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Topic: Did you grow up in a musical household?  (Read 2266 times)

Offline transparently

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Did you grow up in a musical household?
on: December 29, 2014, 03:13:37 AM
I myself did not. Though my parents don't care for classical music, I started piano lessons at age 11. I stopped at 16, since I didn't have much motivation and my parents didn't encourage me. I'm starting to appreciate classical music more and more (perhaps my tastes are becoming more refined?), so I plan to restart my lessons next year. Anyways, for those of you who grew up in a musical family, did that shape your interests? For those of you did not, how did you come to like classical music?

Offline ted

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #1 on: December 29, 2014, 07:51:21 AM
It was unusual for my parents' piano not to be played every day, but not classical. My father was a very good party pianist. Oddly enough he loved Chopin, and played some of it, but strongly disliked classical music in general. Because of his work in classified advertising, however, he was given free seats for just about every visiting concert pianist, so I ended up hearing large doses of classical music and came to like it. (I don't much now, but that isn't relevent to your question) Mum wasn't quite as enthisiastic and they used to argue quite often about it. Generally though, my parents could not have been more supportive of my obsession with music and the piano, even when I must surely have been a colossal nuisance.
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce

Offline faulty_damper

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #2 on: December 29, 2014, 10:01:37 PM
Didn't grow up in a musical family.  Didn't even start piano until I was 19 but did start listening to classical music on the radio when I was 16.  Eventually grew to appreciate classical music, even though I didn't understand it at the time.

Offline Bob

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #3 on: December 29, 2014, 10:49:19 PM
Somewhat.  Lots of music always being played on a stereo, not always performed live.
Favorite new teacher quote -- "You found the only possible wrong answer."

Offline indianajo

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #4 on: December 31, 2014, 05:14:59 AM
Yes, my Mother enjoyed music.  She had bought a piano with her WWII earnings and taken some lessons in town, but moved back to the coal camp when my Father was transferred back out there in 1949, so she didn't get very far.  She did play simple tunes on piano for the elementary school down the road sometimes, and took me on the bicycle in the child's seat my Father had made for her. I sat on the front facing forwards , unlike modern plastic child bicycle seats. "Early in the morning, down at the station" was my favorite tune she played.  She was a 4H leader and did puppet shows in the school, too. Peter and the Wolf and Santa Claus.  
Mother always had a record player, and had a dozen or so pop tune 78s plus a folio of pop sheet music bought in town.  She had enjoyed the 15 minute versions of Beethoven symphonies they played on the AM radio in the forties, so she enjoyed classical music, but didn't have much access.  Mother subscribed to a children's classical record service in the early fifties, which got me 78 RPM disks with the classics with a story told around them that I could play on my own little Bozo the Clown record player starting age 3.  Mother started hauling me to the piano teacher three miles away after she got a driver's license and a car, when I was age nine.  I took lessons until I was sixteen and in the performing high school band, so I didn't have time to practice two instruments anymore.  
Dad bought an FM radio about 1965, and a classical FM station started in Houston about the same time, so I was allowed to listen to that while doing homework in the evenings when the parents were watching television.  I never enjoyed soap operas and sitcoms, as my Mother did.  Perhaps when she bought the television in 1954, that was she herself stopped practicing piano and buying sheet music of pop tunes.  We did do the four hands simple version of Ferrante & Teicher's Exodus arrangement about 1963; that was Mother's last effort as a piano player.  
Mother traded Top Value stamps for a stereo record player about 1965, and bought herself Beethoven LP's and I got Tchaikovski  Rhimski Korsakov and Khatahturian LP's for Christmas.  Mercury Living Presence LP's, what good taste.  
Another big influence was Walt Disney's Fantasia movie which my parents took me to see in 1957.  I loved Moussorgski, JS Bach, the Beethoven sixth, great repretoire from composers  I'd never heard before. We were waay out in the mountains my first five years with one top forty radio station audible in the daytime on the AM band,  and classical music wasn't on the radio in Houston until 1964.
I discovered I liked organ from the dwarves dance in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I was telling the conevener of the Indiana AGO last Sunday night; he has a nice reed organ in his house like that one in the movie, but he never plays it. It didn't come with a bench.  He has a four manual Rodgers electronic organ he is quite proud of in his home.  

Offline ahinton

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #5 on: December 31, 2014, 09:53:15 AM
No.

Best,

Alistair
Alistair Hinton
Curator / Director
The Sorabji Archive

Offline amytsuda

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #6 on: January 02, 2015, 12:06:22 AM
Was anti-music  ;D After my father died, I can make a movie of a struggling single mom and a troubled teenager, except it wasn't about drug, alcohol or boys, but about music 8) I played music excessively not just piano and cello (my school had many instruments in storage to help kids like me) and after every possible drama, my family successfully rehabilitated me away from music when I was 16.... now I am back to my addiction to music though. 

Offline verqueue

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #7 on: January 02, 2015, 05:26:27 PM

My mum learned piano for three years in her life. She always had a sentiment for this instrument and liked old furniture, so she bought some old grand (from about 1900...). She sometimes played Christmas carols on it, but very poorly.
When I was little (about 4?) I spent much time "playing with" piano, but my parents didn't want me to go to music school. So I was 9 when I started lessons and went to music school ;). Usually it's contrariwise - parents want child to practice. Sometimes I'm sad about that I started education so late, probably my technique would so much better if I would start when I was four or five.

Offline bonesquirrel

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #8 on: January 03, 2015, 07:34:41 AM
My Mums and singer and my Dad plays a guitar. I never grown up with anyone who played piano though, nor did anyone ever teach me because as a 8 year old I was the best player in the family lol

Offline dcstudio

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #9 on: January 12, 2015, 06:32:29 PM
yes
mom--classical singer--with degree
sister--doctorate from Columbia in low brass perf and a bunch of other letters
other sister--BM in piano pedagogy/performance
brother--mining engineer with 8 vintage guitars in his display case
father--tried so hard to play ragtime piano...lol.
and me!

Offline nj61

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #10 on: March 01, 2015, 12:57:38 PM
Yes but it was only really my mum around so it was down to her.  She played piano, sometimes with local amateur choirs/orchestras, and organ in church.  I would turn pages and sometimes sing at mass.  So she took it really seriously, and sometimes we would have ex-professional singers warbling away in the living room whilst she banged out some musical number, and we tried to sleep!  But that was cool.

I started piano at home around 4/5 and lessons at 5/6 I think... not really sure.  They were stopped when I got to 14 and became too rebellious to practice enough.  At 11 I joined a classical choir, and then their madrigal choir also, and also the school madrigal choir.  So for my early teens I would do about 6 hours a week of music lessons/choir, and in the holidays we would sometimes have choir trips or shows which we would practice for 9-3 for a whole week.  I really enjoyed the singing, much more than piano.  I was good at it, had pretty much perfect pitch, but have a bit of a foghorn voice so was always at the back of the altos, and only once a soloist for some strange song which called for a strange voice :(

At school you were either a sports girl, or a music girl.  I used to spend free time at lunch in the practice rooms.  It was a state school but I was lucky enough to go to a grammar so there were several pianos and a harpsichord available to play on during break, which was nice for those angsty teen years.

I always regretted not 'getting' sport.  now I take ballet as an adult and love it. I don't believe I have any kind of talent for piano, but I have picked it up again, and think I have prob moved on quite a bit too.  I enjoy helping with choir at school, and singing with my mum on the piano when she comes round.  She doesn't mind my singing :)   But I was allowed to drop ballet as a kid, and pushed at music.  I probably would have done better at ballet, but that's not the only reason to do things.  

Offline diomedes

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #11 on: March 01, 2015, 01:42:52 PM
Yup, my mother continues to play Cello and teach it. I've also decided to do something about my sloppy reading skills so we decided to work on the Brahms sonatas. Starting with the e minor, she doesn't want to play the F major, citing that the first one requires one woman to play on the cello, but the 2nd due to the demanding nature of it requires two. The piano part for the 2nd is a real pregnant dog. Sounds fun.
Beethoven-Alkan, concerto 3
Faure barcarolle 10
Mozart-Stradal, symphony 40

Offline cwjalex

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Re: Did you grow up in a musical household?
Reply #12 on: March 01, 2015, 03:57:04 PM
nope.  my mom doesn't listen to music and neither does my dad.  however, my dad seems to know every song that was written in the 50s 60s and 70s though.  he used to work at a max security prison in a guard tower and work long shifts and have the radio playing the whole time. 
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