Classical Soundscapes
I have always found it important to cherish the foundations of composition from early sacred and folk music from before the common era. As a boy I found myself drawn to classical music because it's what my mother treasured and when I got my first dual tape deck boombox it was on condition that I listened to classical on it. Slowly but surely I discovered the local nationally groundbreaking peoples' station 106 KMEL but that's a story for another entry. I started listening to Classical lullabies at first mostly KDFC 102.1 just like What used to play in her cadillac wherever we would travel (GGBC carpool, curran theatre, eating in the city, hayward's little theatre). My "favorite" composer was Mozart then because I was a boy and he was a musical boy prodigy and I wanted to be a prodigy myself. From there I discovered Debussy through my sister Laurel's piano practice as well as Gershwin through her and mainstream classical exposure. I took in a ton of peripheral listening from movies like Fantasia and classic movies that use the most famous classical pieces from Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance to Rimsky-Korsakov Sheherezade to La Gioconda "Dance of the Hours." I witnessed these prechoir but didn't know the composers until choir but mostly personal study post choir (especially the rules around any other music on my mission). I discovered my love of romantic era symphonies, masses and opera starting about 10 (especially when I performed in Tosca, Turandot and Carmen through auditioning with the choir, others I learned through FAME at school).
Not until my twenties, mission and post did I look through the liner notes and read up on the titles and background of some of the most beautiful piano and orchestral pieces known to man. I particularly was capitivated by Chopin. Laurel would play polonaises but I LOVED the nocturnes and MOST of all Berceuse. There was an adaptation of the tune for a Christmas song we sang in choir called "The Christmas Nightingale." The melody and left hand blend perfectly. During my twenties, I would reflect on my favorite solos from Masses or other major choral works, sang by Adam Miller or David Kashaveroff. Through my love of cds I'd discover more and more romantic era composers and choice classical and baroque pieces especially ones we used to play on the handbells.
In the last decade, I've really honed in on classical masterworks that I had missed in the previous three, I started seriously collecting vinyl and the most common record pressing found in crate, yard, garage and estate sales are famous classical pressings. Lots of Leopold Stokowski, some Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini but really so many great recordings typically pressed many times because the orchestra or conductor was exceptional. Recent acquisition of a record collection from the Barnes family in our ward and there were some great ones from Copland to Vivaldi to Grofe to Mussorgsky. Finally Got Schubert's famous unfinished symphony used in many movies.
The best exposure to these beautiful pieces was the connection to tickets to the symphony through a friend in the Box Office. I saw symphonies at Abravanel Hall here in Salt Lake for free for probably three years. Everything from more experimental symphonies by contemporary old composers like Webern and others to classics by Ravel or Stravinsky. So many great pieces I continue to discover through the excellent symphonic curation post pandemic.