Another class I’m taking this year is History of Music. This fall, it’s all classical, from the Baroque period to the Modern era. 

We began our class with Baroque composers like Handel, Vivaldi, and Bach. Vivaldi was my favorite composer out of these three, because of his musical imagery, and the way you can almost feel an icy chill when listening to “Winter.” 

After a few weeks, we moved on to the Classical era, studying Leopold Mozart, his more famous son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Beethoven (though Beethoven is also considered a Romantic composer in his later works). Leopold Mozart’s most famous piece is titled “The Toy Symphony” and I highly recommend you take a listen to this whimsical piece. The more famous Mozart’s pieces were lovely, and I’ll definitely listen to his work more often now that I have some insights on the meanings behind them. Beethoven’s music is striking and bold, but some of his compositions are more playful, taking inspiration from Mozart and Haydn.

We studied the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, sometimes called his Pastoral Symphony this week. I enjoyed this piece, but it wasn’t as interesting as his other work. 

And this week we also had tickets to our local symphony, for an All Beethoven concert. The violin soloist, Peter Huang, was excellent, and I really enjoyed this lineup of music. 

My favorite Beethoven piece from all the ones I’ve listened to thus far is the “Violin Concerto Op. 61,” specifically Allegro ma non troppo. It was really interesting to listen to it live, and the violin soloist performed the piece on a Stradivarius violin older than Beethoven himself! 

We’ll be studying classical music all fall, but in the spring we’ll switch to Rock & Roll. I’m really excited to learn about how jazz and swing became classic rock.