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.

A Year of Great Live Music

It seems crazy that for about 18 months in 2020 and 2021, there was no live music. I wasn’t watching it. I wasn’t playing it. I was, well…I’m not sure what the heck I was doing for those 18 months. Can you remember what you were doing? I think that the old John Steinbeck quote from Travels With Charlie rings true: “Eventlessness collapses time.”

By the end of 2021 I’d gotten a few gigs and dipped my toes into watching live music again: one outdoors and one indoors with masks on. Some great shows, but for me the floodgates really opened this year, 2024, a magical year for music that will surely provide the signposts necessary to truly remember the time period, rather than having it float away in the ether of my fading memory.

What’s particularly gratifying is that I saw eight acts I’d never seen before in six venues I’d never visited before, including two iconic sites: The Troubadour and The Hollywood Bowl. Both were very cool to check out and rectify the preconceived mental pictures I’d conjured (turns out that The Troubadour isn’t narrow and deep, but wide and shallow. Who knew?). In addition, I’m happy that at least half a dozen acts are producing legitimate new material. In other words, I wasn’t only scratching the itch of seeing legacy acts. Finally, as I wrote about a few months ago, I got to see shows with two of my kids, my wife, my sister, and a bunch of buddies, adding another element of good feelings.

Without further ado, here’s the list:

January 27, Black Pumas, Salt Shed (indoors), Chicago, IL
March 22, The Lone Bellow, The Troubadour, West Hollywood, CA
April 18, Graham Parker, Old Town School of Folk, Chicago, IL
April 20, Robert Cray Band, Des Plaines Theater, Des Plaines, IL
June 8, James Taylor, Ravinia, Highland Park, IL
June 16, Joe Jackson, Cahn Auditorium, Evanston, IL
June 27, Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs, Pat McCurdy, The Dandy Warhols, The Hold Steady, Summerfest, Milwaukee, WI
August 17, Sara Bareilles with opener Renée Elise Goldsberry, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, CA
September 18, Keane with opener Everything Everything Chicago Theater, Chicago, IL
September 26, Lake Street Dive, Salt Shed (outdoors), Chicago, IL
October 8, Charles Heath Quartet, Andy’s Jazz Club, Chicago, IL
October 17, Saga, Arcada Theater, St Charles, IL
October 24, Stevie Wonder, Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, WI
November 1, BEAT (80s King Crimson), Copernicus Center, Chicago, IL

In addition to these shows, I played live eighteen times, plus a church gig or two, I recorded 50 podcast episodes, I completed an album, wrote additional songs for my next project, purchased close to 100 records and CDs…if I’m being honest, by the time I saw BEAT in November, I was kind of finished. It’s been a hell of a great year for music.

To date, I have tickets to only one show in 2025, and given the amount of money my family has been spending lately, that may be the way it has to stay. It’s time to do more writing, recording and producing and less consuming!

The Comfort of Moving On (When to Quit)

A few years ago, I heard former professional gambler and author Annie Duke on the marvelous podcast, “People I (Mostly) Admire,” hosted by economist Steve Levitt of the Freakonomics franchise. In Duke’s book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, she discusses the art of quitting, and how many of us wait too long to walk away. After all, if there’s one thing a good gambler knows how to do, it’s “when to fold ‘em,” as the song goes. It’s important not to stick with a poker hand when the odds are telling you to quit.

Similarly, it’s important in life not to stick with a job, a pursuit, or a partner when every fiber of your being is telling you to get out. Steve Levitt summarizes Annie Duke’s book this way: “People stick with bad things almost always for too long, and we’d be better off if we quit things sooner.” Waiting too long causes us to stop progressing, to stop gaining ground toward our goals.

How often have you waited to quit an unfulfilling job out of fear and uncertainty, only to find that after doing so, you wound up telling yourself, “I should have done this years ago”?

Getting yourself to quit on time can be tricky. There’s an emotional pull in our society that makes quitting sound weak. We hear accolades for people’s “stick-to-itiveness.” We hear aphorisms like “quitters never win, winners never quit.” But what we might not hear is that a successful person who you admire might have quit three other goals before finding the one that worked, that an entrepreneur had two failed businesses before finding the one that succeeded, that a person left three romantic relationships before finding the one that clicked.

In order to grow, we have to allow ourselves to quit aspects of our lives that aren’t working.

Over the last year, I quit my two main music activities: I stopped playing at a church where I’d worked almost every Sunday for twelve years, and then last week I played my last concert with a local yacht rock band that I’d performed with for three years. In both cases I was playing with good musicians who were nice people. There was nothing awful happening in either scenario. Both allowed me to do what I do fairly well: play the keyboards. Both paid me a little cash that gave me a sense of contributing to my family (albeit, minimally). There were reasons to stay.

But neither musical act was fulfilling. I wasn’t inspired. I wasn’t stretching myself as a player. I was showing up, playing, collecting a check, and going home. That’s not what I want out of music. I think of drummer Bill Bruford quitting Yes, Gregg Rollie leaving Journey, or Sting pulling out of The Police, each at a point when those bands were at their creative peaks. There were all sorts of reasons to stay, but they each decided it was time to walk away.

Now, leaving a church gig and local yacht rock band pales in comparison to the above examples, but despite a multitude of reasons to stay, I quit both of them, and if I’m honest with myself, later than I should have. You know you’ve made the right decision when after quitting you feel a little lighter, a little freer, and that’s how I feel now.

Now it’s up to me to put that new energy into action, and to proudly carry the mantel and say, “Yeah, I’m a quitter.”

My new rock album, Pop and Circumstance

POP AND CIRCUMSTANCE (2024)

Listen on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon, Tidal or this website.

1. What Love Can Do
2. Get Out While the Getting’s Good
3. Your Work Day
4. One Good Turn
5. A Thing For You
6. Stretched Too Thin
7. Codependency
8. Long

Music and Lyrics written by Paul Heinz.

Drums – Josh Holm, except track 6, Sam Heinz.
Bass – Johnny Furman, tracks 1-3, Julian Wrobel, tracks 4-8, PH, supplemental bass.
Guitar – Brandon Schreiner, tracks 1, 2, 7, solo on 5, Griffin Cobb, tracks 3-4, Roy Anderson tracks 5-6, 8, PH, supplemental guitar.
Backup Vocals – Jessica Heinz and PH.
Second Vocal on track 2 – Anthony Calderisi.
Paul Heinz – vocals and keys.

Copyright 2024, Paul Heinz. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Sarah Heinz based on a concept by PH.

Drums engineered by Mark Walker at Kiwi Audio, Batavia, IL, on July 10, 2022.
Mixed by PH with helpful feedback from Mark Walker, Johnny Furman, Brandon Schreiner, Sam Heinz and Anthony Calderisi.

Mastered by Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room, Chicago, IL.

Thanks to all of the musicians, engineers and artists, as well as to Isaac Triska for giving it his all.

******************************************************************************

The short version is that I’d hoped to be completed with this project by December of 2022. Oops.

Here’s the long version. Still just clawing our way out of the pandemic in the spring of 2021 and immediately on the heels of completing The Human Form Divine, I decided to tackle what I thought was a brilliant idea: take the original recordings from my 2000 album, Better Than This, and mess around with the mixes. Maybe re-record the vocals of a 32 year-old me and replace them with my more mature voice, add some live drums, get things properly mastered. It would be a blast! So I took out my trusty CD-ROMs upon which I’d stored all the tracks, only to discover that most of them weren’t retrievable. Gone. I even took the CDs to a specialist, and the conclusion was the same: I either had to live with what I recorded back in 1999 or completely re-record the tunes.

Well, why not? I relearned my piano parts, got a proper click-track programmed, recruited my son Sam to record drums, and even tracked down the original guitarist from the original album, Andrew Portz from Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Sam didn’t get the songs down during the summer of 2021 and was soon back off to college. I was in a bit of a bind.

I searched for a replacement drummer, and after hitting a few dead ends, Josh Holm entered the picture, recommended to me by my friend and current podcasting partner Chris. Our initial conversation went something like this: would you like to play drums on an album? If yes, we have two options: completely re-record Better Than This or record a new album of what was shaping up to be a collection of up-tempo tunes, possibly in the realm of power pop. Josh chose the latter, thinking it would be a lot more fun to create parts for new tunes rather than reproducing parts for old tunes. Probably a good call (though I’d love to revisit Better Than This one day).

This was in September in 2021. I hadn’t really written any songs yet but had snippets, some of which I’d shared with Chris a year or two earlier, hoping to do some collaborating, but he didn’t have the bandwidth to address them at the time. So I started writing in earnest, going back to song ideas I’d recorded on my phone over the years, and even one that I started composing over two decades ago (”Long”). It’s funny how once you make a commitment to finishing something, you actually finish something! I started marrying ideas together to complete songs, and as always happens once I start a project, I also wrote several songs from scratch in the ensuing months.

In December, I finally had a demo to send to Josh, a song called ”Your Work Day,” taken from a guitar line I’d written the previous March. Later that month I finished “Get Out While the Getting’s Good,” the chorus of which I’d written the previous February and that I eventually combined with a verse I’d written in November of 2019.

“Codependency” was written in short order on guitar in July of 2021. It’s one of those chord progressions that I would never be able to write on piano. With guitar, I place my hands down and don’t really know what’s going to come out, and sometimes happy accidents occur. I finished the demo for this tune in January.

The phrase “What Love Can Do” was taken from a comment I made during a Packers game in January of 2022. Someone asked me if I wanted Aaron Rodgers to come back the following season, and I answered, “I want to see what Love can do” referring to the team’s second-string quarterback, Jordan Love. Someone said, “That would be a great song title.” And it was! I just needed to write a song. I started composing the tune and by the second week of February it had come together, with just a few lyrics to be ironed out.

I thought of “One Good Turn” in December of 2021 with the chorus pretty much complete. The verses came together that January, and the tune was ready save for a few lyrical phrases later that month.

In April I completed the demo for “Stretched Too Thin,” a song I began way back in 2010 when I still carried around a hand-held recorder. The verse and melody of the B section were fully formed right out of the box, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it beyond that. The bridge “…trying to be a good husband” was written in 2017, and then the tune sat on the backburner until I finally got the motivation to take it to the finish line.

The origins of “A Thing for You” came while I was cutting the lawn in May of 2021, with the verse melody pretty much complete. That September I composed the pre-chorus and chorus, the latter from a riff that I had written a year earlier for an entirely different tune.

Lastly was “Long,” a song I began writing in January and August of 1999 (I still have my original notes) during my stint in Emmaus Pennsylvania, nearly fully formed except for a few key lyrical phrases. Funny how just a few lines can really muck up a tune! It took me a “long” time, but I finally put this one to bed in May of 2022.

I met with Josh at his home to talk through the songs, and on July 10, 2022, he recorded drums at the now defunct Kiwi Studios in Batavia, IL, where I’d recorded at least parts of every album I’d made since The Palisades in 2016. Since my son Sam was back from school by this time, he played drums on “Stretched Too Thin,” and both he and Josh did a terrific job of injecting new life into songs. Real musicians do something that no amount of programming can accomplish. At the controls was Mark Walker who also assisted me on my last recording, and as is always the case at Kiwi, the session was low-stress and productive. We celebrated our achievement at the end of the day with drinks and stogies.

Because the music on this project resembled power pop, I recruited my old bandmate Johnny Furman to play bass, as we had played in a power pop band called Block 37 last decade. I knew he’d be perfect for my new batch of songs. Opting to play on three of them, he sent me tracks in August of 2022. Next on bass came my trusty assistant, Julian Wrobel, who’s played on my last three projects. Julian is a force on bass, employing lines that I couldn’t dream of in a million years. He came over to my house on two dates in August and knocked off the other five songs in short order.

On guitar, I first recruited another old bandmate from a long time ago, Roy Anderson, who I played with in Milwaukee back in 1991-1992. He had played guitar on a few tracks on The Dragon Breathes on Bleeker Street way back in 2003, and we’d recently gotten in touch again. I sent him tracks to a few tunes that I thought would be up his alley and he didn’t disappoint, adding parts to “Long,” “A Thing For You” and “Stretched Too Thin.” Griffin Cobb of Louisville, KY returned after doing a stellar job on my previous album, sending me tasty tracks remotely for “Your Work Day” and “One Good Turn.” Finally, a new musician friend of mine, Brandon Schreiner, came to the rescue on the remaining tracks, coming over a few times in the fall and early winter of 2022, taking the songs “What Love Can Do,” “Get Out While the Getting’s Good,” and “Codependency” to the finish line (at least guitar-wise. I still had a long way to go), and adding the solo to “A Thing For You.”

For vocals I was uncertain about what to do, as admittedly, my voice is not that strong for this type of music. My friend and fellow musician Isaac recorded a few tracks for a couple of tunes in January, but I ended up recording vocals myself, often with the attitude I desired but without the finesse and skill I wished for. I knew I needed help on at least one song, and my old cohort Anthony Calderisi came to the rescue, providing the second vocal for “Get Out While the Getting’s Good” in June of 2023. As ever, on backup vocals was my daughter Jessica, who knocked out her parts with professionalism in an hour or so. I’m glad she didn’t inherit her old man’s vocal chops.

I started mixing in earnest in July of 2023, but after a month or so I decided I hated everything I’d recorded and had to take a break. This happened with my last album as well, and after a few months of hemming and hawing, I ran into Brandon at an impromptu music jam in friend Rob’s basement, and he gave me the pep talk I needed to resume mixing. I also bounced an idea off him that I soon put into action.

Enter Mark Walker once again, the audio engineer who led the drum sessions over a year prior. I asked if he could help me take the mixes to the finish line once I got them to a decent place, and on December 3rd he came to my house and together we dialed in the bass and kick relationship that I so often struggle with, along with a few other issues. I handled multiple rounds of additional tweaks for the next week, and finally got the files sent off to Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room in Chicago for mastering.

For the album cover, I once again employed my in-house artist, daughter Sarah, who’s now done covers for four out of my last five albums. I had the idea of incorporating as many uses of the word “pop” as possible, and Sarah didn’t disappoint, completing the art in short order, long before I’d even finished recording.

So there you have it! Next up is (I think) an album of moody music composed around a particular theme, hopefully with my daughter Jessica contributing on vocals. We shall see if it comes to fruition.

PH