how on earth do you know so much?

[Tash]

it amazes me how many of you know so d*mn much about pieces and composers and performers! i've only really developed a full interest in all this in the past year and am making a great effort to try and learn as much as possible, starting with just hearing a variety of different pieces by different composers and reading biographies on them. but when it comes to actually knowing a decent amount on the individual works and comparing different performers and learning about the top pianists etc who plays what the best, i'm still quite stumped. like just getting recordings by different performers and then trying to judge which one i like the best is still beyond me.
so for those knowledgable people, how do you go about learning such a huge mass of information? maybe i'm just pushing myself way too much and should maybe give myself some more time but i'm impatient!

[aquariuswb]

it amazes me how many of you know so d*mn much about pieces and composers and performers! i've only really developed a full interest in all this in the past year and am making a great effort to try and learn as much as possible, starting with just hearing a variety of different pieces by different composers and reading biographies on them. but when it comes to actually knowing a decent amount on the individual works and comparing different performers and learning about the top pianists etc who plays what the best, i'm still quite stumped. like just getting recordings by different performers and then trying to judge which one i like the best is still beyond me.
so for those knowledgable people, how do you go about learning such a huge mass of information? maybe i'm just pushing myself way too much and should maybe give myself some more time but i'm impatient!

Just as you said: "just getting recordings by different performers and then [...] judge which one I like the best." I have a feeling a lot of the posters don't really do this so much, actually, and just kind of repeat what they've heard critics or other posters say. I'm with you in some aspects, though. There are many big-name composers out there whose works I have NOT explored; in fact, I'd say there are more in this category than those whose works I HAVE explored. But that's kind of why I'm here, too: to get recommendations, see what other people are saying, and find out for myself. I also read/post at the forum at www.good-music-guide.com . There are some very knowledgeable people at that site for all types of classical music; I read the piano forum, obviously, because I'm a pianist and have a particular interest in piano music. Check out that site, though. They have a great classical music primer, too, to help build a foundation. I'll admit it, I still look at that primer sometimes and realize how little I really know... but I LOVE that feeling! There's so much out there I still don't know! So much music yet to be heard, not enough time in 9 lifetimes to listen to it all (I'm a cat).

[DarkWind]

It's easy to know a lot about something you like. That's why I know just about all answers to questions regarding Ravel.

[Motrax]

I've taken classical music seriously for the last two or three years (and I only took piano practice seriously last March), and I think the only way to increase your knowledge is to listen a lot. Right now, I live across the street from the International Piano Archives, which means I can listen to nearly every piano recording ever created (as well as a number of home-made concert recordings which were donated), nearly every piano roll that was created... and I can follow along with the score for pretty much anything Classical. So that makes it much easier to build a knowledge base - but even if you just go to your local library, you'll be able to get a number of CDs.

Read pianist/composer biographies - there are many good ones (another topic on this subject exists) and they tend to name the same people multiple times, so you become familiar with the better-known teachers and critics and rich donors and such along with learning a great deal about specific musicians.

[Floristan]

I listened intently to recordings from about the age of 14 to 25, the less intensely thereafter.  I had friends who did the same.  We'd share and discuss relative merits of interpretations.  We went through huge amounts of repertoire (solo piano, concerto, orchestral, violin, string quartet, lieder, opera, master's classes,etc.)  We had a burning desire to hear all we could hear and learn all there was to know about Western music from Bach and Scarlatti and Handel on to the present.  Our desire was driven by passion only, not by a need to learn these repertoire for school (we were not music majors).  We attended countless performances using student passes.  We listened to David Dubal's program religiously.  We immersed ourselves in scores.  We were, I suppose, fanatics of a sort.

This 10 year period gave me an incredibly broad and deep knowledge of the music and of performance practice.  By the end of that time, there were few works I hadn't heard, and most was familiar with intimately, and that familiarity has held me in good stead since.

It helps to have friends who are equally into developing a deep, historical understanding of the music and its performance, because of all the sharing of recording and ideas.

That's just my experience.   

[bernhard]

Google!

[Tash]

thankyou for your insightful comment benhard lol

so i guess i just keep doing what i'm doing and i eventually might satisfy my need to be a know-it-all haha.
lucky you motrax that'd be so cool- yeah i go to the local libarary or uni library and borrow this massive stack of cd's everytime i go there- they must think i'm crazy! so i've built up quite a stash of music, now i just need to actually listen to it all properly and get some backgroun info on them hmm reading the little booklets might help.

but thanks all for your comments it's inspired me just that little bit more!

[lostinidlewonder]

Yeah, you have to realise, most of us here are musical freaks and have nothing else in our lives )))) ehheehahahha

[Vivers]

Haha... musical freaks...

In Canada, they make us learn music history (part of RCM). It's rather sad. I spent a year memorising the births and deaths of everyone from Stravinsky to Leonin and Perotin, and memorising the key structures and forms of things like Gregorian chant, Chopin Waltzes, certain operas, and all sorts of useless things like that. And then there's all that theory stuff, which actually makes sense to learn. But I honestly do not feel enriched as a pianist now that I know the role of the Trouveres and Troubadours in France and the structure of Motets and Mass.

I'd much rather pick this kind of stuff up by listening and being involved in the musical community.

[ted]

Don't include me in that group. I play a hell of a lot and feel a hell of a lot but really know bugger all about music.

[puma]

  Libraries are a big help.  And it's no doubt a help to play the tune when you know the tune.  I've found I can pick up a piece in one day if I've heard it a bunch of times before I've played it, rather than just sightreading.

[Tash]

Yeah, you have to realise, most of us here are musical freaks and have nothing else in our lives )))) ehheehahahha

it is my plan to be a supposed artist/illustrator/deisnger/whatever i decide to do, who, in fact, know bugger all about art but knows a freak amount of stuff on music! basically i'm a musical freak in disguise mwhahaha.
but it's funny, in truth, my interest in the history of art and going to art galleries doesn't even remotely parallel my huge interest in music history and going to concerts, yet art is my thing- how bizarre?

[richard w]

An excellent resource is Composer of the Week, a radio programme on BBC Radio 3. For those in the UK, you can listen to it 1200 to 1300h every week day, and it is then repeated one week (and half a day) later at 0000 to 0100h. If you are outside the UK, (or inside and those times don't suit you) you can listen using the Listen Again facility on the BBC's website, for up to one week after the first airing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/listen/index.shtml

This week, the minimalist composers have been the subject.  In reverse order, we've also had:

Franz Schubert
Lili Boulanger
Bach
Sir Michael Tippett
Antonio Vivaldi
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Joseph Haydn
Claude Debussy
Carl Nielsen
William Byrd
Richard Wagner
Mozart the Keyboard Player
Vincent d'Indy
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Fryderyk Chopin

The format is very informative, with many musical examples played throughout the week, interspersed with superb dialogue about the composer's life and works. If you want to learn all about music, I can think of no better way to spend 5 hours per week.



Richard.

[SteinwayTony]

It's pretty easy to catch up on the popular music scene by turning on the radio to a Top 40 station, listening for an hour or so, and bang! -- you've listened to all the "important" music of the day.  On the other hand, the music with which we concern ourselves comprises over 400 years of history.  Consequentially, there is an enormous difference in the amount of material that's to be covered. 

It's nice to be well read.  Find a used book shop and buy out their music section.  I'm so glad I live in New York City; otherwise I'd be at the mercy of Amazon and eBay all day.  I try to have two or three books open at all times.  In the past I've read about boring stuff like orchestration and counterpoint, and my current projects are Alfred Brendel's On Music and Artur Rubinstein's autobiography My Younger Years.  An excellent but controversial start I would recommend is Harold Schonberg's The Lives of the Great Composers.  (I say controversial because many scholars disagree with his definitions of who is "great" and who is not.)  Despite it being quite opinionated, it's a great start to your library, and it's more feasible than buying a biography for every composer (which is something I'm working on myself).

About the music itself, you have a few options.  Take classes that force you to come into contact with new repertoire -- not just in piano music, but orchestral, vocal, and chamber music as well.  I believe it is unhealthy to strictly play or listen to the music of one particular instrument.  So much information can be gained from other types of music.  It's so interesting to compare works of similar opus numbers but different interpretation (example: similarities between Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, and the Les Adieux sonata, Op. 81). 

Also, try to teach yourself.  Buy full scores of symphonies and concertos.  Play your favorite recording of them and just follow along in the score.  For these, you'll want to go with the Dover editions, which combine value and authenticity, unless, of course, you plan to play a certain concerto yourself; then you may want to invest a bit more in an edition with more research put into it.

To recap:  read books, get scores.

[pianowelsh]

Just having a real interest in STUFF.  The process is sometimes called enculturation.
Basically jusat absorbing yourself. From as young as i can remember I always listened to radio progs (radio three has some extremely good progs) and lots of recordings and just sightreading everything and getting books out of the library. Going to Art galleries seeing shows, being where music happens - the only way is to go do.. and it takes time but the key ingredient = enthusiasm to learn>!

[Tash]

steinwaytony, i like what you said, cos it's like what i do plus more. i take music classes at uni and included in them is this wonderful thing called the music literature test, and basically it's this page long list about about 40 different works in different categories, so opera, orchestral, instrumental, etc. and you have to learn all about the pieces and listen to them and the in the test a section of 10 different movements from all that is played and you write down what you know for each one. i love this so much, because it gives me the excuse to go listen to music continuously and say that i'm 'studying' and learn about the pieces, and score-reading- i love score reading the uni library is so good with it's umlimited supply of scores!!

anyway second-hand bookshops now that's a good idea i'm gonna try that thanks!

thanks all for your comments, it's given me a little more guidance and assurance that what i'm already doing is keeping me on the right track so it's all excellent

[kaff]

This is a bit of a cheek, me replying to this, since I wouldn't put myself in the category of knowledgeable by any means.  But the one thing I think is useful (and you've recognised it yourself in your last post) is: listen to, and if possible get involved in performing, other instruments than piano.  I don't think it's possible, for instance, to form a clear idea of what Schubert was doing with his piano music, if you don't know his songs.

Kathryn