Tempest and Moonlight

I’m not sure why I suddenly and overwhelmingly got back into classical music, but I feel like it’s helping me with a lot of things. I stopped listening to classical music for the most part in around 6th or 7th grade, which means I was without it almost entirely throughout high school. I can’t imagine that, even considering that’s the state I was in not two weeks ago.

I had an IEA test on Wednesday. Between the time I woke up and the time I left for the exam, I listened to Mozart’s Sonata in D for 2 pianos. It was stuck in my head the whole time I was working on the questions, but unlike popular music, I wasn’t annoyed or distracted in the least bit. I ended up getting a 96 on the test, which I will attribute to the hours of studying I did beforehand. However, I wager I would not have been as focused if the music in my head had been different.

I made sure to buy a nice full keyboard before I left for college so that my piano skills would not deteriorate during my time here. Last week, I cracked open my sheet music for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to see what I could do. The first movement I’ve had memorized for 6 years or something, but the third has always been my favorite to listen to. When I attempted to teach myself this movement, I realized just how much my piano skills had in fact deteriorated; not because of the lack of instruments, but because I had been playing songs from ear without having read real sheet music in years. The last few days I have been fervently erasing my instinctive fingering patterns and relearning how to play, the right way. I’m doing this with none other than Moonlight Sonata mov. III as well as one of my new favorite pieces, Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata mov. III, and it seems to be paying off. The sequences that sound impossible are becoming more and more easy to play.

Obviously, if I had just practiced these pieces more I would be better at them, but the whole point of this is to say that my rediscovery of classical music is shaping me into a better person in a variety of ways. It adds a facet to my being that allows me to tap deeper into my existing talents, allowing me to build upon an already stable foundation a structure that I cannot even begin to imagine.

~ by lalalalifegoeson on 21 September, 2007.