Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Mats replies to me replying to Albie:
>
>>It is so one consider unsubscribing when one reads things like this.
>
>See you around.

*Lookaround* ....I see you Steve. You are ugly.:-)

>>Thats my contribution to the current debate, with the addition I think
>>(or at least hope) Mr. Schwartz was a little humourus here.
>
>Actually, I was serious.  I don't see your problem.  In fact, I suspect
>that very few people deliberately planned a "rational" program of how they
>would begin to listen to classical music.  Most of us encountered it by
>chance.  In my case, my mother happened to be a classical pianist.  A lot
>of people watched Warner Bros.  cartoons and Disney's Fantasia.  If you go
>to movies, you hear so many steals from classical composers, as well as
>classical composers themselves, you probably have a start right there.

Well, when it comes to me, I had first, aged 15 (I guess older when my
interest awoke than many of those who post to the list were), heard a few
classical pieces; snippets from Carmen, Sjostys 7.  Symphony, Beethovens
3., Elgars Pomp & Circumstance...well that was roughly about what I had
heard.  From this I realized that there must be a large field of beautiful
things out there which I didn't know of yet.  For example: I looked up
Sjostakovitj and Beethoven in the encyclopedia.  Well now Sjostakovitj
composed 15 symponies, Beethoven 9.  I had heard nr.  7/15 from one and 3/9
from another.  That is not necessary a correct observation, but at that
time I thought it would be natural that a later work in a composer should
be even better than he had more experience when he compsoed that piece.
Therefore I draw the conclusion there must be much good music out there.
I bought 30 elcheapo CDs each one dedicated to one composer of the most
famous, and listened through, meanwhile looking more in the encyclopedia.
That gave me very quickly a firm grip on the "timeline"; what kind of works
should be where and how, and what my tastes were.  Therefore my
"development" was also very quick.

>>If one possibly whats a more safe start however I would say that Beethoven
>>is indubitabely a much more safe start than Boulez.
>
>The point I have always made is that there is no such thing as a safe
>choice, that one person's Beethoven is another's Boulez and vice versa.

If you read what I wrote you will see also that I was very careful NOT to
write that there is a SAFE start.  I just wrote that some starts are MORE
SAFER than others.

>Furthermore, if you recall, this has been borne out by the testimony of
>other contributors to this thread.

And therefore I have to belive in that?

Mats Norrman
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