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As I type this, I am listening to Yo-Yo Ma’s 2018 recording of Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major.

It’s very, very good, but it’s not the one you’re thinking of. That’s this one:

For me, it all started, of course, with the Looney Tunes, but ever since I got a copy of the tape Hooked on Classics in the 7th grade, I’ve been a lover of classical music. I wouldn’t say I’m an aficionado, by any stretch, but I have my favorites. Currently, I’m trying to get into Opera.

Why? Why would I explore these musical art forms? Well, to be a snob about it: Most of the music is just better. And this is coming from a guy who loves modern pop music.

If you find you’d like to figure out how to get into classical music, have I got good news for you! Lawrence Kramer has plan:

Like most art, classical music activates a dialogue between pleasure and knowledge. The formula is an ancient one; the Roman poet Horace wrote that the task of poetry is to delight and instruct. The combination of something to learn with something to enjoy heightens the impact of both. Classical music has a special take on this process because, unlike art forms based on text or images, the music does not depict knowledge but embodies it. Instead of showing or telling us something, the music simulates a vital experience. The result can feel almost shockingly firsthand, as if it were happening to you.

The feelings and ideas involved in classical music are typically left unidentified or are identified only in loose general terms. When the music has no lyrics, which is the norm for the classical types listed above, it can neither say nor show anything, but it turns this lack into a virtue. The music makes something understood by its means of giving pleasure. For the listener, this often means coming to feel what it is like to understand something important – even if one cannot always say just what that something is.

In addition to breaking down constraints and embodying experience (and in part because it can do those things), classical music, like art forms from classical Greek drama to Italian Renaissance painting to classic Hollywood movies, occupies a significant place in Western history. Anyone interested in that history, or in the history of the arts, has further reason to listen to this music.

How to listen to, and enjoy, classical music