Listen to more classical music

Today I got Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird/Petrushka’ as a birthday present :)

today i got;

Stravinsky-Firebird/Petrushka

Listened to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in work today.

just bought an Eric Satie CD from a charity shop (3 gymnopedies, 3 gnossiennes and “Jack-in-the Box”)

Listened to some Chopin while coding tonight.

to a Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos on the bus the other day. Good stuff.

just watched a documentary Steve Reich,
gonna add him to my list.

11. Steve Reich

I bought this book last week (or earlier this week, i cant remember cos everything’s a blur lately) called ‘Big Bangs- inventions that changed music forever’ by Howard Goodall. it’s a great book cos it explains- in plain english, not music jargon- 5 key points in musical history; 1. the invention of notation, 2. the invention of opera (i’m NOT a fan of opera but it was still interesting) 3. the invention of equal temperment 4. dynamics 5. the invention of recorded sound.

so far this has been a very good read. I’m a musician with very eclectic taste (i play in an indie rock band and an irish folk group) but until now i’ve never been able to appreciate classical music, even though i studied it in depth at school. my favorite composers are;

1. Igor Stravinsky
2. J.S. Bach
3. Turlough O’Carolan
4. Edvard Grieg
5. John Cage
6. Ennio Morricone
7. Johannes Brahms
8. W. A. Mozart
9. Karlheinz Stockhausen
10. Beethoven

when we were baking…it made me feel like a gourmet chef having that as background music.

I got the sonata for two pianos that is on my original list today too, so I’ll try to get some listening time in this week.

So even though the CDs I got have multiple concertos and other other pieces on them, I’m only going to focus on the ones that I listed here in this goal, so I can really get to know a few pieces instead.