i’d been playing civ4 and got to the renisance and industrial era and…
nothing but classical music. then to the modern era-still more. wonder why,there was no classical music in the era in civ3…
anyway,i am really taken by the effect on the mind of that genre.
i’d like that stereotype of a dignified academic like mucius or uniqor listening to classical. dont know if they do?
i’d ask where to download it for free but…?
i’m feeling dysfunctional this evening.my recent thoughts anyway.
I haven’t listened to a pop or rock CD for about 3-4 weeks. I’ve recently purchased a bunch of the 3 channel Living Stereo reissues/remasters on SACD and have been spinning only classical of late. Romantic era stuff mostly, but with a smattering of Mozart, too ( it was his birthday recently).
There’s nothing more relaxing after a hard day than sitting back with cold drink and listening to a Beethoven piano sonata. 
I dont like the relaxing kind of classical music, I like the powerful stuff like ride of the valkyrie.
“Kill the wabbit!”
-Imp
Just a matter of fact - Uniqor is a university student and Mucius is even younger. One needn’t be a grilled and grissly academic to be well educated and finely cultured…
You don’t need a stiff upper lip to listent to classical, either. It shouldn’t be viewed as the music of Ivory Tower Elitists. It’s vibrant, beautiful and completely accessible to anyone who makes an effort to understand it.
You could find alot for free online, particularly the classical composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven et al. Some of Bach can be truly jaw dropping.
I would recommend Chopin and Liszt, myself. And Brahms’ Hungarian Dances.
I enjoy listening to Vivaldi, Chopin, Hasse, Handel, Bach. Classical music really is beautiful. I’m amazed to see there are so many of you that agree. Everybody that hears the type of music I listen to just shudders. My younger brother called it “screeching”. Not to my ears 
Download Stravinsky’s “rite of spring”.
Wagner isn’t powerful enough, he’s just a noisy bullhead for the sweaty mob. Beethoven is the proper musical will to power, k?
Phaedrus’ got it right: you don’t have to be a dunce to enjoy classical. The guy’s talking from personal experience.
For beginners, I recommend Beethoven piano sonatas - those with nicknames, Mozart piano sonatas - particularly the A Major and A Minor, Tchaikovsky ballets, Shubert lieders, Mozart operas, Chopin waltzs, Beethoven symphonies - the odd numbers, contemparory minimalists and Gershwin jazz. If those fail to kick your pop spoiled ears or rock rolled heads, you can forget about classical altogether - you musicality is gone forever. When will you be stuck with classical for good? Whenever you start to take unhealthy pleasure in those four parts of Bach and desire to throw yourself out of the window upon weeping at Shostakovich’s eighth string quartet. k?
Another sweet thing about ‘classical’ is that it is, for one willing to align oneself with the music in a way that he can encompass what the composer in his demiurgical demarche is trying to suggest, instill and depict, to feel him vibrate and be able to vibrate alongside with him, the sweet thing about this kind of music is that in its most elevated forms it embraces such a complex and withstanding form, that it manages to genuinely excite enthuziasm, by winding up to a high pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which are already in the character, but to which this excitement gives a glow and glamour it becomes, and, most important, to inspire.
Sure, waltzes and impromptues will take the burden of living in a moronic environment off your shoulders for a given time and a mazurka might determine you to give your wife a kiss, but there is almost nothing else that will stir your most ardent passions, strenuous tensions like a touching ballade, or incite your latent national vigour like a grandiose symphony.
It’s been scientifically pointed out, by studying pitches and tones in musical samples from different composers, that music follows at least a few national delineations that define its style and convey them substance in a wider context. The fact that cultural patterns are embedded within music demonstrates that the objective spirit that Hegel majestically described as defining a nation or an epoch is in close proximity to the art and culture of that nation or epoch.
Think about that and tell me that you don’t feel your patriotic roots gnashing and ruffling when you have the honor of hearing the entire turmoil and unrest of your ancestry unfold in the up-lifting form that the artist, in divine inspiration, offered them to posterity. You can’t be German without em-visioning* the whole German saga when Beethoven’s Third Symphony reaches your ears, or Hungarian and not feel nostalgic about the days when Transilvania used to be part of the Empire in the moment that Liszt starts to play… Great composers go far beyond the limits of their own individuality - they are the thin fistula through which an entire culture speaks.
*[size=75]I don’t think that such a word exists, but it should. [/size]
Mucius,
I completely agree. It goes far beyond individualism. I think the beauty of it also comes from the period of time in which it was from. My example of this is of course the Baroque era.
trumpet.sdsu.edu/m345/Baroque_Music1.html
The Baroque period of European musical history falls between the late Renaissance and early Classical periods, that is, roughly the century-and-a-half between 1600 and 1750. During the Renaissance, Europe had assimilated the humanism and rationalism of Greco-Roman civilization, had undergone the theological and political turmoil of religious reformation, and had, for the first time in the history of our species, begun to outline the contours of that scientific method which was to provide Europe with its technological impetus. During the era of Baroque music, European civilization emerged to a preeminence on the planet which was to endure into the twentieth century.
Can you not feel this is from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?
I particularly love the sound of
Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings…(sweet and o so sad)
Carl Orff - Carmina Burana…(powerful and overwhelming)
(Both these pieces feature in popular movies - but they are great pieces of music in their own)
Debussy - Clare de lune (sweet paino piece…very relaxing…soothing)
Go and listen!
Johann Sebastian Bach if I am creative (like painting), in particular his St. Matthew Passion.
Some overtures of Wagner if I work (like building in the house), because it gives some real drive.
And somtimes Lieder of Brahms, Mahler, Schubert and Schuman to listen to the beautiful lyrics and te relax.
And sometimes Vivaldi, Mahler, Mozart, Händel, Gregorian songs, Spanish music from the Renaissance and many more. I like to dicover new music and componists.
The best way to have a mix, is listening to a classical radio broadcast. Sometimes I hear something, what is completly unknown for me and I note it and try to get the CD.
I like classical music very much, but I’m not an classical music expert.
This site I find very interesting:
Regards,
Old Europe
thank you very much,those of you who were informative on where to download and otherwise.
interesingly,ILP is down or something right now,so i cant enter it via my browsers,so i am typeing this onto a notepad for the future.
i’ve just downloaded rite of spring’s introduction (1000kb) and could not reply via post.i have not listened to it at the time of this message.
by the way,if any of you have ever watched mouseterpiece theater(disney),what is the opening piece of music during the credits?(it also plays at the end credits)