My Newest Project

A Project

Although I’d gone to a classical Christian school for six years, about a week ago, I realized that I really didn’t know very much about classical music. I came to terms with this while I was listening to just another sonata, and discovered that I had no idea who the composer was of that sonata, which time period it sounded like it was written in, and if that sonata was a sonata. It could’ve been a concerto, for all I knew. Or a passion.

Well, I tried to console myself, you do know that there is such a thing as a cantata, or a sonata, or concerto, and you do know that there is such a person as Bach, Hayden, Handel, and Schubert. But I didn’t feel that I understood or remembered concepts or particulars. Was that happy song about spring composed by Vivaldi, or was Vivaldi that dude I was obsessed with in kindergarten who painted beautiful 2 dimensional paintings on walls? I was determined to find out.

 I took a thick book off one of our bookshelves. We couldn’t bring very many movies, games, or stuffed animals to the Netherlands, but we brought a whole lot of books, and I appreciated this as I found exactly the book I was after.

“Classical Music-the 50 greatest composers and their 1,00- greatest works,” the title told me. This was what I was after. If I was going to work on learning, I might as well start from the beginning.

I, for once, didn’t skip the introduction and I found out that this particular textbook wasn’t a textbook, and that it was written by a music rookie-like me. I was inspired! I checked on the family iTunes account, and we had the 100 greatest works of Bach. This was perfect because Bach was the top composer.  According to the list,

1.        Bach
2. Mozart
3. Beethoven
4. Wagner
5. Haydn
6. Brahms
7. Schubert
8. Shumann
9. Handel
10. Tchaikovsky

1. And so I started on a journey, an epic journey, and I’ve, even now, a week later, only done a little bit. I intend to go artist by artist and slowly work my way down to the very last. I’m reading books about Bach, (still) right now, both from the “big” book, the one with the great list, and from other resources, including a biography on Bach written very shortly after his death.

Our iTunes library is going to slowly grow bigger and bigger, and I hope my appreciation of classical music will too! Do look out for my narrations at the culmination of my research on each composer!