My father listened to "classical music" (if I want to be pedantic I guess his tastes spanned from the Baroque through the Romantic :)). Beethoven and Bach are the two that stuck with me (how unusual!). I never really took to Wagner, though my father loved him.

In the 1950s, for some reason, Wagner wasn't performed very much. My father loved the Ring, so he decided to make a slide show of the whole thing. I grew up with the props (wooden swords and daggers, a club, a mace, some shields...) and pictures from the show hanging on the walls in the basement. He never finished the slide show The actor? model? who played Sigfried died saving a woman who fell overboard on a boat, and the whole thing fell apart. My father did have an hour long synopsis slide show, which he showed in a music appreciation class I took in high school.

I'm not sure I have a point, but I think it was and absurd and extremely cool undertaking.

I'm always really impressed how much people on this blog know about classical music, beginning with you Mac. All I know is that some of the old masters I like more than others, but really I know nothing at all. I like Bach, Brahms, Haydn, Chopin and Tchaikovsky probably the most. Mozart and Beethoven not quite as much. Wagner even less. Any atonal sounding music I can strictly do without. But rock and roll is much more to my taste.

I love reading these posts though!

The only reason I know ANYTHING is that two of my sons and one of my daughters are classically trained ueber-classical musical geeks. They helped me learn a little about sonata-allegro form, for instance.

My mom had classical music LPs and 78s that I listened to some as a kid--between the Grass Roots and the Jackson Five. I especially liked the Scherzo from Beethoven's Ninth because NBC Nightly News with Huntley and Brinkley used it as their theme. 78s of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

I tend towards the more popular classical pieces. My tastes run in the direction of the melodic: e.g. Vivaldi over Bach, Mozart over Beethoven, Tchaikovsky over Brahms. I even like Boccherini, whom some people don't consider serious enough.

My parents didn't teach us anything about classical music, but my mother kept the radio tuned to a classical music station all the time (as a child, I didn't even realize there were any other stations!). I remember one day she rolled her eyes and said, "Why do they always have to play Vivaldi?" and I was amazed that she could tell it was Vivaldi without the announcer saying so.
The first time I heard a piece and had the thought, "Hmm, that sounds like Vivaldi," I felt like I should get a certificate for being Grown Up.

The William Tell is great. I think I'll listen to it tomorrow.

Anne-Marie, I remember being a little impressed with myself when I first began to be able to identify composers, or at least periods. I recall a remarkable feat I witnessed in something like the College Bowl, where college students compete in quizzes. One of them identified a Beethoven piano sonata from literally one chord. I think it was the Moonlight. It wasn't just that he did it but that his reaction was so nearly instantaneous.

Now in my old age I have trouble identifying pieces that I know fairly well. I recognize them but can't place them by name and sometimes composer.

I recall at maybe somewhere around 12 or 13, reading the comics in the newspaper, and one of the characters in one the soap-opera-style strips saying he was going to attend a Debussy concert. I knew the name belonged to a classical composer and remember vaguely wondering how one knew the difference between one composer and another.

When my kids were growing up we used to play a game at the lunch table. We would put on some kind of Spotify, Pandora, or YouTube mix of classical music. When a new piece came on we'd try to guess the period, the composer, and the name of the piece. That is how I got to know about some of the more obscure pieces.

I got to know Borodin because two our kids played one of his quartets. That is another way I got to know pieces--my kids performing them.

I don't think my children would have participated (willingly) in that kind of name-the-tune game.

The 1812 was a big favorite for a while with record companies showing off their engineering, especially in the early stereo days. I see that Morton Gould recording is an RCA Red Seal, which was really the gold standard. A lot of those recordings are still valued. The 1812 is not one of the warhorses that I greatly enjoy--I didn't hear it until I was old enough to be somewhat unimpressed by the gimmick.

I remember seeing Miss Frances and Ding-Dong School on tv. It really is pretty remarkable, the amount of high culture that was sprinkled in to entertainment until, I guess, 1970 or so. Does anybody under 50 get the Rocky and Bulwinkle humor anymore? Though I have to confess that I was at least 40 before I got the Boris Badenough/Gudonov pun.

I did listen to the William Tell overture. It is a great piece. No, it's not profound, but it's great in its way. Pandora happened to have a Fritz Reiner recording, another RCA Red Seal. This is probably the original though it's been repackaged since then:

https://www.discogs.com/release/5227768-Rossini-Chicago-Symphony-Reiner-Rossini-Overtures

Anyway, a fittingly slam-bang performance.

I never heard of the Comedians' Gallop.

My pastor tends to repeat his sermons year after year (I go to the TLM, so the readinfs are the same every year). I don't remember which Sunday it is, but he has recalled a teacher in his seminary (or pre-seminary) saying that the mark of a cultured person is that he can hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. It was a good line in its time, but I doubt anyone much younger than I am (53) knows anything about the Lone Ranger. I know my son doesn't (though I hope he appreciates Rossini).

Up to the mid to late 60's there were a lot of releases of music specifically aimed at children, and they often included classical and folk pieces. But kids' music was eventually colonized by pop and absorbed into it, so that it came to resemble the same pop music their parents were listening to. Anyone born after 1968 or so would most likely not have had the same sort of informal musical education that those of us born earlier would have had, as "children's music" pretty much just disappeared. Two of the three prominent children's record labels, Golden and Cricket, stopped most of their production by the late 60's, and the third, Peter Pan Records, survived into the 70's by moving into the TV cartoon market -- their records having TV and cartoon themes.

I've never seen the movie but the book that it was based on was written by William Gresham, who was Joy Davidman's husband before she married C.S. Lewis.

As much as I like a lot of rock music, there was definitely something lost in the 60's when the new music won the radio wars.

There's a new movie version of Nightmare Alley - I'm almost interested, but not quite enough to watch a whole movie. I really like the old movie, and I don't really see the need for a new one.

Interesting -- hadn't heard of that. It's got a good cast, but it's directed by Guillermo Del Toro, a filmmaker whose work I haven't particularly liked. For me seeing it would depend on how graphic the whole thing is -- I'll have to read some reviews. Surprisingly it's still running at three theatres in the area, and two of them are fairly close to me.

I just don't care about new movies (except maybe Dune if I ever get around to it), so I didn't pay too much attention, but Amy Welborn wrote about Nightmare Alley (the book and the movies) if anyone is interested.

They're interesting. Definitely worth reading if the book and/or movies interest you, but somewhat spoiler-ish.