First of all I have a question here. In CD's catalog I often see both "classic" and "classical", but was never really clear about the difference between them. Anyone please explain it to me? Thank you very much in advance.
The first piece of classic(al) I really listened seriously was Benjamin Britten's "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra". The junior middle school I went to offers a course on classic(al) music and that was a must for every student to attend. "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" is the first lesson in the text book. I was attracted. I liked the melody and the harmony. Till now I can recite the music notes of this piece, at least the first several pages. That course lasted for only 2 semesters and about only a dozen of classic(al) music was introduced. I remember Beethoven's "Egmont Overture", Tchaikovsky's No.6 Symphony( A piece I love very much, still remember the note of main subject now), Mussorgsky's
Fantasia, Bedrich Smetana's "My Motherland"...etc. were in the lessons and in the final exam the teacher played a part of Fantasia and asked us to write the title of it.
Then I liked a Chinese writer Fu4 Lei2 who was a great translator of Romain Rolland's works. As a teenager I was deeply thrilled by the musicans R. Rolland biographed and his novel "Jean Christophe" made me look for classic(al) music in a wider range.
German people are crazy for Wagner, but for me even the Beethoven's 9th is a bit too strong. I guess I'm just not mentally tough enough. My favourite is Mozart's works, especially those after K600. His life was filled with miserable things, he got sick so often and his wife was unhealthy too, he was short of money when grown up and his children died one after another...but listen to his music! In his music he never complained even not fought against the fate like Beethoven did, just brought people the joy of living in this world in his purely beautiful music. I believe if there is really a God, Mozart is one among those closest to him. J.S. Bach's music always brought me images of the beautiful old architectures in Italy and never made my heart beat wildly, I love them very much, my cell phone's ringing tone is his Fuga. Georg Friedrich Handel's one of my favourites. It's strange that I'm not a Christian and was grown up in an atheism environment, but I like Handel and Bach's religious Chor very much. Sometimes I have to admit the religion really did people good in many aspects, without the respect and passion to the God, we wouldn't have those great Chors.
I usually read relative books before I listened to the classic(al) music. But the musician I completely fell for without reading anything about him is Antonin Dvorak. One day I was sleeping in bed and the radio was still on, it was sending Dvorak's
String Quartet No. 12 in F major "The American". I was overwhelmed by the intimacy, it sounds so much like music from my homeland (the sequence of C,D,E,G,A...) and there's passion which Chinese folk songs lack. The melody is so beautiful. I told my excitement to my boyfriend and he thought I like American classic(al)s. Then he sent me some Aaron Copland's CDs and recommended several other American composers of Aaron's peer. I listened to the CDs and find that's really "American", by no means anything like Dvorak and the European composers, but well, they are American spectaculars, I like them too.
For the matter of music I'm sorry for China. We had good literatures good art but never really science or great music. Our traditional music was way too simple and boring compared to western classic(al)s. Traditionally we didn't have any Chors.
And our instruments were only for solo but could never make anything like orchestra, extremely lack of richness. I play a Chinese instrument called pipa, this intrument was greatly reformed according to western music theory in middle 1900's and now much better than the ancient ones. That made it sound much better.
[ June 26, 2004: Message edited by: Ellen Zhao ]