Skip to main content

About This Blog

This blog is the result of a New Year's resolution. I have a good-sized collection of classical music at home that has been collecting dust for years, and I wanted to make 2008 the year that I actually made an effort to listen to it. All of it.

I have a reasonably thorough musical education, having played trumpet throughout elementary, middle and high school. I was also principal trumpet in my university wind ensemble for two years before I gave up playing. I also have some basic grounding in music theory and composition, although it's gone quite stale through years of disuse.

However, there is much that I don't know about classical music, and one of the purposes of this blog is to force me, in a public forum no less, to learn and share thoughts about the discs in my collection as I listen to them. I'll also link to music selections on Amazon.com that are applicable to the composer or composition I'm featuring. Occasionally I'll write posts that hopefully will assist others who may share the goal of listening and experiencing more classical music--it's truly an amazing and diverse art form that is underappreciated in the era of three-minute-long popular music downloads.

The posting rate for this blog should be about 2 posts per week. Over the course of 2008, then, I should be able to listen to 101 CDs--my entire classical music collection!
Labels:

Comments

MyMusic said…
Brilliant idea! I feel inspired to do the same - I keep meaning to listen to all my classical CDs and get to know the lesser know ones more intimately, but I always end up listening to the same old favourites - you've motivated me!
January 28, 2009 at 7:11 AM
玉女天皇 said…
Dear Noble Gentleman: Is there any way you could make your classic music collection available for the public to appreciate? Please let me know if you already have a channel like Youtube. Thanks! --- minji0722@aol.com
December 27, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does Bach Suck?

It's not often that you see a classical music-related comment that makes you spit out your coffee : "Bach sucks because he was not a true composer. A true composer hears the music before he writes it. Bach composed using a mathematical system of numbers which he tought[sic] his students. After his death one of his students published a book “How to write a menuet[sic] with little or no musical knowledge”. Frankly, the result of his work is not musical, the opening bars always sound musical because he copied someone else’s melody, broke it down into numbers and wrote counterpoint from it. Handel did not even like Bach, because Handel wrote music. Anyone who does like Bach does so because they are told to. For a comparison, listen to music by Frescobaldi, Rameau, or Couperin, then listen to Bach. The difference? Something that is musical throughout the entire piece, and something that is musical for 10 seconds and quickly loses interest." Once I'd finished mopping the co
15 comments
Read more

Why Classical Music Writing is So Difficult to Read

Have you ever read the liner notes of a classical music CD and scratched your head wondering what the heck the writer was trying to say? Or attempted to read a classical music concert review in your newspaper and felt totally illiterate? One of the things that frustrates many people about classical music is its perceived elitism. It's unfortunate, but most of what gets written about classical music only worsens that perception. Most of the classical music writing I see out there--either in symphony concert program books, in concert reviews in major papers like the New York Times, or worst of all in the little essays in the booklets accompanying most classical music CDs--is quite simply terrible. Often, it is pretentiously written, it is full of industry jargon (yes, even the classical music industry has its own jargon), and it reads like an intellectually insecure liberal arts student's PhD thesis. There are a few reasons for this. First, there's the fundamental difficulty
8 comments
Read more

Schubert: Symphony #3

I have a confession to make. Today's CD is not only further proof of my need to start this blog, but it is perhaps the most embarrassing example of how mindless and uncontemplative my life had become over the past several years. This CD sat on my shelf with more than a hundred other CDs for years, unlistened to, unnoticed, and collecting dust. It was just like all the rest of my CDs, except, uh, in one key respect: It was still in its cellophane wrapper. I had been so out of touch with myself that I bought CDs that I forgot I bought. I must have wanted to listen to this CD at some point, but apparently in the time between buying the CD and putting it on the shelf, I got distracted. For ten years. That is a prime, and admittedly foolish-sounding, example of why I'm taking a break from my career, and why I started this blog. I guess I didn't want to wake up in another ten years and hear myself making excuses for myself like "I work too hard and make too much money to
4 comments
Read more