The Classical World

Growing up in a working class household I didn’t really have much exposure to classical music – or at least I didn’t think I did until much later. My dad did have some records of his own but they were essentially pop music from the 50’s and 60’s. My only exposure to the Classics was at school and through TV adverts and movie soundtracks – what is usually disparagingly called ‘Popular Classics’. My school teacher, who seemed to be 80+ to my 11 year old self, tried very hard to get a bunch of ignorant working class kids to appreciate the better things in life. Needless to say we would have none of it and it would have been social suicide to admit to liking anything he played. Adverts and movies dis drip classical music more subtlety into my conscious and sub-conscious mind. Only years later did I realise that I love some pieces of music without knowing anything about them including name or composer. It was only really in my late twenties that I really started hunting down the music I had secretly loved since my teens. One of my earliest ‘discoveries’ was two pieces of music from the original Rollerball movie one of which is quite possibly my favourite piece of classical music ever. The other work is yet another piece of pop classical the experts sneer at: Toccata & Fugue in D minor by JS Bach. But my favourite by far, of which I have at least 10-12 different versions is Adagio in G minor for organ and strings by Albinoni. I absolutely love this piece. It just washes over me and completely envelopes my senses. Discovering what this piece of music actually was inevitable led to other works by Albinoni as well as other Adagio’s which I discovered is an actually style of music I really enjoy.

As I started experimenting I made another discovery. I LOVE piano music. I remember when I worked in London discovering a classical music store quite close to where I worked. One lunchtime I popped in and sought advice from the guy behind the desk. I’m after a piece of music I said, but I have no idea who it’s by or what it’s called. At this point his eyes positively lit up. I said that I remembered if from the movies ‘Seven Year Itch’ and ‘Brief Encounter’. That’s easy he said and went to fetch it for me. It was, of course, Piano Concerto No 2 by Sergei Rachmaninov. This is a VERY close second to my favourite classical piece of all time. Of course this naturally led to an exploration of piano works. With Mozart and Beethoven (works both familiar and unfamiliar) assimilated I moved further into the Baroque style with Handel, Vivaldi and Haydn. Branching out still further into the beautiful sound of the piano I became a firm fan of Satie and Debussy.

Branching out still further in a spirit of experimentation I tried my hand (or ear) at opera. Some of it I liked. Some of it I liked a lot. I even when to see one with my then girlfriend Carol. Despite the whole thing being sung in Italian and often having no idea what was going on it was quite an experience. Helped on by the classic movie ‘Apocalypse Now’ I started to listen to Wagner and, for a while there, a compilation of his work called ‘Twilight of the Gods’ became my favourite CD. It’s just amazing to listen to – the feeling of powerful drama is unforgettable. It must have been amazing hearing it for the first time.

Overall my taste in Classical music is, for want of a better word, unsophisticated. I have a (great) fondness for the popular classics – being popular for a reason! – but I have also dug into particularly composers a bit and have tried out other stuff. As the saying goes – I may not know much about it but I know what I like. As with pop it’s more the sound I go for more than anything else. This may mean that my collection clusters around certain composers and certain historical styles. I have no idea at all why I find some styles or composers deeply satisfying and others simply OK to listen to in the background. I guess it’s just the way my brain is wired (probably completely by chance). In the grand scheme of things that hardly matters. I just know what gets my brain firing and that will do.