Why classical?
Why should you put a stop on new albums and start going after Beethoven instead? Here are five reasons to start listening to classical.
It’s richer and more rewarding than popular music - Classical takes a much longer time to “get” than popular music, which is intended to be picked up quickly, by the widest possible audience. It takes just a listen or two before the melodies of most four-minute songs from the radio become embedded in your head, and then you’re stuck whistling Baby One More Time all day, and cursing Britney. It doesn’t take long to understand a piece. Classical takes far longer to parse. It can take five or six listens before you even hear recurring melodies, but the more the listen the more you hear and understand in the piece. It just doesn’t “wear out” like most popular pieces do after repeat listening, in fact it gets better.
It’s an intellectual challenge - Popular music tastes good to everyone, classical is an acquired taste. It surprises me how few of people I think are really smart have given classical a go, even though they blatantly thrive on giving themselves mental challenges. Many more people seem to give great literature or great paintings a serious go than they do classical music.
It’s more varied than you realize - You might have heard people claim that different composers sound totally different, but you might well also not believe them. I didn’t. It’s true though. If you try listening to pieces composed in 50 year steps (actually… that might make a good page here) starting from Bach and ending at Adams, you’ll probably find something which appeals to your tastes. As you listen more and more, those tastes will expand like crazy.
It’ll make you sound impressively cultured - Okay, so it’s not nearly as sophisticated sounding a reason as the others, but it’s true. There’s something extremely satisfying when you hear a song playing in the background of your local book store and you can casually remark “Ah! The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto…” to the group of friends you’re in there with. It’s nice to occasionally be able to be a smug bastard.
It’s a cost effective hobby - Classical recordings are often half the price of popular CD’s, especially if you buy them used. (Amazon/eBay is a great resource for used classical CD’s, and I have never had a problem with scratches) You can often get multiple CD sets for around ten dollars. Additionally the quality of the music is uniformly great. Do you ever feel ripped off when you shell out fifteen or twenty bucks for a new album, only to discover that seven out of the ten tracks on it suck? Well, that pretty much never happens with classical.