Learn more about Classical Music

Constructive criticism is very useful, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to take. So I was a bit upset yesterday that my editor basically told me I was doing it all wrong after reading my Bach article. We ended up having an interesting conversation about what the role of music critics is though. And I decided to try to get over my desire to just give up on it after that (which tends to be my first response to being criticized), and instead learn as much as I can and keep trying.

So today, I handed over my review of yesterday’s concert, feeling rather nervous and scared that he might just say “Nope, still all wrong”. But my editor read it and said “This is good, wow, you’ve learned so much from our conversation yesterday”. Yay! Very happy about that!
Now if his squirrel theory is right, I’ll probably mess it up again next time or the time after and feel back at square one, but I guess trying harder is the way to deal with it, and grow from the experience.

And today, a special treat, I get to go to another lovely, lovely baroque concert, and we’ve decided not to write about that one, so I can just sit back and enjoy a lovely and free concert. :)

as I was working on a review from the chamber music festival, that this is my one year anniversary of music reviews. I wrote my first review from the same festival last year. And it is good to feel that even though I still consider myself a beginner in this, I do feel that I have learned a lot since then, and I think my reviews this year will be a lot better in every way.
Which doesn’t mean they are great, I am still in awe when I read reviews by people who really know this stuff, such as my editor. It will take me years to get to that level. But I have developed a lot since my first, not exactly impressive attempts at this at least. Must keep listening to classical music, reading about it and going to concerts and try to improve my music writing further, because this is seriously an amazing field to work in!

So, since I am lucky enought to know people here who know more about Bach than I do, I though I’d ask if you have any ideas for questions for people I’ll interview while I’m at the Bach festival!

I won’t know until I get there who I’ll get to talk to, I’ll give them my list of who I would like to talk to, and they will see what they can do I guess. But it will be musicians, conductors, possibly a music historian.

Any ideas?
My editor said to ask them what it is about Bach that makes him so popular throught the centuries. That’s one. I think I will also ask them something about the period instruments versus modern instrument debate, there will be both sorts of performances there. Hm. More?

especially early music, which is definitely my favorite. But I feel that I´m missing out on a lot since my knowledge of the music and composers is very limited. Plus, I would very much like to write more music reviews in time. I have written some concert reviews already, which was fun, but also very scary. I felt way out of my comfort zone, and was constantly scared that I was either misunderstanding the whole thing, or making a big point out of things that are just obvious and not interesting to readers who knows more about classical music.

My first sub-goal here is to get through the book “All you have to do is listen”, which I bought in London. So far it´s brilliant. The author breaks great works into tiny pieces and discuses what´s going on, and there is a website where you can listen to all the examples. It´s a bit of work to read it since I constantly have to stop reading and go to the computer to listen to another example, but still, it´s very good.
Second sub goal is to read a book I already have about baroque music, that works in the same way, with a website to listen to the music along the way.