If you want to appreciate classical music, enrich your life, enhance your creativity, encounter cultures different from your own, move your body through dance, move your spirit through contemplation, travel through time without a time machine, or just discover much more potential listening that you enjoy, then
this COULD BE the most VALUABLE web site you EVER visit!
Here’s why:
Like any form of knowledge, musical appreciation is built. As in developed.
It’s not something you’re born with.
No fairy waves a magic wand . . . although we do have aptitudes that differ.
Backgrounds that differ too.
That’s why we have lives that differ and outcomes that differ as well.
Just consider the reality:
We all start out with no ability, unable to talk, unable to walk. Yet some of us end up writing symphonies, or operas, or conducting them, or playing in the New York Philharmonic, or singing at the Metropolitan Opera.
And if not there in other places all around the world, from Perth to Buenos Aires to Calgary to Ankara to Novosibirsk to Tokyo . . .
Down to Singapore and back to Perth!
These people who write, conduct, sing, and play, they were all beginners once, too!
If you’re a beginner looking to start out, whether you’re young or old, you aren’t necessarily too young or too old.
Are you open? Are you curious? Are you teachable?
The rest is just details.
And repetition . . . and time . . .
If you’re young, would you like to expand your horizons, modulate your emotions, and make new mental connections?
If you’re aging, would you like a very enjoyable way to stay sharp? How about appreciating all the cultural wealth that humanity has given us . . . as long as you’re around to appreciate it?
Here’s the key: what you’re going to begin to do is start USING YOUR BRAIN in ways that are probably unfamiliar, ways that never developed because they weren’t given the opportunity (so far).
This is not entirely your fault!
Some school systems do have music education for everyone, but many don’t. As a result, listening to classical music might not have been something you encountered while growing up since it wasn’t being taught in school.
Nor is it a part of life in many families today.
Although that can change . . . can’t it?
Here’s an important point: no one can listen to music for you. If you don’t do it, you miss out on the benefits.
Other people can do your hair, your makeup, and your wardrobe.
Other people can do your lighting and interior decorating.
Other people can do your grocery shopping and your cleaning if you wish.
Other people can write a book for you or a blog post for you–and almost anything in between.
Other people can do your dentistry and your surgery–if you need it.
They can’t do this: develop your ear . . . and, little by little, your cultural perspective.
The first African American to become a tenured faculty member at a major university in the United States was anthropologist W. Allison Davis. In his scholarship, paraphrased here by Ethan Zuckerman of MIT, he suggested that “we need to learn each other’s language, not assimilate into a single monoculture.”
Music transcends the barrier of language while yet preserving and conveying some of that cultural difference which can make every nation and each people distinct.
The point: the world of music awaits you.
Most people are exposed to so little musical variety and so little musical history it would shock you.
And you’re about to take that step. While you explore, you’ll be developing an attention span and cultivating all sorts of benefits.
If this is your first time visiting this site, you really should start with an inventory of your musical background.