I grew up surrounded by classical music, literally back stage at the opera or the symphony. My mother was a gifted, professional violist, and my father was a very good amateur oboe player. My mother played in the local symphony (quite a good outfit actually) and the opera orchestra, and managed a chamber music series that brought top artists from around the world into the city. We had two grand pianos in our living room, where some of the world’s great musicians played.
All us kids were expected to learn instruments.
It didn’t take with me.
Segovia, or
Rudolf Serkin could be playing in the living room, and I would be fretting about missing sleep before a history test the next day.
I listened to Rock surreptitiously. I taught myself jazz and boogie-woogie on the piano.
But some of it must have rubbed off. Today MS Tharmas and I are opera fans. We’d attend the symphony more except the local hall is murder for handicapped people like myself. I don’t listen to much true classical, as in Mozart and Bach, Vivaldi and those dudes, because I favor the Romantics and later, Brahms, Chopin, Mahler, Stravinsky and the like for symphonic, and I seem to be listening to composers I did learn to play for piano music - Debussy, Satie, Poulenc or Bartok.
My recommendation would be to fool around with a keyboard instrument and teach yourself some simple stuff, scales, simple chords, simple songs. Learn to read music at least at a rudimentary level. Learn the circle of fifths. I know you play guitar, and that’s good, but seeing the notes all laid out makes the relationships much clearer, at least in my judgement. Then you will start to see what Bach is doing in his “Well tempered” music, his Inventions and the like. That’s really where it starts.
My two cents.
