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

How to Start Your Own Classical Music Collection

I'm often asked by people who are new to classical music for a list of CDs or key symphonies that I think are the best choices to start off a new classical music collection. What are ideal symphonies or works that can help you get started getting to know classical music? Today I'm going to attempt to answer this question, and I'll provide you with a brief list of works that can form the foundation of a great collection of important classical music. Keep in mind that whenever one reviews any type of list like this, invariably one can complain that a given work was left off the list ("where's Chopin? or Mahler?"), or even that some work was left on the list ("ugh, Beethoven's 5th again?"). This list is in no way meant to be exhaustive. It is merely a starting point for the novice listener. If you purchase recordings of these works and listen to each and every one of them, you'll have a great head start on your journey towards getting to know c...
10 comments
Read more

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