Classical Music Top 40: Learn How To Listen To And Appreciate The 40 Most Popular And Important Pieces I Book

In school I hated classical music and couldn't understand why we had to listen to all these composers. Over time this changed and especially with broadway musicals as my gateway genre I learnt to enjoy good compositions and melodies.

Classical Music Top 40 could be seen as a simple best-of-all-time list but it's more than that. It does a great job in bringing the appeal for this kind of music to people like me (first-time listeners). The author compares it to a gourmet meal. Even if you don't know a thing you should be able to enjoy it. That's a good way to look at it. The music has been written to entertain and if you feel something then the job is done. There is even the strong advice that there is no need to learn listening. Let the pictures come up on their own.

Billy Joel makes another point in his foreword. He writes that all "problems" have already been solved by composers like Beethoven so when you study the classics you will learn a lot as a musician.

The book is structured in the following way: first the piece is briefly described in the historical context and the reader learns something about the composer. Next some passages are highlighted and described in detail. This is followed by a recommendation of 3 recordings. They may be hard to find and as the book was published 1995 any modern recording will be missing. Finally there is the "If you enjoyed this piece..." part that allows you to discover works by the same composer or similar in nature.

I haven't listened to every single piece yet but the selection includes many of my personal favorites (Debussy, Dvorak, Mahler, Orff, Tchaikovsky to name a few). This looks like the perfect list for the anti-fan. :-)

5 out of 5 stars