November 25, 2006

My Love-Hate Affair with Classical Music

By Paul Shlichta
I first encountered classical music in summer camp when I was ten. The cabin next to ours had the only record player in camp, and the only record was "Voices of Spring" by Strauss, which they played over and over and over again. Later that summer, I spent a month by the sea with my parents, in a cottage that had an old Victrola and half a dozen albums. But there, I could play it or not, as I chose. I quickly singled out Prokofieff's "Classical Symphony" and Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave Overture" and played them over and over again. Every time I heard "Fingal's Cave", the hairs stood up on the back of my head. I had never before been so excited by music. That fall, in a New York City public school, I had to attend a twice weekly class called Music Appreciation. The idea was to train us to enjoy classical music. The method was to play the piece through, and then, in subsequent 'quiz' classes, to start an unannounced record and award a point to the...(Read Full Article)