How to get into classical music
No homework required. What to hear first, and how to hear it.
There is no entrance exam. You do not need to read music, you do not need to know what sonata form is, and you certainly do not need to start with Gregorian chant and work forwards. All of that advice makes a simple thing sound complicated.
Two things actually matter: finding a concert worth going to, and knowing what to do with your attention once you are in the hall.
Start with a live concert, not with recordings
Most people go about this backwards. They download a playlist called something like 100 Classical Essentials, put it on in the background during a commute, and conclude they have no ear for it.
The trouble is that this music was never written for a divided attention. A symphony is a forty-minute structure. Listen to ten minutes of it on a train, take a phone call, and the remaining thirty have nothing to hold on to.
A concert solves that by force. The phone goes off, you cannot leave for two hours, and there is something to look at. The odds of a piece landing the first time are much higher in a hall than in a pair of headphones.
Shanghai has a dozen or more concerts a week, from around ¥80. That is not much more than an album.
What to pick for a first concert
Three filters, in order of importance.
One: pick something with an orchestra. A hundred people making sound at once is an experience headphones cannot reproduce, and it requires no knowledge whatsoever to receive. A symphony or a concerto both qualify.
Two: pick a name you recognise. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Dvořák. Not because they are better, but because familiarity lowers the cost of a first attempt — at some point in the evening you will think I know this bit, and that moment does real work.
Three: do not pick something long. A Wagner opera or Mahler's Third is not a first concert. Ninety minutes with one interval is a comfortable length.
Equally, a few things make poor first concerts even though they are excellent: atonal twentieth-century works, song recitals, and Baroque sacred music. Each asks for a reserve of patience as a precondition, and a first night should not be spending patience.
What to do while listening
Do not try to understand it. Understanding is something that grows on its own after a few dozen concerts; it is not a task to complete on the first evening.
For a first concert, do one thing: follow the volume and the density. Is the music getting louder or quieter? Are more instruments joining or dropping out? Is tension accumulating or releasing? Those questions need no training at all, and they are the spine of the whole art form.
An optional second thing: track one instrument. Pick an oboe, a cello, a horn — anything — and spend the evening noticing only when it plays. That crude trick will teach you to hear texture faster than any theory book.
If your attention wanders, that is normal; nobody concentrates for forty unbroken minutes. Pick it back up. The music does not stop working because you missed two minutes of it.
Afterwards
That night, while it is still fresh, look up what you heard. Who wrote it, when, and why. The order matters: have the experience first and fill in the background afterwards. Doing it the other way round almost always fails.
We keep a page for every work, and that is exactly what is on it.
Last updated: 2026-08-14