6 ms·

I know I like "classical" music, but I dont know what. The problem is getting to know it. The barrier to entry is so large. Imagine if someone said "I like pop

I know I like "classical" music, but I dont know what. The problem is getting to know it. The barrier to entry is so large. Imagine if someone said "I like pop music" if they're 80, they'd be talking about bubble gum pop from the 50s, in their 70s ABBA and disco, in their 50s Madonna and Oasis, etc. I like(d) post WW2 music but I dislike Reggae, death metal, but Im a big Pink Floyd and NWA fan. Now consoder "classical" music spans centuries, arguably a millennium if we include Gregorian chant. The space is huge and all my mom's classical radio ever seemed to play growing up was some chamber string quartet by Bach.

analog31 4y ago
Classical radio has changed. For one thing, you can get a lot of the stations via streaming, anywhere. If your local station is monotonous, try some other. I like WFMT out of Chicago. And radio is a good way to get exposed to a lot of stuff without having to study anything. If you live near a college, check out the faculty recitals, or the advanced students. They will often try things that you won't hear anywhere else, and the live atmosphere is its own thing. Often for free.
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  Agreed! I always thought I didn't like Brahms, although I don't have any idea where I picked up that notion; I must have been confusing him with someone else. I started listening to Classical King FM, and now and then I'd just be blown away by some piece that sounded like... I don't know, sheer mathematical perfection. Each time I said "I wonder who that is?", it turned out to be Brahms. Now I'm a fan. For example his piano quartets like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyAiXNAZ5WE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyAiXNAZ5WE
  - tzs 4y ago
    > I started listening to Classical King FM That's a pretty great station, as long as you aren't listening around 4 AM (5 AM during daylight savings time). 4 AM they make me want to scream with frustration. 4 AM is when their daily programming starts. The daily program usually doesn't run exactly 24 hours, so there is usually a gap between the end of one day's programming and the start of the next day's. The shortest gap I've seen was about 30 seconds and the longest was several minutes. What they do during that gap is play lute or guitar music, usually solo but sometimes part of a small group. For example this morning they played Fernando Sor's Edude in A, OP. 31/19 with guitarist Norbert Kraft. They seem to choose from all through the range of lute and classical guitar music from the Renaissance through at least the 20th century, and whoever is choosing is doing a great job. A majority of the time I've been awake for their gap music I've enjoyed the piece enough to want to find the sheet music and learn it myself (I dabble in classical guitar). There are two problems. 1. The gap music does not show up on their playlist [1]. It does show up on the now playing display at the top of the playlist page. So if I'm barely awake in bed I've got to make myself wake up enough to get to a web browser to catch the now playing display. 2. At precisely 4 AM they start the next day's programming, regardless of whether the gap piece that was playing has actually finished. I thought of having a cron job grab the playlist page with curl, but the now playing data is not part of the page source. It's added by JavaScript. I suppose I could run something that uses an actual browser and then looks at the DOM to see what the JavaScript puts there. I just gave that a try and this works on Mac, assuming you have an open Safari window for it to use. It's not pretty, especially that while loop in load_page(). It would be better to do the waiting for page load loop in the shell script. #!/bin/sh FILE=${1:-""} osascript -l JavaScript <<HERE var app = Application('Safari'); app.includeStandardAdditions = true; function load_page() { let ct = app.windows[0].currentTab; app.doJavaScript("document.title = 'not ready'", {in: ct}); app.windows[0].currentTab.url = 'https://www.king.org/music-schedule/'; let status = get_status(); while (status != 'complete:Music Playlist | Classical KING FM 98.1') { status = get_status(); } } function get_status() { let ct = app.windows[0].currentTab; return app.doJavaScript("document.readyState + ':' + document.title", {in: ct}); } function now_playing(file_name) { let ct = app.windows[0].currentTab; let playing = app.doJavaScript("document.getElementsByClassName('player-content')[0].innerText", {in: ct}); console.log(playing); if (file_name != '') { let path = Path(file_name) let s = $.NSString.alloc.initWithUTF8String(playing) s.writeToFileAtomicallyEncodingError(file_name, true, $.NSUTF8StringEncoding, null) } } load_page(); now_playing("$FILE") HERE This could also be done using Apple Shortcuts. I'll have to think about that. A "What's Playing on KING" Shortcut could be useful. Being able to just call out "Hey Siri, what's playing on KING" would be quite convenient. Oh wait...that would actually probably not work. When I call out "Hey Siri" it is usually my iPhone or iPad that responds, and the Shortcuts action for running JavaScript on a Safari page only works on mobile Safari if the Shortcut is invoked from the share sheet for that page. The shortcut would only work right when invoked on Mac. [1] https://www.king.org/music-schedule/ https://www.king.org/music-schedule/
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      Ahaha, I appreciate your passion for early-morning classical guitar! Fortunately, that's a problem I've never been enough of either an early bird or night owl to notice, even on some nights when I've stayed up working very late.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I watched the moderately controversial Buñuel movie “Tierra Sin Pan” which uses Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 as the soundtrack and honestly fell in love with the music.
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      I haven't heard of that movie, but Symphony no. 4 is an excellent piece!
Clubber 4y ago
Good starting points is Beethoven and Bach. Yo-Yo Ma's Bach Cello suites are pretty amazing. I'm not a huge listener, but I can appreciate it as an amateur. If you really want something different, check out bluegrass.
wrp 4y ago
A very popular syndicated radio show is Through the Night with Peter van de Graaff. (https://www.wfmt.com/schedule/ https://www.wfmt.com/schedule/)
TylerE 4y ago
Even funnier because there was an actual classical period, but most of what is called classical isn’t from that period. Beethoven is basically the dividing line between line between the classical and the Romantic period that followed it. Bach and Vivaldi were from the earlier Baroque period. Mozart and Haydn were from the classical. The bulk of what most people listen to is the romantic period, which runs from roughly around Beethoven’s 3rd to around 1900. That gets you Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Rachmanoff, Nielsen, Bruckner, Mahler.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Historical accuracy is not the ticket for broader acceptance. If they want to think anything with violins is "classical" let's just go with it.
  - jaggederest 4y ago
    Nodding, over here with my Bluegrass playlists.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Itzhak Perlman proudly called himself a "fiddler" to reinforce that he's doing the same thing as klezmer musicians. Yo-Yo Ma plays with non-traditional musicians, too. So yeah; violin and cello don't make it "classical."
    - vintermann 4y ago
      I like classical music. I like listening to the music of people who lived hundreds of years ago. I try to understand what they were trying to say. I try to connect with them on a human level across the centuries, to their joys and sorrows. But what's even greater, is living traditions. Which carry much of that history, but are very much alive themselves, and not operating on someone's official approval for the "right" way to do it. And bluegrass, and the wider style of American music which I like to call "Prairie Home Companion Fusion" (I never listened to that old radio show, but I found out a ton of music I love was connected to it) - it totally is one of those wonderful, living traditions.
motohagiography 4y ago
Familiar entry points would be: Arthur Rubenstein's Chopin, particularly the nocturnes. This is soulful Chopin before it was played as a sport. Glen Gould's interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Nigel Kennedy's Vivaldi's Four Seasons - and then Max Richter's recomposition, it's really worth it. Mozart's Requiem - any performance. it's huge. Same with Handel's Coronation Anthem: Zadok the Priest. Personally, I put a CD of Alan Mearns' Bach (Sei Solo Works) in my car player about year ago and haven't ejected it since, but guitar and Bach are one of my vices. If you are interested in what's happened since, check out the "Not Quite Classical" spotify playlist as well. It's all new, but you can hear the influences and then track down the roots.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty is great, and has that familiar hook if you grew up watching the Disney movie. https://archive.org/details/SleepingBeautyByTchaikovsky https://archive.org/details/SleepingBeautyByTchaikovsky
8bitsrule 4y ago
> The barrier to entry is so large. One way to start might be to break it down, as you have with pop, into periods. Start at say 1780, late Mozart, to 1900 or so (six 20 year periods). Listen widely - in a good collection for example - to several famous composers whose popular works fell within each period. (Less famous composers from the same period will sound similar.) Decide which period you like best, and mine that more thoroughly. (Quieter:piano works, quartets, vocals. Louder, more dynamic:orchestral.) For example, if you like stuff around 1800, then it's Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. (Largely German) On the other end are Dvorak, Ravel, Debussy, Grieg. As you listen you might find one or two conductors whose style you like. Some are strong in one period in particular. See where they lead you!
flappyeagle 4y ago
I usually recommend people start with Dvorak. You sound more sophisticated than average but still it might help. Dvorak write ridiculously beautiful melodies and they’re memorable
hilbert42 4y ago
"I know I like "classical" music, but I dont know what. The problem is getting to know it. The barrier to entry is so large." Decades ago when I was young the percentage of people listening to classical music was much higher that the 1% shown here. I can't tell you what that percentage was exactly but as an illustration quite a few radio stations that now play pop or rock music were once classical music stations. Also, when I was at school music was a compulsory subject and we didn't listen to pop or rock music in lesson time but rather classical music. And it wasn't just listening, I still recall us kids having to follow full orchestral musical scores in time with records. One such work that still sticks vividly in my mind is Morning from the Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x463zoWpiVI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x463zoWpiVI. This score was chosen for us kids because it's comparatively easy to follow. What that amounts to is that we had much more exposure to classical music at a very early age and thus we had become familiar with it even though pop and rock were also completing for our attention. Moreover, we were deliberately exposed to the 'pops' from the classical repertoire at that young age specifically because these works were much easier for young minds to assimilate. For example, Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Ravel's Boléro, Dvořák's Humoresques, Rossini's William Tell Overture (aka the Lone Ranger theme music)—this was another score I recall following at school. That classical music cultural background has now essentially all but died so it's little wonder that the classics are left to the 1% or so of Diehards like me. The trouble is that the percentage of the population who has the potential to like classical music hasn't changed but rather, unfortunately, it's the opportunity to be exposed to it at an influential age that has.

analog31 4y ago

Classical radio has changed. For one thing, you can get a lot of the stations via streaming, anywhere. If your local station is monotonous, try some other. I like WFMT out of Chicago. And radio is a good way to get exposed to a lot of stuff without having to study anything. If you live near a college, check out the faculty recitals, or the advanced students. They will often try things that you won't hear anywhere else, and the live atmosphere is its own thing. Often for free.

mitthrowaway2 4y ago
Agreed! I always thought I didn't like Brahms, although I don't have any idea where I picked up that notion; I must have been confusing him with someone else. I started listening to Classical King FM, and now and then I'd just be blown away by some piece that sounded like... I don't know, sheer mathematical perfection. Each time I said "I wonder who that is?", it turned out to be Brahms. Now I'm a fan. For example his piano quartets like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyAiXNAZ5WE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyAiXNAZ5WE
- tzs 4y ago
  > I started listening to Classical King FM That's a pretty great station, as long as you aren't listening around 4 AM (5 AM during daylight savings time). 4 AM they make me want to scream with frustration. 4 AM is when their daily programming starts. The daily program usually doesn't run exactly 24 hours, so there is usually a gap between the end of one day's programming and the start of the next day's. The shortest gap I've seen was about 30 seconds and the longest was several minutes. What they do during that gap is play lute or guitar music, usually solo but sometimes part of a small group. For example this morning they played Fernando Sor's Edude in A, OP. 31/19 with guitarist Norbert Kraft. They seem to choose from all through the range of lute and classical guitar music from the Renaissance through at least the 20th century, and whoever is choosing is doing a great job. A majority of the time I've been awake for their gap music I've enjoyed the piece enough to want to find the sheet music and learn it myself (I dabble in classical guitar). There are two problems. 1. The gap music does not show up on their playlist [1]. It does show up on the now playing display at the top of the playlist page. So if I'm barely awake in bed I've got to make myself wake up enough to get to a web browser to catch the now playing display. 2. At precisely 4 AM they start the next day's programming, regardless of whether the gap piece that was playing has actually finished. I thought of having a cron job grab the playlist page with curl, but the now playing data is not part of the page source. It's added by JavaScript. I suppose I could run something that uses an actual browser and then looks at the DOM to see what the JavaScript puts there. I just gave that a try and this works on Mac, assuming you have an open Safari window for it to use. It's not pretty, especially that while loop in load_page(). It would be better to do the waiting for page load loop in the shell script. #!/bin/sh FILE=${1:-""} osascript -l JavaScript <<HERE var app = Application('Safari'); app.includeStandardAdditions = true; function load_page() { let ct = app.windows[0].currentTab; app.doJavaScript("document.title = 'not ready'", {in: ct}); app.windows[0].currentTab.url = 'https://www.king.org/music-schedule/'; let status = get_status(); while (status != 'complete:Music Playlist | Classical KING FM 98.1') { status = get_status(); } } function get_status() { let ct = app.windows[0].currentTab; return app.doJavaScript("document.readyState + ':' + document.title", {in: ct}); } function now_playing(file_name) { let ct = app.windows[0].currentTab; let playing = app.doJavaScript("document.getElementsByClassName('player-content')[0].innerText", {in: ct}); console.log(playing); if (file_name != '') { let path = Path(file_name) let s = $.NSString.alloc.initWithUTF8String(playing) s.writeToFileAtomicallyEncodingError(file_name, true, $.NSUTF8StringEncoding, null) } } load_page(); now_playing("$FILE") HERE This could also be done using Apple Shortcuts. I'll have to think about that. A "What's Playing on KING" Shortcut could be useful. Being able to just call out "Hey Siri, what's playing on KING" would be quite convenient. Oh wait...that would actually probably not work. When I call out "Hey Siri" it is usually my iPhone or iPad that responds, and the Shortcuts action for running JavaScript on a Safari page only works on mobile Safari if the Shortcut is invoked from the share sheet for that page. The shortcut would only work right when invoked on Mac. [1] https://www.king.org/music-schedule/ https://www.king.org/music-schedule/
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    Ahaha, I appreciate your passion for early-morning classical guitar! Fortunately, that's a problem I've never been enough of either an early bird or night owl to notice, even on some nights when I've stayed up working very late.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I watched the moderately controversial Buñuel movie “Tierra Sin Pan” which uses Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 as the soundtrack and honestly fell in love with the music.
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    I haven't heard of that movie, but Symphony no. 4 is an excellent piece!

Clubber 4y ago

Good starting points is Beethoven and Bach. Yo-Yo Ma's Bach Cello suites are pretty amazing. I'm not a huge listener, but I can appreciate it as an amateur. If you really want something different, check out bluegrass.

wrp 4y ago

A very popular syndicated radio show is Through the Night with Peter van de Graaff. (https://www.wfmt.com/schedule/ https://www.wfmt.com/schedule/)

TylerE 4y ago

Even funnier because there was an actual classical period, but most of what is called classical isn’t from that period. Beethoven is basically the dividing line between line between the classical and the Romantic period that followed it. Bach and Vivaldi were from the earlier Baroque period. Mozart and Haydn were from the classical. The bulk of what most people listen to is the romantic period, which runs from roughly around Beethoven’s 3rd to around 1900. That gets you Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Rachmanoff, Nielsen, Bruckner, Mahler.

AlbertCory 4y ago
Historical accuracy is not the ticket for broader acceptance. If they want to think anything with violins is "classical" let's just go with it.
- jaggederest 4y ago
  Nodding, over here with my Bluegrass playlists.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Itzhak Perlman proudly called himself a "fiddler" to reinforce that he's doing the same thing as klezmer musicians. Yo-Yo Ma plays with non-traditional musicians, too. So yeah; violin and cello don't make it "classical."
  - vintermann 4y ago
    I like classical music. I like listening to the music of people who lived hundreds of years ago. I try to understand what they were trying to say. I try to connect with them on a human level across the centuries, to their joys and sorrows. But what's even greater, is living traditions. Which carry much of that history, but are very much alive themselves, and not operating on someone's official approval for the "right" way to do it. And bluegrass, and the wider style of American music which I like to call "Prairie Home Companion Fusion" (I never listened to that old radio show, but I found out a ton of music I love was connected to it) - it totally is one of those wonderful, living traditions.

motohagiography 4y ago

Familiar entry points would be: Arthur Rubenstein's Chopin, particularly the nocturnes. This is soulful Chopin before it was played as a sport. Glen Gould's interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Nigel Kennedy's Vivaldi's Four Seasons - and then Max Richter's recomposition, it's really worth it. Mozart's Requiem - any performance. it's huge. Same with Handel's Coronation Anthem: Zadok the Priest. Personally, I put a CD of Alan Mearns' Bach (Sei Solo Works) in my car player about year ago and haven't ejected it since, but guitar and Bach are one of my vices. If you are interested in what's happened since, check out the "Not Quite Classical" spotify playlist as well. It's all new, but you can hear the influences and then track down the roots.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty is great, and has that familiar hook if you grew up watching the Disney movie. https://archive.org/details/SleepingBeautyByTchaikovsky https://archive.org/details/SleepingBeautyByTchaikovsky

8bitsrule 4y ago

> The barrier to entry is so large. One way to start might be to break it down, as you have with pop, into periods. Start at say 1780, late Mozart, to 1900 or so (six 20 year periods). Listen widely - in a good collection for example - to several famous composers whose popular works fell within each period. (Less famous composers from the same period will sound similar.) Decide which period you like best, and mine that more thoroughly. (Quieter:piano works, quartets, vocals. Louder, more dynamic:orchestral.) For example, if you like stuff around 1800, then it's Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. (Largely German) On the other end are Dvorak, Ravel, Debussy, Grieg. As you listen you might find one or two conductors whose style you like. Some are strong in one period in particular. See where they lead you!

flappyeagle 4y ago

I usually recommend people start with Dvorak. You sound more sophisticated than average but still it might help. Dvorak write ridiculously beautiful melodies and they’re memorable

hilbert42 4y ago

"I know I like "classical" music, but I dont know what. The problem is getting to know it. The barrier to entry is so large." Decades ago when I was young the percentage of people listening to classical music was much higher that the 1% shown here. I can't tell you what that percentage was exactly but as an illustration quite a few radio stations that now play pop or rock music were once classical music stations. Also, when I was at school music was a compulsory subject and we didn't listen to pop or rock music in lesson time but rather classical music. And it wasn't just listening, I still recall us kids having to follow full orchestral musical scores in time with records. One such work that still sticks vividly in my mind is Morning from the Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x463zoWpiVI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x463zoWpiVI. This score was chosen for us kids because it's comparatively easy to follow. What that amounts to is that we had much more exposure to classical music at a very early age and thus we had become familiar with it even though pop and rock were also completing for our attention. Moreover, we were deliberately exposed to the 'pops' from the classical repertoire at that young age specifically because these works were much easier for young minds to assimilate. For example, Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Ravel's Boléro, Dvořák's Humoresques, Rossini's William Tell Overture (aka the Lone Ranger theme music)—this was another score I recall following at school. That classical music cultural background has now essentially all but died so it's little wonder that the classics are left to the 1% or so of Diehards like me. The trouble is that the percentage of the population who has the potential to like classical music hasn't changed but rather, unfortunately, it's the opportunity to be exposed to it at an influential age that has.