Wonderful comments, I couldn't describe it better. A place that once you find it, you never want to leave it. I love music, simple. I also love your channel, it's the best thing on the Internet. Thanks for all you do to introduce us to all these wonders.
Classical music takes me to places of inconceivable beauty. Not always but often. It sometimes opens up worlds of emotion that I had only previously glimpsed and presents them in full view. In these and other ways, it occasionally blows my mind!
What a great comment. I feel exactly the same. Music is everything to me, it gives me something otherworldly that nothing else does. A world of it's own, outside of the rest of life. It's takes you somewhere outside of yourself into something amazing. It's impossible to describe and wonderful, a place once you find, you never want to leave.
One word: emotion. Classical music has been the soundtrack to my life; the highs and the lows. Like all great art it brings people of all races together, irrespective of language or faith. Why? The emotions it brings out in us all.
Everybody's got a story. My first classical record (I think I'm older than you by about a decade) was the Disney tie-in "Sorcerer's Apprentice", complete with stills from "Fantasia". I was about 5, and boy--did I love it! we moved around a lot when I was little, and my dad had promised my mom that the minute we settled somewhere and had a house of our own, he'd buy her a piano. And he did, even though money was tight (big family). This was the only time he made payments on something other than the house. So, when we landed in LA, there was the piano, and Mom wanted us to have lessons (she was one of those naturals who could sight-read anything). So I went through the usual teaching pieces (no prodigy I), but when I finally got to play something real--by which I mean the easier Mozart and Chopin, the Bach Inventions--well, I had never found anything that so delighted me. I started listening to the late and lamented KFAC in LA. Commercials and all, it was water in the desert. That's why I majored in music in college: for the simple joy it gave me. How lucky for me, then, to be able to share it with others on the radio! I was an evangelist for it. Never "worked" a day in 40 years. I had the good luck to sing in the chorus for Maurice Abravanel (I'm somewhere back there in his Mahler Second). He was much too busy to collect very many records of his own. When he wanted to hear something he wasn't already on intimate terms with, he'd borrow records from our station at the University of Utah station, or from the head classical guy at the station, who was a real demon collector, from the 78 era on. Little furniture in his little house, but thousands of records (and cats--always cats!). Along the way, it wasn't just classical music I had a passion for. I love the Great American Songbook, and musical theatre too. I'm an opera nut, a piano nut, and an old-movie nut. It all just gives me pleasure in a way that nothing else ever has.
I like the sense of historical vastness also. Sometimes I almost feel like I'm listening to one single, giant, continuous piece of music, with all these changes and surprising progressions.
Music in general is great, but classical is the only kind which can get me to feel deep emotion. Pop is fun, jazz is cool, country is really good (I honestly love it), but all of them combined couldn’t match the emotional depth of a symphony from someone like Shostakovich. First time I got in touch with classical was a year ago with twoset, and I believe the first piece I listened to in full was something Sibelius or Debussy. A piece of pop or jazz, even if the lyrics were sad or the melody was, nothing ever made me feel anything other than “general sadness”, as I call it. Just basic, if a bit unnerving, sadness. Debussy made me nearly tear up due to the beauty, and Shostakovich due to the suffering portrayed in his pieces, something a 3 minute pop song could never do, and I’m so grateful I’ve found this goldmine of music that I never discovered in my 10 years of learning piano. I honestly wish I’d found it earlier.
Dear Dave, this was so wonderful. Thank you for this wonderful integration of personal experience, contemplation of time, and the value of entertainment. I've listened to many of your videos more than once, and this will mot certainly be a repeat performance. Thank you for starting off my morning in such a thoughtful manner.
That pretty much aligns with my own experience. I listened to pop music as a child, like everyone else, but it didn't make a significant impact on me. Then, around the age of 13, I stumbled upon classical music by chance, and it felt like I had discovered a whole new, fascinating continent. Besides the enchantment of beautiful melodies, captivating harmonies, and modulations, I found myself particularly drawn to the form of extensive compositions. Of course, at that age, I couldn't trace features like sonata form or rondo for many years. For me, the form simply meant that the music sometimes played softly and sometimes loudly, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. The totality formed by these variations either impressed me or, sometimes, it didn't. Yet, when a symphony or concerto started, I couldn't wait to see what kind of journey would unfold and what experiences I would have as a listener along the way. Another aspect that fascinated me in classical music was its rich palette of colors. I have some synesthetic tendencies. I perceive music primarily as colors, and while listening, the colors that come to my mind can create vivid visual images. In classical music, these visual experiences were, for some reason, noticeably stronger than in pop music. Although I enjoy listening to jazz (which is also a rich play of changing rhythms and colors) and Gregorian chant, in addition to classical music, I selectively listen to rock as well. However, the experiences offered by classical music are the richest and most diverse for me. (I apologize for the long write-up!)
Classical music is a sanctuary-a place where time may exist…..or it may not, as exemplified by my putting on Morton Feldman`s 2nd String Quartet (instead of a movie) to start a 2-hour platelet donation and before I knew it, the two hours had completely passed. I was not aware at all of its passage, even as I was squeezing a sponge ball every 10 seconds during that interim. It was a very profound experience.
Only these so-called “musicologists” would argue that classical music is not entertainment. I’m reminded of Thomas Beecham’s brilliant assessment - “. A musicologist is someone who knows all about the theory of music but can’t hear it”. - Genius😁
One can argue that the comment can apply perfectly well to a music critic. If you admire that sentiment, then it'd be perfectly reasonable to ask , "why are you here?" Wouldn't it?😊
Only a bad musicologist would argue for that but unfortunately the humanities in academia have become corrupted with cultural relativism ages ago and ceased to be legitimate studies since at least the 1960s. To give you an idea: my brother is literally incapable of telling you why the music of Beethoven is superior to the music of Beyoncé Knowles (which it is, and anyone arguing otherwise must be a complete lunatic). He majored in cultural studies. I did not, and majored in accountancy before dropping out, but I could tell you why in a couple of sentences. Thanks to the so-called 'humanities', universities are churning out graduates dumber than when they started their studies and doing so in droves.
@@classicallpvaultOkay, do enlighten us as to why Bey-thoven beats out Beyoncé, two artists writing in completely different styles and time periods with different priorities and audiences and cultures and so on. Like so many such arguments, you can make them, and make them convincing, but what’s the point? Who’s going to be convinced and say “you know, you’re right, I should cease listening to one and change to the other,” as opposed to “cool, now let me get back to listening to Single Ladies”?
I grew up in the 60s/70s. The concept of the orchestra fascinated me - how all these instruments could come together and make such a beautiful sound. Back then there were still variety shows and shows like Lawrence Welk where the orchestra would be front and center. I think I was was the only kid in the world that listened to FM public radio and certainly the only kid that liked elevator music LOL. Other than my Classical collection, I have lots of vinyl by 101 Strings and the like. I just love that stuff. I guess they call it lounge music now.
On a somewhat related topic : as a critic, it would be great to hear you talk at length about the important composer critic/theorists -- Rameau and Gluck for 18th c opera and CPE Bach for non-opera and especially the early romantics, Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner. I know you've touched on these before. But I think it would be interesting to address the topic as a whole.
Thank you so much for this, Dave. Your thoughts on the appeal of abstract art align with my own, which is why I like listening to you, your opinions, and everything you talk about here.
I first got into classical music in a way, I suspect, like many: "Fantasia" and "2001". I had a horrible little stereo system in high school with an old BSR turntable terminally affected with rumble, but I listened to the "2001" soundtrack over and over. I slowly assembled a better system as I could afford it while in college in the late 80's. I vividly recall listening to Solti's 1981 recording on Decca of Bartok's "Concerto for Orchestra" and loving the dark creepiness with light thrown in. Then I heard Bernstein's Israel Philharmonic digital recording of "The Rite of Spring" and was hooked. It just...spoke to me, as cliched as that sounds. Then came "The Miraculous Mandarin" and Beethoven's 6th...and...and...and...yes. But the recording that really put me onto classical music was on one of those budget compilation cassettes of Budget Classics; blue label, many editions. It was Karajan's 1962 recording of The Hebrides Overture. It was just amazing to me; I listened over and over and over. I have it on CD now and it sure brings back the great memories that introduced me to a wonderful hobby and world of music. Cheers! Everything you say here is just...perfect. Rather humbling and I love and agree with everything you say.
The first real exposure I had to the sound an orchestra could make was my Dad playing records of John Williams soundtracks while we played board games as a family. Later, as we watched Star Trek TNG, they would often feature members of the crew playing chamber music. So that sound had always been with me. I had gone to a few concerts, I bought a few CDs here and there of Brahms, Copland. But around 2018, I desperately wanted some form of entertainment to escape into, something beautiful, something abstract, something not tied to "today." One CD box set later, and I've been a compete classical nut ever since. I now have many hundreds of albums representing many dozens of composers. It has enriched my life as a respite from the modern world.
Very well said, echoing some of my own sentiments. I enjoy a variety of musical genres, but classical is what I would choose if limited to just one. I treasure the vast range of emotions and images that the soundscapes created by the composers can evoke. It's unparalleled entertainment for me, whether it brings smiles or tears. Incidentally, I've been enjoying the complete original series Perry Mason on dvd for years.
Music was always a big part of my life, but I grew up with the music my parents listened to: classic and modern rock from my dad (who played drums to the radio); soul, R&B, and funk from my mom. At about 12 I started exploring music on my own. My first love was rock and metal, but I knew I wanted to explore everything that was out there and classical was just one of the things that was out there, and it was very much love at first listen. Similar to Dave I always loved any art (even film and literature) that invited me to engage with it, and classical music very much did because there weren't lyrics telling me what it was about and how to feel, so I could sit and listen and let my imagination run wild. Over time I think I developed a passion for all the arts, even formally studying poetry and literature, but music, and classical music especially, has always felt like home, and it also feels like an infinite world to explore, as if one could never run out of new things to hear, or even new things in familiar works.
I love that you call classical music entertainment. It takes the pressure off to find something that may or may not be there. Just enjoy it for what it is. And for some composers and performances, “what it is” can be incredibly moving and make you think you are in touch with something much larger than yourself (Mahler’s 2nd, Beethoven’s 9th), but in the end, you’ve just had a moving experience for the time you listened to it, which I think it’s fair to call entertainment.
I played classical violin for 10 years. My home was filled with classical music. Listened to the Texaco Opera Theater on Saturdays in the 70s. Played in musical show orchestras for 3 years. Was a rock DJ for a college radio station. Like Dave - I love music, and in almost all forms. About the only exception is hip hop/rap because I just don’t get it. But my love is still classical music. It’s the only music that for me provokes intense emotional reaction. Pieces like The Ninth and Mahler’s Titan and the great violin concertos still bring me to tears decades and decades later.
Thank you, Dave, for this very special presentation. I was touched, moved, and enlightened by it. Your comments about abstract forms and time were particularly telling. I was reminded of two sources that have shaped my understanding of how music moves us. One is an essay, "What Does Musi Mean?" by Leonard Bernstein (based, I think, on a script for a Young People's Concert). In that piece, Lenny argues that music "says" what it says so directly it means only itself. Though it can be made to "depict" extra-musical realities, it is fundamentally abstract temporal forms. Time shaped by sound. And so I'm also reminded of those philosophers who affirm that the flow of time is the basis for consciousness and its content. Take away the content, and you still have the flow of time out of which emerge latent forms. Among those forms are musical patterns all the way from motives to grand symphonic structures. Music, like all genuine forms of entertainment, "redeems the time." One final remark. When I read the subject heading for this talk, "Why do I love classical music?" the first response that came to mind, for me, was: "Because it's beautiful." And so putting together your answer and mine, we get: "Music redeems the time through abstract forms which are, in some sense, beautiful."
There are instrumental progressive rock music in long form. Viljans Öga by Änglagård, Lord of the Rings by Bo Hansson, Red Queen to Gryphon Three by Gryphon, ...Di Terra by Banco Del Mouto Soccorso, are some good examples of that.
I can relate to a lot of this. I also regard classical music as "just" entertainment, but it's meaningful for me in a way that almost nothing else is. Your channel is also one of the entertainment highlights of my life the last couple of years. Thanks so much for what you do, & for free! Here's an "Ask Dave": Have you ever conducted an orchestra? I'd love to hear about it. If not, why not? Would you, if given the chance?
Yes, Yale Art Galley has an amazing but underrated collection of abstract art - the best Albers, Abstrract Expressionism - the best Rothko, and early British Modernism. When I was living in New Haven, I visiteed these works at least once a week.
I've learned that synapses in our brains are lit up mostly from classical music, influencing emotions and probably imagination, which makes for a very satisfying experience. Mentally following all the strands of interest is like a workout. I guess that could be a positive addiction that may expand our attention abilities and thought processes.
My first experiences with classical music were the endless Chopin mazurkas I had to endure as a kid with my piano teacher before we got into the good stuff that I really wanted to play: blues and jazz. It wasn't until a friend in college more or less insisted I listen to Shostakovich's 8th symphony before I found a classical emotional language that clicked with me. Later I discovered the minimalists and realized how much of the electronic music I liked came directly from that as well. As you say, it's all entertainment.
Dear Dave, since you don't know me I don't have to be too embarrassed to admit I'm one of those people who, when I was new to classical music, always preferred symphonies or tone poems with titles. The reason for that is that I assumed that a title meant that the music told a story. I love stories -- I think of life as being as a story, and if music could tell me stories I could learn more about life. Of course, since then I've learned two things: just because music tells a story doesn't make it good music (!), and music without titles can also tell stories in its own way. Basically, I love classical music not only because it "tells" a story, but because it somehow (more than other musical expressions) invites me into the story and makes me feel the story. Thank you again for this video, and all your videos.
You handled it with your trademark wit and sense of humor. An entertainment in itself. I actually discovered classical music through the Pastoral Symphony though quite differently as it was through an lp (in French) associating passages of the the music to episodes from Disney's Fantasia with Centaurs and Nymphs... Music is not there to punish anyone. Never enjoyed so much what I listen while walking the dog in the loneliness in calm, open mood.
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing again. I love the art connection with the discovery of the music. Who cares if it's classical or avant garde indeed. Personally, I fell in love with music listening after hearing the Gregorian chant in Kenneth Clark's second episode of his Civilisation series. Likewise and later on via the ninth episode in love with classical music and opera. Looking at Tiepolo's ceiling whilst listening to Handel. What can create more enjoyment, more entertainment to the senses than opera? Just more of the same art and delight in a different disguise. 'Come Away Fellow Sailors' by Henry Purcell from the opera Dido and Aeneas with Mireille Lebel, Douglas Williams, Lydia Brotherton and Michael Taylor! 🙂
My story is part explanation of why I'm passionately opposed to the concept of 'Fine Arts School', especially High schools, which might seem counter-intuitive since I consider my High school experience was spent at a fine arts high school. It was the same high school every other kid attended! If the most talented had been sent some[elitist]where else the remaining kids would have been shortchanged. A high school with a fully fledged symphony orchestra was one of the foundational blessings of my life. The HS ensembles performed every year at elementary schools to inspire children to consider taking up an instrument, either strings (4th grade) or wind/percussion (5th). The first time I heard the SO I immediately thought "I'll have that" and the 'cello was my passion ever after. Milestones include performing the Academic Festival Overture in 10th grade (my first big-boy piece) and the adventure has been non-stop now for more than half a century of orchestral playing, choral singing, and audience appreciating (audiencing?) Major Kudos to Royal Oak Michigan Public Schools - every child child should have the possibility.
This always fascinates me. My first memory of really falling for a particular piece was seeing a TV transmission of Boult conducting The Planets at the Proms in the 60s. Yet I think there are many pieces which just entered my bloodstream and have just always been there. Of course, that is nonsense, but I think I must have absorbed those pieces which appealed to me from an early age. There was no influence from friends or family. The rest grew on that.
Between the ages of 2 and a half and 7 years of age there were pieces I liked without knowing what they were: 'spindly' music which turnerd to be Bach, Elizabethan Serenade, Bizet's Carmen tunes, Prokofiev tunes...I knew nothing sbout them, only that I was moved by them.
A question I have is would you/will you make a fabulous concert programs series for chamber music? I’ve found it a great resources for finding excuses to listen to new orchestral music in a satisfying way and I’d really appreciate it if you’d consider doing the same thing with chamber music.
I like the long form, both in literature and in music. There's something extra satisfying about exploring a musical idea in a big, fully coherent piece. Outside of classical music, Western music only has a relatively small number of jazz musicians who do extended improvisations, and the maybe the occasional concept album in other genres. And I find that feature of classical music much more compelling than any appeal to classical music as "culture" or "high art." We sell novels without being snobbish about the novel form. Why not sell symphonies the same way? Maybe a bit unusually, I originally got into classical music partially because of pop music snobbery. I lived in Dubai from age 3 to 12. Although pop culture there was very Westernized even then, it was before the internet age, and American movies and music tended to arrive a few years late. So when my family moved back to the States in 1995, I was in middle school, and I hadn't heard of any of the bands that my classmates were listening to because I was years behind. But I also got my own radio for the first time after moving back to the US. In the first month I stumbled upon the local classical radio station just as the announcer was introducing Howard Hanson's 1st Symphony, which turned out to be a long, winding musical journey unlike anything I'd ever heard before.
I like classical music, because it is best expression of the created mind. There is no other genre of music which speaks to your emotions, soul and heart like classical. Don't get me wrong, I like other genre too. But usually for different reasons....
I just had a wonderful idea! You should let yourself go & design/create some art to go on Classics Today T-shirts. Maybe 4 or 5 limited edition shirts 👍
Thank you. Mr. Hurwitz for a very fine list of under performed symphonies. I, too, would add Tchaikovsky's Third to this list, but I am left with one unanswered question: Can you recommend recordings of these gems? A video on Classics Today Insider, perhaps? It would certainly be an entertaining addition to your output, and you could also include some excerpts of a few of these. Just asking because I want to keep on listening!
I have always thought of classical music as great entertainment, whether it's high, low, or in between. Somehow, my DNA was imprinted with record nut structure (that's one of my machines in my avatar) but the content of the recording was always the thing. I'm a voice nut as well and was always attracted to the vocal side, opera, song, concert. It never occurred to me that opera, be it Wagner or Rossini or Leoncavallo, was not tremendously entertaining. Visually, I'm fine with abstract art but movies grabbed me too. Like music, they also structure time and are a progression in time. I was always intrigued by the silent era, which was more like a musical composition, but purely visual. (Somebody once said that art begins in a taking away. Editing is one of a composer's most vital jobs.) For me, a day without a symphony or something classical is unthinkable.
I have a question for you Dave: which recordings (if any) have you *really* changed your mind about during the years, compared to when you first listened to them? (I'm not talking about former old reference recordings getting displaced by better renditions, nor about mediocre recordings being slightly less mediocre than you first thought. I think you get the idea).
I grew up with a father who only listened to classical music and never opera or songs (and rarely even chamber music or even solo piano). I started listening to jazz and progressive rock in the early 70s, because vocals, if there at all, were only there as an element of the soundscape. I didn’t really listen to pop or rock music with lyrics until in my 20s. And I still don’t know the lyrics to songs I might have listened to hundreds of times. I’m not proud of this (nor ashamed). It’s just that the abstraction held my attention much more than the English language (to say nothing of music sung in foreign languages), which always seemed pedestrian to me in comparison to the abstraction.
There is Ambient-Techno from the '90s and '00s but somehow I can't see you liking Aphex Twin's Drukqs or Autechre's NTS Sessions. As a genre, though, it was 90% without singing and very long tracks and albums.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Ah, that's interesting. You're beyond me here, sir. What do you mean by form ? I don't know musical theory. I'd love to know what you thought of Avril 14th by Aphex Twin. He did two tracks inspired by John Cage's prepared piano too. One was the impossibly named Jynweythek. That's what attracted to me that genre but I've worked my way back to my first musical love, Classical, and your videos are helping me discover some music I 'd never heard of. Which is costing me a lot haha
I am fond of weird harmonic progression, it doesn't matter whether it is classical, jazz or pop/rock music. I started composing classical music at the age 17, that ability suddenly came out of the blue. But I am not good at composing jazz/pop, it is not really my forte.
I love music because it’s the first art to be understood but last to be explained. Babies love music more than DaVinci but try explaining why as an adult. I love classical music for its sophisticated aural landscapes.
Could I ask for your thoughts on that particular flavour of inflation whereby performers are now expected to commit to compete cycles of, say, symphonies or piano sonatas. You've mentioned a time when singleton recordings were "enough," such as with Paul Paray and his mono Brahms 4th. You've also spoken of how some composers have such a wide emotional range that it simply can't be adequately encompassed by a single interpreting mind. (Mahler? VW?) So you have people like Markus Stenz being drafted into complete Mahler cycles when they just can't and shouldn't. Is it purely a marketing push from the bean counters?
Note a Christopher Hitchens-like essay diversion that you didn't develop further; University Art Galleries. They are wonderful and typically easy to view entirely in a single visit - when you travel they're worth looking into and also typically inexpensive or free! (My hometown [Chicago] recommendations for you and fans, Loyola U art gallery downtown and the Smart Museum at U of Chicago). Also please do not ever again say 'one of the only' or I will be forced to thrash you with a grammatical wet noodle!
I don't have a problem with classical music being just entertainment. But is it as valuable or worthless as popular music or we are not allowed to make that judgement?
It's a curious question. My answer: it's the only language I seem to understand, a little. There's a pub near me that plays a neverending loop of 1970s pop music videos. The 1970s were when I was a teenager. Turns out I can identify pretty much every performer and song that's ever played on it, which took me aback, and clearly indicates that I was _listening_ to this stuff as a kid *and* actually taking it in, though I was definitely unaware of this at the time. Yet none of it 'sticks'. I can identify it as I can tell blue from green, but none of it ever mattered or counted for anything, other than "just another tune". Stick me in a school choir with a history teacher that made us sing Britten, however, and "something spoke to me" and has done so ever since (and I also went on to do a history degree: Mr. Vafeas deserves a medal). I can enjoy all types of music and hear its inner workings. It's not that non-classical music doesn't have any. But the only music I've ever _responded_ to was classical. It's the only one which seemed like a language to me, rather than noise (I exempt Brian Fernyhough from this observation, however!) It has a syntax and grammar that I found I could understand, natively. I can't explain it, but it just seems hard-wired to me. It turns out that I can sing almost all of Melanie's _I've got a pair of brand new pair of roller skates_ or Lennon's _Imagine_ ...but none of it matters and all of it leaves me cold. Play me a bit of _Peter Grimes_ or Bruckner's fourth, however, and you'd better have a box of tissues at the ready. It's just visceral. One other thought or two: My father bought me a model railway set as a 7 year-old; I had taken the engine apart and reduced it to a disembodied motor within a day (he was as amused at that as when I made him listen to 16 bars of Vaughan William's second symphony: i.e., not at all). We had an old television in the basement: I stripped it for interesting parts. I think I'm trying to say, I don't like the surface of things. I like knowing how they work. You can do that with classical music, but not so much with most non-classical. To close a rambling thought: I loved your story about abstract art. Same thing here: I like colour and shapes, not delineated forms. Maybe thats the same sort of thing: a like of having to piece things together to make sense of them, rather than just enjoying a surface beauty?
I love Classical music because it is composed by genius composers for full Symphony Orchestras with each section of the Orchestra having its specific say in the Composer s intentions.
Although there is some (old) pop music that I like, I mostly listen to classical music, particularly orchestral. I am not a fan of vocal music, mainly because the words are either in a foreign language or hard to make out. Non-classical music tends to be too short and repetitive, while classical music has changes of instrumentation, loudness, speed, rhythm and key, which other music lacks, as well as more inventiveness and less repetition. Classical music also has far more emotion and atmosphere.
In my sixties, inspired by Gen Z's fascination with "vinyls", I've started picking up, and thinking about, old records of "Beautiful Music" - the "elevator music" that was inescapable in my youth. Nowadays I'm impressed by the anonymous talent that went into that smooth stuff we loved to ridicule. I wonder how the experience of that wordless, never-ending (if formless) aural immersion affected my taste. I enjoyed instrumental rock music before discovering the wider world of classical music. Funny how Haydn's masses led me back to text-based music, including pop!
Wonderful comments, I couldn't describe it better. A place that once you find it, you never want to leave it. I love music, simple.
I also love your channel, it's the best thing on the Internet. Thanks for all you do to introduce us to all these wonders.
Many thanks!
Amen. Music is like air, to me. I need it to live. Music makes life worth living. My life is filled with music.
Classical music takes me to places of inconceivable beauty. Not always but often. It sometimes opens up worlds of emotion that I had only previously glimpsed and presents them in full view. In these and other ways, it occasionally blows my mind!
What a great comment. I feel exactly the same. Music is everything to me, it gives me something otherworldly that nothing else does. A world of it's own, outside of the rest of life. It's takes you somewhere outside of yourself into something amazing. It's impossible to describe and wonderful, a place once you find, you never want to leave.
The filmmaker Tarkovsky famously talked about sculpting in time. His films are similar to music in that way.
One word: emotion. Classical music has been the soundtrack to my life; the highs and the lows. Like all great art it brings people of all races together, irrespective of language or faith. Why? The emotions it brings out in us all.
Everybody's got a story. My first classical record (I think I'm older than you by about a decade) was the Disney tie-in "Sorcerer's Apprentice", complete with stills from "Fantasia". I was about 5, and boy--did I love it! we moved around a lot when I was little, and my dad had promised my mom that the minute we settled somewhere and had a house of our own, he'd buy her a piano. And he did, even though money was tight (big family). This was the only time he made payments on something other than the house. So, when we landed in LA, there was the piano, and Mom wanted us to have lessons (she was one of those naturals who could sight-read anything). So I went through the usual teaching pieces (no prodigy I), but when I finally got to play something real--by which I mean the easier Mozart and Chopin, the Bach Inventions--well, I had never found anything that so delighted me. I started listening to the late and lamented KFAC in LA. Commercials and all, it was water in the desert. That's why I majored in music in college: for the simple joy it gave me. How lucky for me, then, to be able to share it with others on the radio! I was an evangelist for it. Never "worked" a day in 40 years. I had the good luck to sing in the chorus for Maurice Abravanel (I'm somewhere back there in his Mahler Second). He was much too busy to collect very many records of his own. When he wanted to hear something he wasn't already on intimate terms with, he'd borrow records from our station at the University of Utah station, or from the head classical guy at the station, who was a real demon collector, from the 78 era on. Little furniture in his little house, but thousands of records (and cats--always cats!). Along the way, it wasn't just classical music I had a passion for. I love the Great American Songbook, and musical theatre too. I'm an opera nut, a piano nut, and an old-movie nut. It all just gives me pleasure in a way that nothing else ever has.
I like the sense of historical vastness also. Sometimes I almost feel like I'm listening to one single, giant, continuous piece of music, with all these changes and surprising progressions.
What draws me the most to classical music is the element of pleasant surprise
Music in general is great, but classical is the only kind which can get me to feel deep emotion. Pop is fun, jazz is cool, country is really good (I honestly love it), but all of them combined couldn’t match the emotional depth of a symphony from someone like Shostakovich. First time I got in touch with classical was a year ago with twoset, and I believe the first piece I listened to in full was something Sibelius or Debussy. A piece of pop or jazz, even if the lyrics were sad or the melody was, nothing ever made me feel anything other than “general sadness”, as I call it. Just basic, if a bit unnerving, sadness. Debussy made me nearly tear up due to the beauty, and Shostakovich due to the suffering portrayed in his pieces, something a 3 minute pop song could never do, and I’m so grateful I’ve found this goldmine of music that I never discovered in my 10 years of learning piano. I honestly wish I’d found it earlier.
Dear Dave, this was so wonderful. Thank you for this wonderful integration of personal experience, contemplation of time, and the value of entertainment. I've listened to many of your videos more than once, and this will mot certainly be a repeat performance. Thank you for starting off my morning in such a thoughtful manner.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That pretty much aligns with my own experience. I listened to pop music as a child, like everyone else, but it didn't make a significant impact on me. Then, around the age of 13, I stumbled upon classical music by chance, and it felt like I had discovered a whole new, fascinating continent. Besides the enchantment of beautiful melodies, captivating harmonies, and modulations, I found myself particularly drawn to the form of extensive compositions. Of course, at that age, I couldn't trace features like sonata form or rondo for many years. For me, the form simply meant that the music sometimes played softly and sometimes loudly, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. The totality formed by these variations either impressed me or, sometimes, it didn't. Yet, when a symphony or concerto started, I couldn't wait to see what kind of journey would unfold and what experiences I would have as a listener along the way.
Another aspect that fascinated me in classical music was its rich palette of colors. I have some synesthetic tendencies. I perceive music primarily as colors, and while listening, the colors that come to my mind can create vivid visual images. In classical music, these visual experiences were, for some reason, noticeably stronger than in pop music. Although I enjoy listening to jazz (which is also a rich play of changing rhythms and colors) and Gregorian chant, in addition to classical music, I selectively listen to rock as well. However, the experiences offered by classical music are the richest and most diverse for me. (I apologize for the long write-up!)
Classical music is a sanctuary-a place where time may exist…..or it may not, as exemplified by my putting on Morton Feldman`s 2nd String Quartet (instead of a movie) to start a 2-hour platelet donation and before I knew it, the two hours had completely passed. I was not aware at all of its passage, even as I was squeezing a sponge ball every 10 seconds during that interim. It was a very profound experience.
Only these so-called “musicologists” would argue that classical music is not entertainment. I’m reminded of Thomas Beecham’s brilliant assessment - “. A musicologist is someone who knows all about the theory of music but can’t hear it”. - Genius😁
One can argue that the comment can apply perfectly well to a music critic. If you admire that sentiment, then it'd be perfectly reasonable to ask , "why are you here?" Wouldn't it?😊
@@qtduck7082 No it wouldn’t because the comment was aimed at a specific type. You can assume anything but that’s not the point that was being made. 😁
Only a bad musicologist would argue for that but unfortunately the humanities in academia have become corrupted with cultural relativism ages ago and ceased to be legitimate studies since at least the 1960s.
To give you an idea: my brother is literally incapable of telling you why the music of Beethoven is superior to the music of Beyoncé Knowles (which it is, and anyone arguing otherwise must be a complete lunatic). He majored in cultural studies. I did not, and majored in accountancy before dropping out, but I could tell you why in a couple of sentences.
Thanks to the so-called 'humanities', universities are churning out graduates dumber than when they started their studies and doing so in droves.
@@classicallpvaultOkay, do enlighten us as to why Bey-thoven beats out Beyoncé, two artists writing in completely different styles and time periods with different priorities and audiences and cultures and so on. Like so many such arguments, you can make them, and make them convincing, but what’s the point? Who’s going to be convinced and say “you know, you’re right, I should cease listening to one and change to the other,” as opposed to “cool, now let me get back to listening to Single Ladies”?
I grew up in the 60s/70s. The concept of the orchestra fascinated me - how all these instruments could come together and make such a beautiful sound. Back then there were still variety shows and shows like Lawrence Welk where the orchestra would be front and center. I think I was was the only kid in the world that listened to FM public radio and certainly the only kid that liked elevator music LOL. Other than my Classical collection, I have lots of vinyl by 101 Strings and the like. I just love that stuff. I guess they call it lounge music now.
Thank You Dave Hurwitz
It is a Joy & Entertainment to listen to you expound on things I Love
On a somewhat related topic : as a critic, it would be great to hear you talk at length about the important composer critic/theorists -- Rameau and Gluck for 18th c opera and CPE Bach for non-opera and especially the early romantics, Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner. I know you've touched on these before. But I think it would be interesting to address the topic as a whole.
Thank you so much for this, Dave. Your thoughts on the appeal of abstract art align with my own, which is why I like listening to you, your opinions, and everything you talk about here.
I first got into classical music in a way, I suspect, like many: "Fantasia" and "2001". I had a horrible little stereo system in high school with an old BSR turntable terminally affected with rumble, but I listened to the "2001" soundtrack over and over. I slowly assembled a better system as I could afford it while in college in the late 80's. I vividly recall listening to Solti's 1981 recording on Decca of Bartok's "Concerto for Orchestra" and loving the dark creepiness with light thrown in. Then I heard Bernstein's Israel Philharmonic digital recording of "The Rite of Spring" and was hooked. It just...spoke to me, as cliched as that sounds. Then came "The Miraculous Mandarin" and Beethoven's 6th...and...and...and...yes. But the recording that really put me onto classical music was on one of those budget compilation cassettes of Budget Classics; blue label, many editions. It was Karajan's 1962 recording of The Hebrides Overture. It was just amazing to me; I listened over and over and over. I have it on CD now and it sure brings back the great memories that introduced me to a wonderful hobby and world of music. Cheers! Everything you say here is just...perfect. Rather humbling and I love and agree with everything you say.
The first real exposure I had to the sound an orchestra could make was my Dad playing records of John Williams soundtracks while we played board games as a family. Later, as we watched Star Trek TNG, they would often feature members of the crew playing chamber music. So that sound had always been with me. I had gone to a few concerts, I bought a few CDs here and there of Brahms, Copland. But around 2018, I desperately wanted some form of entertainment to escape into, something beautiful, something abstract, something not tied to "today." One CD box set later, and I've been a compete classical nut ever since. I now have many hundreds of albums representing many dozens of composers. It has enriched my life as a respite from the modern world.
Very well said, echoing some of my own sentiments. I enjoy a variety of musical genres, but classical is what I would choose if limited to just one. I treasure the vast range of emotions and images that the soundscapes created by the composers can evoke. It's unparalleled entertainment for me, whether it brings smiles or tears. Incidentally, I've been enjoying the complete original series Perry Mason on dvd for years.
Music was always a big part of my life, but I grew up with the music my parents listened to: classic and modern rock from my dad (who played drums to the radio); soul, R&B, and funk from my mom. At about 12 I started exploring music on my own. My first love was rock and metal, but I knew I wanted to explore everything that was out there and classical was just one of the things that was out there, and it was very much love at first listen. Similar to Dave I always loved any art (even film and literature) that invited me to engage with it, and classical music very much did because there weren't lyrics telling me what it was about and how to feel, so I could sit and listen and let my imagination run wild. Over time I think I developed a passion for all the arts, even formally studying poetry and literature, but music, and classical music especially, has always felt like home, and it also feels like an infinite world to explore, as if one could never run out of new things to hear, or even new things in familiar works.
Classical music first came to my attention with a matinee showing of Fantasia. That was when I was six.
Best answer - and one I came up with immediately as well. Kudos!
I love that you call classical music entertainment. It takes the pressure off to find something that may or may not be there. Just enjoy it for what it is. And for some composers and performances, “what it is” can be incredibly moving and make you think you are in touch with something much larger than yourself (Mahler’s 2nd, Beethoven’s 9th), but in the end, you’ve just had a moving experience for the time you listened to it, which I think it’s fair to call entertainment.
I played classical violin for 10 years. My home was filled with classical music. Listened to the Texaco Opera Theater on Saturdays in the 70s. Played in musical show orchestras for 3 years. Was a rock DJ for a college radio station.
Like Dave - I love music, and in almost all forms. About the only exception is hip hop/rap because I just don’t get it.
But my love is still classical music. It’s the only music that for me provokes intense emotional reaction. Pieces like The Ninth and Mahler’s Titan and the great violin concertos still bring me to tears decades and decades later.
Thank you, Dave, for this very special presentation. I was touched, moved, and enlightened by it. Your comments about abstract forms and time were particularly telling. I was reminded of two sources that have shaped my understanding of how music moves us. One is an essay, "What Does Musi Mean?" by Leonard Bernstein (based, I think, on a script for a Young People's Concert). In that piece, Lenny argues that music "says" what it says so directly it means only itself. Though it can be made to "depict" extra-musical realities, it is fundamentally abstract temporal forms. Time shaped by sound. And so I'm also reminded of those philosophers who affirm that the flow of time is the basis for consciousness and its content. Take away the content, and you still have the flow of time out of which emerge latent forms. Among those forms are musical patterns all the way from motives to grand symphonic structures. Music, like all genuine forms of entertainment, "redeems the time." One final remark. When I read the subject heading for this talk, "Why do I love classical music?" the first response that came to mind, for me, was: "Because it's beautiful." And so putting together your answer and mine, we get: "Music redeems the time through abstract forms which are, in some sense, beautiful."
There are instrumental progressive rock music in long form.
Viljans Öga by Änglagård,
Lord of the Rings by Bo Hansson,
Red Queen to Gryphon Three by Gryphon,
...Di Terra by Banco Del Mouto Soccorso, are some good examples of that.
I can relate to a lot of this. I also regard classical music as "just" entertainment, but it's meaningful for me in a way that almost nothing else is. Your channel is also one of the entertainment highlights of my life the last couple of years. Thanks so much for what you do, & for free!
Here's an "Ask Dave": Have you ever conducted an orchestra? I'd love to hear about it. If not, why not? Would you, if given the chance?
Yes, Yale Art Galley has an amazing but underrated collection of abstract art - the best Albers, Abstrract Expressionism - the best Rothko, and early British Modernism. When I was living in New Haven, I visiteed these works at least once a week.
I've learned that synapses in our brains are lit up mostly from classical music, influencing emotions and probably imagination, which makes for a very satisfying experience. Mentally following all the strands of interest is like a workout. I guess that could be a positive addiction that may expand our attention abilities and thought processes.
My first experiences with classical music were the endless Chopin mazurkas I had to endure as a kid with my piano teacher before we got into the good stuff that I really wanted to play: blues and jazz. It wasn't until a friend in college more or less insisted I listen to Shostakovich's 8th symphony before I found a classical emotional language that clicked with me. Later I discovered the minimalists and realized how much of the electronic music I liked came directly from that as well. As you say, it's all entertainment.
Dear Dave, since you don't know me I don't have to be too embarrassed to admit I'm one of those people who, when I was new to classical music, always preferred symphonies or tone poems with titles. The reason for that is that I assumed that a title meant that the music told a story. I love stories -- I think of life as being as a story, and if music could tell me stories I could learn more about life. Of course, since then I've learned two things: just because music tells a story doesn't make it good music (!), and music without titles can also tell stories in its own way. Basically, I love classical music not only because it "tells" a story, but because it somehow (more than other musical expressions) invites me into the story and makes me feel the story. Thank you again for this video, and all your videos.
Also music is the one art that consists purely of energy.
You handled it with your trademark wit and sense of humor. An entertainment in itself. I actually discovered classical music through the Pastoral Symphony though quite differently as it was through an lp (in French) associating passages of the the music to episodes from Disney's Fantasia with Centaurs and Nymphs... Music is not there to punish anyone. Never enjoyed so much what I listen while walking the dog in the loneliness in calm, open mood.
Great argument on entertainment. While you were speaking Beethoven and Chaplin crossed my mind
Thank you so much.
Dave, your journey and discoveries are so much like mine. We could be twin brothers.
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing again. I love the art connection with the discovery of the music. Who cares if it's classical or avant garde indeed. Personally, I fell in love with music listening after hearing the Gregorian chant in Kenneth Clark's second episode of his Civilisation series. Likewise and later on via the ninth episode in love with classical music and opera. Looking at Tiepolo's ceiling whilst listening to Handel. What can create more enjoyment, more entertainment to the senses than opera? Just more of the same art and delight in a different disguise. 'Come Away Fellow Sailors' by Henry Purcell from the opera Dido and Aeneas with Mireille Lebel, Douglas Williams, Lydia Brotherton and Michael Taylor! 🙂
My story is part explanation of why I'm passionately opposed to the concept of 'Fine Arts School', especially High schools, which might seem counter-intuitive since I consider my High school experience was spent at a fine arts high school. It was the same high school every other kid attended! If the most talented had been sent some[elitist]where else the remaining kids would have been shortchanged. A high school with a fully fledged symphony orchestra was one of the foundational blessings of my life. The HS ensembles performed every year at elementary schools to inspire children to consider taking up an instrument, either strings (4th grade) or wind/percussion (5th). The first time I heard the SO I immediately thought "I'll have that" and the 'cello was my passion ever after. Milestones include performing the Academic Festival Overture in 10th grade (my first big-boy piece) and the adventure has been non-stop now for more than half a century of orchestral playing, choral singing, and audience appreciating (audiencing?)
Major Kudos to Royal Oak Michigan Public Schools - every child child should have the possibility.
This always fascinates me. My first memory of really falling for a particular piece was seeing a TV transmission of Boult conducting The Planets at the Proms in the 60s. Yet I think there are many pieces which just entered my bloodstream and have just always been there. Of course, that is nonsense, but I think I must have absorbed those pieces which appealed to me from an early age. There was no influence from friends or family. The rest grew on that.
Ask Dave:
If you could by magic or by a gennie obtain recordings from 10 historical performances, which ones would you chose?
Between the ages of 2 and a half and 7 years of age there were pieces I liked without knowing what they were: 'spindly' music which turnerd to be Bach, Elizabethan Serenade, Bizet's Carmen tunes, Prokofiev tunes...I knew nothing sbout them, only that I was moved by them.
A question I have is would you/will you make a fabulous concert programs series for chamber music? I’ve found it a great resources for finding excuses to listen to new orchestral music in a satisfying way and I’d really appreciate it if you’d consider doing the same thing with chamber music.
I am thinking about it.
I like the long form, both in literature and in music. There's something extra satisfying about exploring a musical idea in a big, fully coherent piece. Outside of classical music, Western music only has a relatively small number of jazz musicians who do extended improvisations, and the maybe the occasional concept album in other genres.
And I find that feature of classical music much more compelling than any appeal to classical music as "culture" or "high art." We sell novels without being snobbish about the novel form. Why not sell symphonies the same way?
Maybe a bit unusually, I originally got into classical music partially because of pop music snobbery. I lived in Dubai from age 3 to 12. Although pop culture there was very Westernized even then, it was before the internet age, and American movies and music tended to arrive a few years late. So when my family moved back to the States in 1995, I was in middle school, and I hadn't heard of any of the bands that my classmates were listening to because I was years behind. But I also got my own radio for the first time after moving back to the US. In the first month I stumbled upon the local classical radio station just as the announcer was introducing Howard Hanson's 1st Symphony, which turned out to be a long, winding musical journey unlike anything I'd ever heard before.
I like classical music, because it is best expression of the created mind. There is no other genre of music which speaks to your emotions, soul and heart like classical. Don't get me wrong, I like other genre too. But usually for different reasons....
I just had a wonderful idea!
You should let yourself go & design/create some art to go on Classics Today T-shirts.
Maybe 4 or 5 limited edition shirts 👍
Thank you. Mr. Hurwitz for a very fine list of under performed symphonies. I, too, would add Tchaikovsky's Third to this list, but I am left with one unanswered question: Can you recommend recordings of these gems? A video on Classics Today Insider, perhaps? It would certainly be an entertaining addition to your output, and you could also include some excerpts of a few of these. Just asking because I want to keep on listening!
You can find reviews on ClassicsToday.com and in many other videos that I've done here. That's why I didn't duplicate the same information.
I have always thought of classical music as great entertainment, whether it's high, low, or in between. Somehow, my DNA was imprinted with record nut structure (that's one of my machines in my avatar) but the content of the recording was always the thing.
I'm a voice nut as well and was always attracted to the vocal side, opera, song, concert. It never occurred to me that opera, be it Wagner or Rossini or Leoncavallo, was not tremendously entertaining.
Visually, I'm fine with abstract art but movies grabbed me too. Like music, they also structure time and are a progression in time. I was always intrigued by the silent era, which was more like a musical composition, but purely visual. (Somebody once said that art begins in a taking away. Editing is one of a composer's most vital jobs.)
For me, a day without a symphony or something classical is unthinkable.
I have a question for you Dave: which recordings (if any) have you *really* changed your mind about during the years, compared to when you first listened to them? (I'm not talking about former old reference recordings getting displaced by better renditions, nor about mediocre recordings being slightly less mediocre than you first thought. I think you get the idea).
I grew up with a father who only listened to classical music and never opera or songs (and rarely even chamber music or even solo piano). I started listening to jazz and progressive rock in the early 70s, because vocals, if there at all, were only there as an element of the soundscape. I didn’t really listen to pop or rock music with lyrics until in my 20s. And I still don’t know the lyrics to songs I might have listened to hundreds of times. I’m not proud of this (nor ashamed). It’s just that the abstraction held my attention much more than the English language (to say nothing of music sung in foreign languages), which always seemed pedestrian to me in comparison to the abstraction.
There is Ambient-Techno from the '90s and '00s but somehow I can't see you liking Aphex Twin's Drukqs or Autechre's NTS Sessions. As a genre, though, it was 90% without singing and very long tracks and albums.
Yes, but you ignore the matter of form.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Ah, that's interesting. You're beyond me here, sir. What do you mean by form ? I don't know musical theory. I'd love to know what you thought of Avril 14th by Aphex Twin. He did two tracks inspired by John Cage's prepared piano too. One was the impossibly named Jynweythek. That's what attracted to me that genre but I've worked my way back to my first musical love, Classical, and your videos are helping me discover some music I 'd never heard of. Which is costing me a lot haha
I am fond of weird harmonic progression, it doesn't matter whether it is classical, jazz or pop/rock music. I started composing classical music at the age 17, that ability suddenly came out of the blue. But I am not good at composing jazz/pop, it is not really my forte.
Donald Fagen is a brilliant exemple
I love music because it’s the first art to be understood but last to be explained. Babies love music more than DaVinci but try explaining why as an adult. I love classical music for its sophisticated aural landscapes.
Could I ask for your thoughts on that particular flavour of inflation whereby performers are now expected to commit to compete cycles of, say, symphonies or piano sonatas.
You've mentioned a time when singleton recordings were "enough," such as with Paul Paray and his mono Brahms 4th. You've also spoken of how some composers have such a wide emotional range that it simply can't be adequately encompassed by a single interpreting mind. (Mahler? VW?)
So you have people like Markus Stenz being drafted into complete Mahler cycles when they just can't and shouldn't. Is it purely a marketing push from the bean counters?
No, it's also the artists who do whatever they can whenever they can because they can.
Note a Christopher Hitchens-like essay diversion that you didn't develop further; University Art Galleries. They are wonderful and typically easy to view entirely in a single visit - when you travel they're worth looking into and also typically inexpensive or free! (My hometown [Chicago] recommendations for you and fans, Loyola U art gallery downtown and the Smart Museum at U of Chicago). Also please do not ever again say 'one of the only' or I will be forced to thrash you with a grammatical wet noodle!
And if you ever attempt to correct my grammar again I will ban you from this channel forever. So there!
I don't have a problem with classical music being just entertainment. But is it as valuable or worthless as popular music or we are not allowed to make that judgement?
You can judge however you want. I don't believe it is any more or less valuable.
It's a curious question. My answer: it's the only language I seem to understand, a little.
There's a pub near me that plays a neverending loop of 1970s pop music videos. The 1970s were when I was a teenager. Turns out I can identify pretty much every performer and song that's ever played on it, which took me aback, and clearly indicates that I was _listening_ to this stuff as a kid *and* actually taking it in, though I was definitely unaware of this at the time.
Yet none of it 'sticks'. I can identify it as I can tell blue from green, but none of it ever mattered or counted for anything, other than "just another tune".
Stick me in a school choir with a history teacher that made us sing Britten, however, and "something spoke to me" and has done so ever since (and I also went on to do a history degree: Mr. Vafeas deserves a medal).
I can enjoy all types of music and hear its inner workings. It's not that non-classical music doesn't have any. But the only music I've ever _responded_ to was classical. It's the only one which seemed like a language to me, rather than noise (I exempt Brian Fernyhough from this observation, however!) It has a syntax and grammar that I found I could understand, natively. I can't explain it, but it just seems hard-wired to me.
It turns out that I can sing almost all of Melanie's _I've got a pair of brand new pair of roller skates_ or Lennon's _Imagine_ ...but none of it matters and all of it leaves me cold. Play me a bit of _Peter Grimes_ or Bruckner's fourth, however, and you'd better have a box of tissues at the ready. It's just visceral.
One other thought or two: My father bought me a model railway set as a 7 year-old; I had taken the engine apart and reduced it to a disembodied motor within a day (he was as amused at that as when I made him listen to 16 bars of Vaughan William's second symphony: i.e., not at all). We had an old television in the basement: I stripped it for interesting parts. I think I'm trying to say, I don't like the surface of things. I like knowing how they work. You can do that with classical music, but not so much with most non-classical.
To close a rambling thought: I loved your story about abstract art. Same thing here: I like colour and shapes, not delineated forms. Maybe thats the same sort of thing: a like of having to piece things together to make sense of them, rather than just enjoying a surface beauty?
I love Classical music because it is composed by genius composers for full Symphony Orchestras with each section of the Orchestra having its specific say in the Composer s intentions.
Okay, bot.
Although there is some (old) pop music that I like, I mostly listen to classical music, particularly orchestral. I am not a fan of vocal music, mainly because the words are either in a foreign language or hard to make out. Non-classical music tends to be too short and repetitive, while classical music has changes of instrumentation, loudness, speed, rhythm and key, which other music lacks, as well as more inventiveness and less repetition. Classical music also has far more emotion and atmosphere.
In my sixties, inspired by Gen Z's fascination with "vinyls", I've started picking up, and thinking about, old records of "Beautiful Music" - the "elevator music" that was inescapable in my youth. Nowadays I'm impressed by the anonymous talent that went into that smooth stuff we loved to ridicule. I wonder how the experience of that wordless, never-ending (if formless) aural immersion affected my taste. I enjoyed instrumental rock music before discovering the wider world of classical music.
Funny how Haydn's masses led me back to text-based music, including pop!