What is your favorite music memory?

First concert? Who/when? Family tradition concerning music? Do tell!

As a small child, frequently going to Boston Pops concerts in Symphony Hall when Arthur Fiedler was the conductor. Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was always my favorite-- from our usual seats in the first row of the first balcony, I could just see through the open door to backstage where they were setting off the explosives for the cannon fire.

My first truly impactful memory was listening to Beethoven’s Ninth. I was in my dorm room as a freshman, my roommate was in class, I popped in his cassette of the ninth. I remember thinking, “Hey, this is pretty good.” (Ah the arrogance of youth.). Anyway, I cringed with embarrassment when the choral movement started at a volume at which my entire floor could hear. However, I was spellbound just listening. The rest is, as the saying joss, hooked on classics!

I think one of my more interesting memories was going to a concert performed by a trombone quartet at a local church. I was taking a music class for my college degree, and had to write about my experience at a concert as part of the assignment. I enjoyed it a lot, especially since I've heard several of the works performed, but with a full orchestra. One of the more interesting pieces I enjoyed was when they performed Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor. I had heard it before, but on organ, so it was interesting hearing it performed on trombones.

My earliest musical memory (since my birth, really) was any family get-together with my maternal grandparents. After dinner we sang old standards (Tea for Two, You are My Sunshine, stuff like that). My grandfather played a four-string electric guitar which he tuned like a banjo, which he played softly, but somewhat jazzy accompaniments to our singing. My grandmother would start singing and he would follow, finding the right key--not until I was an adult did I realize how remarkable that was. It's how I learned to harmonize as a very young child.

Later in junior high/early high school I had a small portable record (LP) player next to my bed. I wasn't allowed to buy "pop" albums at that time (the 60s). I played several albums over and over and over again, including: "Rhapsody in Blue" with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra; a recording of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, and after seeing the movie "On the Waterfront" on TV I got a recording of Leonard Bernstein's orchestral score to the movie. That one still brings me to tears every time I hear it.

>5 kac522: I also had a small portable record player in my room. Also, was not permitted to BUY pop. However, I did borrow some from my friends, The Beatles "Rubber Soul", Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon", and The Kinks "Lola." I think Lola might have been the first tranny song in the 1960's? "She walks like a woman but she talks like a man." I got to keep these albums for about a week or two at a time. However, most of the time I listened to my mom and dad's very few albums, mostly country or what would be considered pop in the 50's or early 60's--Dean Martin, Tex Ritter, Bing Crosby, and Brenda Lee.

Family memories; My mother played the piano and at least monthly did a roaring 2 hours of polka music. For her 16th birthday she received an accordion from Germany on which she also played polkas. She also played lots of hymns.

The only classical I got was from piano lessons and concert band.

>6 Tess_W: We could only listen to pop music stations on our little transistor radios at night in bed under our pillows!
My mom played piano, too-- a little Bach, a little Chopin and some other things, but mostly arrangements of 30s & 40s standards (Gershwin tunes, Cole Porter, etc.). And tons of records that she played all the time: classical (Bach, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky were favorites); Gilbert&Sullivan; lots of musicals; jazz artists (George Shearing, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Joe Pass); Swingle Singers (remember them?); and Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme. She eventually acquired most of these on CD.

Watching an animated special TV broadcast of Rhapsody in Blue with my son when he was little.

Given his recent death, my favourite memory is of a concert by Maurizio Pollini in Berlin — that was cancelled at the last minute for health reasons. We had a pleasant weekend in Berlin anyway.

My earliest memory of a classical concert was Handel's Messiah at the Queen's Hall, Wigan, December 1971 with my Auntie Amy (she was actually our next-door neighbour and not a relative at all, though we called her 'Auntie'). I was thirteen at the time and although I loved classical music at that age I seem to recall finding the oratorio long and boring. Since then, however, Messiah has become a firm favourite and my wife and I listen to it every Christmas.

My most treasured musical memory is the 2007 world premiere of Christopher Rouse's Requiem, performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Sadly, the piece remains unrecorded, but it's a stunning (and very difficult) 90-minute piece for chorus, children's chorus, baritone soloist, and large orchestra. The choruses sing the liturgical text, and the baritone sings a series of six interpolated poems that present a sort of Everyman's journey, each reflecting the poet's experience with death at a different stage of his life, from childhood (Seamus Heaney's "Mid-Term Break") to contemplation of his own impending death (Michelangelo's "On Immortality").