Inspired by a recommendation from Austin Kleon (e.g. see this blog post) I ordered a copy of The Language of Spirit by Jan Swafford and when I got home yesterday evening it was waiting for me to open.
As I think I mentioned in an entry last week, I grew up on a diet of Classical music both as a listener and as a performer and throughout my teens and well into my 20s I routinely listened to Classical works, mainly from the period 1830 through to 1930. I was (am) a particular fan of the Romantic period – Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Borodin, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Nielsen and a host of other – pieces that my mother often referred to as ‘troubled’ music. But in the last 25 years or so I have not listened to Classical music much. In fact I have not listened to any music much (properly).
Looking through the book I find myself ridiculously excited to reconnected with so many old favourites and, I am sure, to discover some new ones. The book is arranged as short chapters each giving a brief overview of the life and works of a different composer and presented in essentially chronological order. In each chapter there are recommendations for works to listen to and glancing through I could see a lot that I knew but also a lot that I didn’t. I am pondering the idea of reading the book slowly, progressing through the composers in date order and listening to each and every work that is highlighted. This is a project that could take a long time and I might get frustrated by the time it takes me to get through to my (currently) preferred era, but it seems to me that if I want to give myself a really thorough re-grounding in this musical world it makes sense to follow its development in a logical fashion. Also, if I don’t adopt some kind of methodical/disciplined approach then I think I will just cherry-pick works I know well and then I will potentially miss out on a lot of what this journey might have to offer. We will see.
Tim O'Hare 