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A review by ben_miller
Declassified: How Anyone Can Listen To--And Fall in Love With--Classical Music by Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch
4.0
In this book, there are no stupid questions. It's a smart, genuinely funny, haphazardly organized handbook to classical music that addresses topics as vast as the key pieces to listen to from every major musical era and as minute as where to sit at a concert and how to not be a dick to the other concertgoers.
It's also an episodic memoir of the author's own life in music: her childhood obsession, relentless training, and short-lived professional career. This was my favorite aspect; some of the anecdotes were hilarious, some were compelling in a TMZ kind of way, and a few were deeply moving.
The entire project here is to loosen the grip of snobbery and elitism on classical music, and she's as good as her word.
Exhibit A: In the final chapter she devotes a paragraph to tips on searching for classical music pieces on Spotify—you know, because they often have generic and unmemorable names. While I didn't necessarily need these tips, it struck me as really thoughtful. Knowing what to search for is a barrier that most insiders would never even consider, but could actually be quite a stumbling block for the newbie. I think that exemplifies the spirit of this book. Without dumbing down the material, it extends a helping hand to the masses.
I definitely skimmed some of the chapters, either because I was already pretty familiar with the topic or because I just wasn't that interested. But since it's as much a reference book as a narrative, I don't think that's a knock against it. Recommended for the classical-curious.
It's also an episodic memoir of the author's own life in music: her childhood obsession, relentless training, and short-lived professional career. This was my favorite aspect; some of the anecdotes were hilarious, some were compelling in a TMZ kind of way, and a few were deeply moving.
The entire project here is to loosen the grip of snobbery and elitism on classical music, and she's as good as her word.
Exhibit A: In the final chapter she devotes a paragraph to tips on searching for classical music pieces on Spotify—you know, because they often have generic and unmemorable names. While I didn't necessarily need these tips, it struck me as really thoughtful. Knowing what to search for is a barrier that most insiders would never even consider, but could actually be quite a stumbling block for the newbie. I think that exemplifies the spirit of this book. Without dumbing down the material, it extends a helping hand to the masses.
I definitely skimmed some of the chapters, either because I was already pretty familiar with the topic or because I just wasn't that interested. But since it's as much a reference book as a narrative, I don't think that's a knock against it. Recommended for the classical-curious.