Classical

     Within the past 6 months or so, I have developed a liking for classical music. It's not that I hated it before, but I just didn't feel it. My previous attitude being that it was more cerebral, whereas other forms of music, rock, jazz, &c., were more emotive, and that's what gets me with music: the almost indescribable "soul" of it, the compounding of human experience, emotion, and other indefinable mysteries coalescing to become these moving works of art. And to me, the music I listened to had that, and classical didn't. It was equatable to a mathematical equation, a sum of parts put together just so to please the old kings, aged queens, pious pontiffs and other ancient patrons of the arts.
      But, of course, that was stupid. Writing a good rock song can be just as formulaic as composing a symphony (albeit the symphony will have a vastly more complex equation), and a classical piece can stem from, and extract, emotions just as deep and strange and human as that favorite piece of contemporary music that grabs your heart and squeezes and doesn't let go, ever. Both types of music can be composed of mind and magic.
      Still, though, classical music doesn't do it for me in the way that the music I've grown with does, and I don't expect it to. I listen to it mostly in the mornings: it's good music to clear your head and think to. It helps keep me calm when driving, something that I find more difficult each time I get behind the wheel. I'll never scour classical record bins or prefer this conductor's treatment of a classical masters opus vs. that conductor's, or be put off by a certain piece being played on not-period-correct instruments, but I like classical music now more than I did before. And if I hear a piece that really gets me or that I think is interesting or fun to listen to, I'll write it down and, if you're lucky, I'll share it here.

P.S. If you get a chance, listen to Towe on Thursdays w/ Teri Towe onWPRB Princeton 103.3 FM, 6-11 AM on Thursdays. His DJing is extremely passionate and entrancing and is almost more of a joy to listen to than the music, but I find he always plays good music, too.



Franz Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (1847)- You'll recognize this from 'toons of old. Do today's cartoons introduce children to music that will endure for hundreds of years? Probably not.