Letting the Adagio work its magic.

I am sitting here surfing the net, reading other blogs, browsing books on Amazon and catching up on friends news on Facebook. The whole time I am doing this I am listening to a classical collection called ‘Adagio’, which as its title suggests is a compilation album of various well known Adagios from various composers.

I wasn’t aware until reading a review of the album online that Adagio derives from the latin word for ‘at ease’, but I can certainly believe it as the music plays soothingly behind me.  It has been a busy and at time stressful couple of weeks, which explains my sporadic posting here and it helps to have music like this to calm things down and help lower my blood pressure.

In the past I liked a bit of rousing classical music and at one point I was of the opinion that if it didn’t have guts and bombast then it wasn’t worth listening to.  As you can imagine Wagner and Beethoven featured very highly on my classical listening lists.  Maybe I am mellowing, but I enjoy more soothing, reflective classical music now and today’s compilation fit’s the bill perfectly.

I initially found baroque music too twee, opera too screechy and choral music overpowering, but as I tune my ear in I can appreciate and even come to love elements in all of these types of classical music.  I especially love opera now and will happily spend an afternoon immersed in an opera as I read along with the translation and feeling the emotions imparted.

I guess like with heavy metal and gradually tuning in your ear in so you go heavier and heavier and with jazz so you find it less scattered and wild, you just need time to acclimatize and appreciate what the music has to offer.

I guess this is a long winded way of saying I am enjoying the Adagios I am listening to today and they are helping soothe my mind and unwind before it all starts again on Monday.  If you are new to classical music I would say this album makes a good introduction and if you already have a wide and varied collection, it still makes for beautiful listening and it is good having these pieces collected in one place

Future Classic Albums

Linked back to a previous article (Disjointed Music) this week has been another strange week for me.  I’ve had so little time to focus on one album from start to finish that I decided to put my ipod on shuffle and take whatever it threw at me.

This started off well enough, but the problem of having such an eclectic taste in music is that I would get an emotional opera aria one moment, followed by some elemental Japanese taiko drumming, then some pumping thrash metal followed by some deep south blues, then some haunting relaxing acoustic guitar swiftly followed by rousing rock.  I liked it all, but lets just say if my mind was scattered before, it was completely blown apart after a few hours of this.

I changed tack and selected shuffle within a particular genre and that made things a bit better.  I got a selection of tracks that suited my mood and which didn’t clash with one another.  The good thing about shuffle is that you come across tracks you haven’t heard in years and I’ve heard some old favourites, as well as some long lost tracks this week.

This got me thinking about something I read in an article recently.  It mentioned how some albums get a sales boost after a certain period of time as they become deemed a classic album and certain music fans wish to include all of these types of albums in their collection to ensure it is as rounded out as possible.  I have to admit I can tend to fall into this category.

I will snub an album for ages even though I like certain tracks on it, but because I hear it blaring from every car stereo or on every TV music channel I balk at jumping on the bandwagon.  I like my music to be individual and a representation of who I am and if I am part of a larger crowd I lose some of that identity.  But when the album reaches classic status I know I need it in my collection and so I will happily go out and buy it.

Recent examples of this mentioned were Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’, Lady Gaga’s ‘The Fame’ and it said the Adele’s ‘21’ was rapidly heading the same way. 

I wouldn’t buy an album if I didn’t like at least some of the music on offer and if it’s at the right price I will buy it if it’s deemed required listening for any discerning musical collection.  And of course I find it is often deserving of the hype and praise or it wouldn’t have been so successful. 

I’m more than happy enough to buy certain albums this way and it was interesting to realise I fall into the group mentioned in the article.  I’m also more than happy to overlook certain albums that may be classed as essential if I don’t like what I hear.  The more obscure stuff I own keeps me individual enough and the big hit albums ensure I am listening to the music that will shape the music to come.  All in all it’s a win win situation.