Re: GG: First symphonies, now classical radio

[Charles McElwain <mcelwain@world.std.com>]

> So my question is to everyone on the list-- where DID you first hear
> "serious" music?  That pretty much pin points
> my age I think. I have listened to classical radio probably a total of 4
> hours in my whole life.  What about you all?
>
> Mary Jo Watts

Age and perhaps income as well.  I was born in 1952, and grew up in
the New York metropolitan area.  While classical music was a value in
my parent's house, the only record player throughout my childhood
was an old 78 rpm player/shortwave radio console, with very few
78's.  A reasonably good quality (Grundig) FM table radio was where
I grew up listening to classical music.  (And talk radio, which was also
something of a value, in a much different style than today, and in its
own place, alongside but not displacing music radio, but that's a
different story...)

Through the 50's and 60's, I can remember the pleasure of WQXR,
the NY Times radio station, WNCN, another commercial classical
station, WNYC, and the various college radio stations (particularly
such as Columbia's, famous for its marathon broadcasts on composer
birthdays).  It was nice to have the dilemma of which classical
station to which to listen, because there was something interesting
on several at the same time.  (Although "Piano Personalities" on
WQXR in the morning always won...)

My first stereo and LP player arrived in 1970, when I graduated
from high school, and began commuting from Jersey City to
Rutgers College (in New Brunswick, NJ), and had little time in my
house to listen to it.  But the record collection grew, and that
stereo stayed with me many years, partially upgraded, and finally
adding a CD player, to begin the conversion from LP to CD media.

Unfortunately, it's not just classical music that is dying on the radio
spectrum.   In the years I talked about, there was also a host of
options for finding many styles of jazz on the radio spectrum.
Today, jazz is disappearing just as fast.  In Boston, where I've
lived since 1985, there were first some jazz stations (besides, of
course the college stations), then just one, then just one "smooth"
jazz station, and now not even that...

I will say one advantage in having grown up with only good
quality sound from a radio.  I learned how to listen to music
before I became anything of an audiophile, and hear the valuable
and interesting points of interpretation regardless of sound
quality.  I'm never tempted into ignoring an old recording of
poor audio quality and significant musical quality in favor of a
modern recording of superlative audio quality and negligible
musical quality, as some people in my acquaintance do.

Charles McElwain