Classical Gas Bags

As a kid classical music was never pushed at home, the nearest we got was probably Mantovani or the sort of elevator music you would expect to hear at “Abigail’s Party”. When I got to secondary school the possibility of me ever appreciating any classical music was well and truly dashed to the ground.

This is the reason , while some lads learned instruments , for music lessons a class of thirty lads were sat down and a classical album was put on and played (both sides) with no input from the music teacher , and basically we were teenage boys mostly into various forms of rock music so we were hardly enamoured by the listening.

I think we saw the music lesson as an hour when we didn't have to do any work , but that soon turned into an hour when we were bored stiff.

Classical music was just boring and meant nothing to me, it was aural wood chip wallpaper and nothing more to me.

I think I left school and my musical tastes were eclectic but classical was not on my radar.

So this is just a few pieces of classical music that I particularly love.

Jupiter - The Bringer of Joy from The Planets Suite by Gustav Holst

One Saturday afternoon I was listening to the Alan Freeman rock show (I have mentioned this before in my writing) and he played “Mars - The Bringer Of War” from “The Planets Suite” by Gustav Holst. This stopped me in my tracks and this was classical music being played by a rock DJ and it was excellent.I went out the following Monday (shops weren’t open on Sundays in those days) and bought the album of “The Planets” conducted by Leopold Stokowski and while some bits I found bland (like I still do with a lot of classical music) I decided that “Jupiter - The bringer of Jollity” had some of the most beautiful music I had ever heard , and it was borrowed for “Joybringer” by Manfred Mann’s Earthband after they were given dispensation from Holst’s estate.

Carmina Burana - Carl Orff

This is my favourite classical work , it has everything. It demonstrates the main problem I have with classical music , going from being so quiet you cannot hear it to so loud it blows your speakers . It ranges from beautiful to monstrous and it is a work I have on vinyl and digital so I can listen to it anywhere.

Ode To Joy from the Symphony Number Nine by Ludwig van Beethoven

If someone told me Beethoven’s Ninth was the greatest piece of music ever written I could not disagree with them . Beethoven was deaf when he wrote this and it is incredibly uplifting and by the time you get to “Ode To Joy” you are surfing on the crest of a classical wave.

I will use a flash mob take on this for the lead in

Night On Bare Mountain - Modest Mussorgsky

I first heard this when my mum took me to watch Disney’s “Fantasia” which was a film especially designed to bring classical music to the attention of children and includes lots of worth classical pieces , but my mum loved it for the cartoons , the music was just incidental, but some of it probably rubbed off on me, because I bought it for my daughters to watch knowing they wold love the cartoons but also take in the music too.

Overture from The Marriage of Figaro - Mozart

This is my closing piece . Mozart started composing at the age of three , and because of that his music is not tainted by adult trauma and therefore is ideal to play for children and has a very calming effect on them , so my daughters got lots of Mozart.

I love the bit in the film “Amadeus” where the Austrian Emperor asks Mozart if there are too many notes and Mozart replies that there are exactly the right amount of notes. If you haven’t seen that film, get it right away.