Last week I attended a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No.3 at the Barbican Centre in the City of London. Gustavo Dudamel conducted his former orchestra, which he nurtured to global fame: the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra from Venezuela. It was a special night, as pretty much every performance of this symphony is.
Mahler’s third is gigantic in every sense. His level of ambition for it was insane. He set out to do nothing less than capture the whole world: the creation of the earth, mountains and valleys, flora and fauna; all of music, high and low: the village band, church choir and Romantic orchestra; and all of humanity: joy and nostalgia and pain and terror, and, above all, love.
To achieve this, he decided to compose the longest symphony anyone had ever written. Instead of the conventional four movements, he wrote six. The entire piece takes more than 90 minutes to perform, which when he wrote it was about twice the length of a standard symphony and is still pretty much the longest in the repertoire. He also scored it for the largest ensemble anyone had ever put together. It requires a massive orchestra – there were ten double basses and two harps on stage last week, but every section needs to be supersized – plus a soprano soloist, and not one, but two choirs.
It’s mad. And the maddest thing of all is, it works. What could have been a failure on the grand scale of its ambition is today considered one of the greatest of all symphonies. The proof is that it’s still being played, despite the logistical complexity and injurious expense of putting it on. People flock to see it. There weren’t any empty seats at the Barbican.
Why does it work? Because Mahler knew what he was doing, obviously; he was a supreme musical architect. But if I had to boil it down to one thing it’s his genius for transmitting the white hot intensity of his feelings and beliefs through the medium of music. At every moment, whether the music is bombastic or sweet, you feel he is grabbing you by the shoulders and saying listen to this. And you do, even if you have no idea what he’s on about. The emotional effect is electrifying.
It’s not just the sound, it’s what you’re watching. The piece is great to listen to at home but it’s nothing like seeing it live. The sight of 150 or so highly skilled, committed musicians moving in tandem, and giving absolutely everything they’ve got for an hour and a half – giving it to you, the audience – becomes very much part of the effect. The symphonic experience is utterly distinctive, unlike any other live music or art form.
As I caught the Tube home, I felt exhilarated, and I also felt lucky. That I was able to enjoy that concert was down to at least three things: a 400-year old tradition of music-making that represents the most fertile, inexhaustible and polyphonous flourishing of communal creativity in history. A social consensus – now fading – that this tradition is worth cultivating. And, finally, my own capacity for appreciating it. By this, I don’t mean my ability to sit in a comfy seat and listen to music, although yes, I am very talented at that. I mean the ability to derive enjoyment from, and to be moved by, a genre of music that isn’t that easy to appreciate if you aren’t in some sense trained in it.
I don’t mean formal training, just time spent getting to understand it. Classical music proselytisers will sometimes claim that all the stuff about having to be educated into the tradition before you can enjoy it is so much snobbish guff. Just look at how many people are moved by it when it’s used in films and ads or by Classic FM! This is true, up to a point. But it’s also just undeniably true that the genre is less immediately accessible than popular music (the clue being in the name there), and that this isn’t just down to social norms but to the music itself, which demands some measures of attention, concentration, persistence.
It takes a bit of effort to fully appreciate classical music. I still have to put work in, to get the kind of rewards I reaped last week, and I’ve been into it for decades. In a culture that offers so much by the way of effortless entertainment and stimulation, classical music is always going to suffer. But as with longform reading, that investment only makes the rewards richer.
I was lucky. I had parents with the foresight to see that despite my protestations – I was a very unwilling violin student – I would appreciate having a musical education later in life. I grew up in a household where classical music was routinely played (even if for most of that time I disdained it). In my teens I played in youth orchestras and became friends with people who were really into this music, and then started to get into it myself.
The more people that are into classical music, the better chance we have of keeping this magnificent ship afloat
Today, even though I haven’t played violin or any other instrument for many years (though I do sing in a choir), I feel enriched by all the classical music that lives inside me and by my ability to appreciate it, including pieces I don’t yet know. It’s amazing how much great, essential music there is in this genre. It’s not just the number of great composers and eras and styles and pieces, it’s the recordings, the soloists, ensembles, orchestras and conductors. Classical music is like a grand, magically infinite palace, to which I have a golden ticket. I know how to get to the places within that I love. But there are so many different, stunning rooms and vistas in this palace that I can wander through it forever and never feel like I’ve exhausted its wonders. So I keep venturing further down corridors, into whole new wings and exquisite hidden chambers, happily aware that I’ll never get to know all of it.
I want everyone to feel the same way. The more people that are into classical music, the better chance we have of keeping this magnificent ship (switching metaphor) afloat. While I do think this music takes some effort, I don’t think you need have to have grown up with it. I know many people who started listening to classical music well into adulthood and are now even more into it than I am. There are definitely barriers, but the barriers are good ones: the kind that make you appreciate what’s on the other side all the more. Once you’re in, you’re in, and you never want to leave.
So here are my ten tips for getting into classical music from a standing start.
I may have a slight curse of knowledge problem here, having grown up with it, but I’ve never felt like an expert or a ‘buff’. I often feel like a beginner and an ignoramus; compared to many, many people, I am. So I think I can identify with someone who is completely on the outside. Here we go:
1. Expect it to be hard. I don’t want to make it sound like boot camp but the truth is that classical, on average, is just less immediate than pop or rock or dance. You have to tune into it: the genre, an era or style, a particular piece. That’s not always easy. This is important to say because I think sometimes newbies try listening to a symphony or a quartet, get nothing from it, and decide classical just isn’t for them. If you do have an immediate, emotionally powerful response to a piece, that’s great, but if you don’t, then don’t rule out the possibility you will have one once you get to know it. By the way, classical music has a bit of product naming problem. It’s hard to remember whether that sonata you like is the one A Flat Minor Opus 48 or if that’s a completely different one. But don’t let that put you off.
2. Take your time. Listen to a piece again, and again. Listen many times, then step away from it and return to it down the line. You will find your brain and your heart responding to it in a new way. One of the great things about this music is that so much has stood the test of time, so you can be pretty sure it’s worth all that time. I will listen to new pop music, going through best of 2024 lists, and so on, but there’s so much of it and it’s so variable in quality, and I always worry that I’m wasting my time on flotsam and jetsam. When I’m listening to Bach I never worry about that. Even when I’m not sure if I ‘get’ a Bach piece or not, I’m reassured by the knowledge that this is my problem, not his, and that there is literally no better way I could be spending my time on the planet than trying to solve it. So: invest time in the greats. It’s a low-risk investment with high payoffs.
3. Go to concerts. One of the upsides of this music being a relatively niche pursuit is that you can see some very high-level musicianship inexpensively. If there’s a quartet or a pianist playing in a nearby church or hall they’re probably extremely good at what they do. Go and see them. That aside, I love going to see orchestral music because of the sense of occasion and the visual interest. Whatever concert you’re at, it’s OK if your mind wanders. It’s like meditation in that sense (so I’m told): stray thoughts about the day or about work or politics are bound to wander into your head. Don’t feel bad about it; just let them go and gently take yourself back to the music. One thing I would advise is to get to know the piece in advance. Mere repetition works: just listen to it a few times, or many times, in the days before, trying different recordings on Spotify, noting the different approaches. If you do that you’ll get much more out of the performance.
4. Here are a few pieces to start with. These are pieces I think are pretty easy to like or get something from and they’re all works I could never tire of. This list is very arbitrary but it’s just a starter if you need one. Brahms, Intermezzi for piano (particularly E Flat Major and A Major); Ravel’s string quartet (and Debussy’s – often paired, both gorgeous), Mozart, Mass in C Minor; Bach’s Double Violin Concerto (slow movement in particular); Dvorak, Serenade For Strings, Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major (slow movement in particular again), Copland, Appalachian Spring; Arvo Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel; Handel, Ombra mai fu; Wagner, Tristan and Isolde overture; Chopin, Nocturnes; Leonard Bernstein, Candide Overture. If you hear something you like, try other pieces from the same composer. I haven’t included symphonies because they’re another step up in terms of length but try Beethoven’s seventh, Sibelius’s fifth, Tchaikovsky’s fifth, Dvorak’s ninth (‘New World’).
5. Explore recommendation threads. There are of course, many better and more comprehensive lists than this. Over at Reddit r/classicalmusic someone has put together a list of all such threads. It’s a fantastic resource. You could just skip my post and spend all your time going through them.
6. Form a mental map of the territory. It’s not necessary to get a degree in music history but I do think it’s useful to have a rough idea of how the form has evolved over the centuries; the different eras and how they intersect with everything else in the culture. It’s good to know just the order in which it all happened, who the leading composers are, and who influenced whom. Having that kind of map helps you work out how to organise your listening choices, and what to explore next.
7. Listen to people talking about it. I love listening to people talk about music they love. Enthusiasm is infectious, at least it infects me. I get many of my listening ideas from shows on BBC Radio 3 where people share their favourite music, especially This Classical Life and Private Passions. Both are available as podcasts. (So is Building a Library, where experts talk about the best recordings of a particular piece, more ‘advanced’ but a great deep dive into particular pieces). If you’re in the UK, make Radio 3 your default station. The presenters are really good and I promise you it will make you so much happier than listening to news channels. There’s a good American podcast called Sticky Notes which does deep dives on particular pieces (maybe a little technical for my tastes but the presenter is great). The omnivorous Tyler Cowen is a great source of musical inspiration and insight. He’s done a couple of informal guides to music, in conversation with Rick Rubin, one on the avant-garde (not just classical), and a brilliant one on Russian composers. There’s also lots on in the Great Courses series on Audible, in particular Robert Greenberg’s comprehensive history of music, 36 hours long. I’ve only listened to some of it, but it’s so good: Greenberg is charming and companionable and very much knows what he’s talking about. If you have a New York Times subscription, its 5 Minutes series is excellent. There is obviously a wealth of great classical content on YouTube. Look up performances of pieces you like and train the algorithm to serve you more. (Including things like this).
8. Use ChatGPT/Claude. The Large Language Models are obviously just great for all this. They can tell you about the history, about different composers, and about particular pieces, in detail, perhaps as you’re listening. They can help you work out what to listen to next. They’re very handy tools and we should make the most of them before they kill us.
9. Read. I might be wrong but it feels like there’s a shortage of good writing and books on classical music – especially on the music itself (unlike in pop). The musicological stuff doesn’t excite me much. There are some good histories, however, like Tim Blanning’s The Triumph Of Music. There’s Alex Ross’s very good account of twentieth century music, The Rest Is Noise (should be a podcast). My favourite classical music book is Absolutely On Music by Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa, which is more or less a transcription of conversations between two knowledgeable and passionate music lovers, one a novelist and one a conductor. It’s a great balance of erudite and informal. There are some great articles online, including this one from Psyche which has really good, detailed tips for listening.
10. Set goals. Once you’ve waded into the waters you can go deeper by setting yourself goals for the year, as you might with reading. Get to know all the piano sonatas this composer or all the quartets of that one. Do some reading around them as well as listening a lot. I’ve been doing this recently with Schubert’s quartets and Brahms’s symphonies (relatively easy, to be honest, since he only wrote four). It’s a great satisfaction when you realise you more or less know your way around a particular composer’s work, or at least a part of it. You could do worse than starting with Beethoven’s symphonies.
This article originally appeared on Ian Leslie’s Substack The Ruffian.
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