except that it exists, so perhaps there's more there, but I wouldn't even know how to access it to find out if there was anything worthwhile. I know the discography of all my favorite performers, and there are only a few things I don't own, and that's simply because they were never even released on CD.

 

[intowner]

IMHO

I wouldn't say it's the best in the world as there are other genres that are either incomparable or just as good in their own way, IMHO. I likes me some classical and I've quite a bit of classical knowledge on both "pops" (common, mainstream, stereotypical) and the greater classical genre off the radar. But I also like Metal, Jazz, Easy Listening, Pop, Rock, Reggae, Blues, Rap, Country, Bebop, Fusion, Disco, House, Trance, Noise, Folk, Industrial, "World" and more.

 

[brmstn69]

Does "Metallica" count? Seriously, if you remove all the distortion it sounds like classical music...



With a Flamenco twist...



And if you play it on banjos... Bluegrass!!!

 

[trencherman]

With music I can live on classical and jazz alone. My life will get better though with bits of opera. I do not claim to hate any genre of music but when surfing around the dial, I do not stop for Arabic, Chinese and Indian music at all. Latin. African and Brazilian music are different though, these can keep me going until I find a good classical music radio station.

 

[jeansGuyOZ]

The comparison with Metallica is not as silly as it sounds. I've come across a few metalheads who also like some of the "heavier" well-known classics. Beethoven (esp. Symphony No. 5) and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries seem to be favourites.

 

[brmstn69]

Many "Metal" artist have a Classical music background, for instance, Glen Danzig...




Also composed and recorded two Classical music albums...

 

[iryhousen]

I like many varieties of music, but prefer listening to string and woodwind instruments rather than brass and percussion.

 

[Behrluvr]

I took a couple of music history courses in college. It exposed me to that music. I fell in love with the Romantics, - Beethoven, Strauss, Berlioz, Wagner, Prokofiev, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky. I know its sounds cliche, but I also like the Italian Opera, and Broadway shows. (all time favorite is Miss Saigon).

But on the other hand I'm a decent rock and metal guitar player with excursions into blues and fusion. (Both metal and fusion are God's gift to man, heyheyhey). I screw around with the bagpipes and have fantasies of joining a pipe band but I basically stink at the pipes ...so far.