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Ten Things I've Learned From Starting a Classical Music Blog

101 Classical Music CDs is now one year old, and if you'll permit me a brief fit of gratitude, I'd like to list ten things I've learned and discovered from my first year of finally listening to my collection of classical music.

1) I learned how much I loved Mozart. I spent years hating Mozart's music as a high school trumpet player--as far as I was concerned, it was all oom-pah parts and rest-counting. It wasn't until I started this blog (and had high school recede 20 years into my past) that I could at last hear him through fresh ears.

2) I learned even more how much I loved Haydn (yep, trumpet playing again), and it taught me never to take great composers like these for granted.

3) I became much more familiar with each and every one of Beethoven's symphonies, by itself a worthwhile exercise if there ever was one.

4) It taught me about less-well known composers like Sibelius, who were sitting on my CD shelf, collecting just as much dust as my Bach, Brahms and Beethoven recordings.

5) It taught me how wonderful it is to compare, closely, different recordings of the same classical music work.

6) It taught me much greater appreciation for classical music outside of the typical symphonic repertory. In particular, it taught me a profound appreciation for the great chamber music works of both Brahms and Beethoven.

7) It taught me that there's a whole world of classical music blogs out there, written by a great group of musicians and thinkers.

8) It taught me all sorts of historical and personal details on each of the composers I wrote about.

9) It taught me never to be ashamed of loving Bruckner.

10) It has started to teach me to stop being so hard on myself. Brahms was hard on himself and it didn't help him one damn bit.

Thank you for reading!

Comments

peskypesky said…
love your list. my recent discovery of classical music blogs like yours has totally ignited my passion for classical music. as a classical guitar player, i've always enjoyed PLAYING classical music, but strangely I never listened to it much (except for modern composers like Glass and Reich).

the blogs have successfully introduced me to a number of works, performers and composers I wasn't familiar with before (Bruckner, Janacek, Mahler, Nielsen, etc).
Daniel said…
So glad you enjoyed it and really happy to hear your interest in classical music has been re-ignited! That is the kind of thing that makes writing this blog worthwhile.

Thanks for reading!

DK

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