My Classical Music Journey through the Baroque Period

Late last year, I decided to embark on a classical music-listening journey in 2025, hopefully learning a little something along the way and getting a better sense of how music evolved and what composers or types of music particularly speak to me. Accompanying me on my journey are a couple of excellent books to help me understand the context of the music I’m listening to. I’m six weeks in, and since I’m taking my journey in chronological order, I knew that some of the front end of this effort was going to be a little tough. I just finished with Bach last week, which means the next stage includes composers like Mozart, Hayden, Beethoven and Schubert. This part of the journey excites me more than what preceded it, but I thought I should at least summarize my feelings thus far.

The initial recordings I listened to were by composers of the 1100s through the 1500s, and this was more out of curiosity than an expectation of truly enjoying the listening experience. From Hildegard, Dufay and Des Prez, to Palestrina and Tallis, none of the music is something I’d seek out again, but I was intrigued by some of the musical conventions of the time. For example, the scale Hildegard Von Bingen uses is generally mixolydian, but ever-so-often she inserts a major seventh and a minor second in the scale, giving it a flavor that’s a bit foreign to my ears, and likely yours as well.

Traveling a few centuries later, the music becomes more metered and more polyphonic, with distinct parts for bass, tenor, alto and soprano, and harmonic conventions begin to take shape – harmony which today seems rather mundane, but which at the time must have been quite trailblazing and perhaps even outlandish to some people’s ears. The piece I listened to from Palestrina from 1550 uses a lot of Vsus4 to V to I resolution, a convention which today sounds so common that it’s a little dull, but it works, and it must have worked beautifully at the time.

I then moved on the Monteverdi, considered the father of the opera, and listened to several movements of L’Orfeo from 1607. This offered the first piece of music that I genuinely liked: I found the “Ritornello” and its soprano aria (if indeed I’m getting my terms correct) truly gorgeous. The opera also offered some lovely trumpet and violin parts that almost sounded like the klezmer music that was to come out of Eastern Europe centuries later. But after listening to 20 minutes or so, I became uninterested in the basic harmonies – there were flashes, but not enough to return to the piece.

Similarly, the Vivaldi concerto I listened to was all very pleasant, but ultimately unfulfilling. It was Stravinsky three centuries later who is said to have quipped, “Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.” I only listened to one, and it was fine, but I wouldn’t want to hear another 399 of them!

For Handel, I eschewed his compositions that I was already familiar with, and instead turned to his Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne from 1713. Here I was quite taken with movement’s I and V, the former gorgeous and serene, and the latter movement in 3/4 delightful, with impressive vocal runs and prominent trumpet. I was less taken with two later pieces by Handel – Zodak the Priest and Ombra Mai Fu from the opera Serse. The latter is considered to be a measure of beauty rarely achieved in music, but for reasons unknown it didn’t reach me despite it being a very pretty piece. Zodak the Priest for me suffered from the bombastic quarter note accents, emphasized by the timpani, similar to sections for his Water Music and Royal Fireworks pieces that I find tiresome.

The remainder of my journey through the Baroque period centered on Bach, widely considered to be the genius from which all other composers sprouted. Aside from some obvious pieces that I’ve enjoyed through the years  (Prelude in C, minuets in G and G-minor, Sheep May Safely Graze) I’ve never gravitated toward his music, it being of a high contrapuntal nature and less devoted to melody, the musical component which has guided nearly all of my musical interests and aspirations since childhood. I was interested to see if my opinion might change through a more thorough examination of the master’s works.

For me, listening to parts of Bach’s major works – The Brandenburg Concertos, the Well-Tempered Clavier, The Goldberg Variations and The Art of the Fugue – I was more taken with Bach’s mastery of the form and the incredible musicianship exhibited in the recordings than the music itself, if that makes any sense. Hearing Rosalyn Tureck’s piano performance of the “C# Prelude” was awe-inspiring, as was Glen Gould’s playing of The Goldberg Variations. What players! But of course, what music as well, with shifting keys and flipping melodies and crazy-challenging runs of allegro sixteenth notes. And it all hangs together so well. I like moments for sure, perhaps even sections of these pieces, but listening for five minutes, ten minutes, and beyond, for me it all starts to sound similar, with sections meandering and no discernible melody to latch onto.

Now, I know full well that my inability to find the melody in these pieces is my own shortcoming, not Bach’s. Having been raised on Elton John, Paul McCartey and showtunes, the advanced counterpoint of Bach is not a natural fit for me. I was happy to hear some samples, and I would be happy to hear some again in small doses, but these long pieces are not my jam.

Of the Bach pieces I listened to, my favorites were movements one and four of The Art of the Fugue, largely because I listened to an orchestrated version of these pieces that were originally likely written for a keyboard instrument. Instead, I was directed to the Stuttgard Chamber orchestra’s take on this piece, and I think that part of my issue with enjoying works like The Well-Tempered Clavier and The Goldberg Variations is that I’m less drawn to piano solo music than orchestration, this despite being a piano player myself who once recorded a CD of original piano solos.

Go figure.

But I found section one of The Art of the Fugue to be beautiful as a string piece, and section four varied the melody and tempo just enough to keep my interest. Then, sadly, it waned as I listened to section 6. By this point I was looking at my watch and wondering if I could hear a palette cleanser of some melodic rock and roll!

Anyhow, that’s my journey so far, and I hope to summarize the next stage of my musical escapade in a month or two.

2025: A Year of Classical Music

(note: to cut to the chase and read the list of classical music I’ll be listening to in 2025, scroll to the bottom)

Lately I’ve been fed up with talk radio and rock radio while driving around the Chicago area, and I’ve found myself absentmindedly tuning in to 98.7 WFMT, the local classical station, allowing me to appreciate what used to be a regular listening experience for me. My exposure to classical music has waned over the years, but it was significant during my childhood: between my parents’ listening habits and my piano lessons, band and choir concerts, solo and ensemble competitions and the like, not to mention an occasional concert in the park or local orchestral performance, classical music was very much a part of my life. As a young adult, when CDs became a thing, I’d buy the occasional classical CD, and I must have forty or so on the shelf today.

Although my active listening to classical music decreased when my children were young, my exposure to classical music was still significant, as my wife and I attended our children’s band, orchestra and choir concerts. It wasn’t until my children left home that this automatic exposure to classical music ceased, and I forgot to ramp up the intentional listening of my young adulthood. As a result, this music has mostly been absent from my life for the past decade or so.

It’s time to correct that, but I’d like to approach it in a concerted way (no pun intended). I’m going to devote 2025 to listening to classical music in a way I’ve never done before: consistently, repeatedly and intently. I’ve created a list of pieces to listen to over the course of the year, from some of the earliest choral works to musical pieces from the 21st century.

To what end? What’s the purpose? Mostly, I’d like to find additional pieces of music that I enjoy listening to. If I can find a few pieces that really wow me, or a composer or two I can explore further, then it’s mission accomplished. But I’d also like to have an overall better understanding of how music progressed over time, what the innovations were, and what some of the musical nomenclature of the classical world means. After all, I consider myself a musician, but there’s so little I know about classical music, and that shouldn’t be the case.

To help me with my cause, I’ve purchased three books on classical music:

1)      The Vintage Guide to Classical Music by Jan Swafford.

2)      The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross

3)      What to Listen for In Music by Aaron Copland.

I’ve completed the last book and was struck by a few observations by Mr. Copland:

“No composer can write into his music a value that he does not possess as a man.” (p. 212) This is very much a theme I considered when writing what is probably my favorite fictional piece that I’ve authored: “Nosebleed.” (2011, https://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1355&context=plr) I’d like to learn a bit more about the composers to help me understand their compositions.

Also from Copland: “When I hear a new piece of music that I do not understand, I am intrigued – I want to make contact with it again at the first opportunity. It’s a challenge – it keeps my interest in the art of music thoroughly alive.” (p. 199)  This is the spirit I’m going to try to tap into during my endeavor.

As always with these types of undertakings, there are some rules I’ll be following:

1)      I’ll only be listening to music that I don’t already know well. So, no Water Music, Eroica, Pictures at an Exhibition, The Planets, 1812 Overture, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, and the like. Sure, all of those pieces and many others could warrant another listen, but that will have to wait for another time. Of the pieces I’ve decided on, I think there are three or four I’ve heard before: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, Keith Emerson’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.

2)      I’ll be listening in chronological order, which should illuminate for me the progression of music through the centuries. 

3)      Each piece will be listened to, not watched. If the only way I can get a performance is on YouTube, I’ll stream the audio, not the video.

4)      I will listen to each piece initially without any knowledge of the piece aside from the year and the composer. Only after listening one time through will I consult the aforementioned books and a website or two to get some historical context.

5)      I will listen to each piece at least three times, allowing me to better absorb the music hopefully to the point of some degree of understanding.

I’d like to blog about my listening experience from time to time, though I’ll do so more from a layperson’s perspective, as my knowledge of music is mostly limited to the rock world. We shall see how this goes!

Without further ado, the following is the roadmap I intend to follow, though there could be some edits along the way. For many of the pieces, I’ll be listening to a particular movement or movements. My parents, my friend Uli and my daughter Jessica helped curate this list for me, along with several good websites devoted to the genre. The list below is color-coded to indicate which works I’ll be listening to in a given week.