I love listening to classical music but How can people just be like “yeah that’s Nocturnes Op 9 in B- Flat”? Is it just straight memorization from exposure? Or is there a method to figuring it out?
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Yes, it’s just memorization / recognition.
Don’t forget how many of us are (amateur) musicians who took years of music lessons. We’ve *played* many of those pieces, either on our own or in high school band/orchestra. Do you really think I’m going to forget a piece that I practiced for 30 minutes a day for 6 months straight and then performed at a recital that my grandma attended?
Second, there are a small number of classical pieces that are extremely popular that you hear over and over again. If you found some list of the 25 most recognizable classical music pieces and you listened to all of them 10 times and memorized their names, that’d cover a huge fraction of the ones that someone recognizes on the radio, in the background, etc.
Finally, once you know a bunch of pieces, you can often recognize composers by their sound. That is sort of the trick to it. I can make an educated guess that a particular piece is Chopin or Bach even if I don’t recognize the exact piece, because I know enough Chopin and Bach to recognize their unique sound.
Do you have this problem with popular music? Probably not.
Some of the name is meaningful because it gives you direct information about the key in your example.
The other portion is less meaningful since it is the numerical order in which it was composed.
The real challenge is you are probably having a difficult time recognizing the individual piece of music. Without lyrics it is more challenging.
Ultimately, you memorize modern music but do not know you are doing it. Knowing classical music is the similar but with practice and familiarity you can do it.
A lot of classical music titles are actually more *descriptive* than you’d think.
If you hear a piece of classical music, and it’s played on a keyboard or stringed instrument, and it’s fast-moving with a lot of different chords, that’s probably some kind of *Toccata*.
If you hear a piece of classical music that’s just a solo piano, with one hand playing a playing a slow melody while the other plays more distinct, quick notes, that’s probably some kind of *Nocturne*.
Some types of classical music are more well known, like the waltz, but a lot of these titles are literally just describing the style, the key, and the composer.
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