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Classical Music

  Tags: Music
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio Post Reply
19 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>


Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
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Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
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 Message 9 of 19
01 September 2011 at 5:53pm | IP Logged 
I also like the ouverture to "Le Nozze di Figaro" - but not those parts where people sing.
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clmns01
Diglot
Newbie
Austria
Joined 3477 days ago

22 posts - 23 votes
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Portuguese, Italian

 
 Message 10 of 19
21 October 2014 at 10:06am | IP Logged 
My reason for studying Italian is to get a deeper connection to Italian opera. Being able to read the libretti and to
understand the lyrics without subtitles is my goal in the language.
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lorinth
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Belgium
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443 posts - 581 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin
Studies: Mandarin, Finnish

 
 Message 11 of 19
21 October 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged 
Whenever I toy with the idea of learning German and Italian, it's because of opera. Or, less
precisely, because of poetry. Of course, it's not the kind of language you need to be "fluent"
or say anything useful in daily life. But there are other reasons to learn a language than the
wish to communicate and do business with contemporaries.

The trigger that finally made me start Chinese was an anthology of ancient poetry and songs,
written in a language that no one speaks now (or spoke at that time, actually). But it was the
bridge that I crossed to discover Chinese and China as they are today.

By the way, apart from classical, I also listen to a lot of jazz music. Instrumental jazz
music. So, even if there is such a thing as a jazz scene in China, the usefulness of this kind
music to help me learn Chinese is zero :-)
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IarllTroseddwr
Newbie
United States
Joined 3447 days ago

23 posts - 28 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 12 of 19
19 December 2014 at 8:23pm | IP Logged 
I know this is an older post, but wanted to throw my two cents in anyways.

Personally, I am not a fan of wordless music. It's just something I don't particularly enjoy, although there are certain works that I do enjoy when I listen to them.

However, in regards to language learning, I have learned to appreciate classical music. I have a really hard time concentrating on what I read if I can hear any talking whatsoever, whether it be a TV, radio, or someone around me having a conversation. Unfortunately, both my mother and girlfriend who I live with watch the TV with the volume turned up unreasonably (to me) high. My mom I can understand as she is getting older and her hearing is going. The way my house is, I can hear the TV (doesn't matter which, since she turns them all up high) from any room in the house (walls are very thin it seems) and am therefore unable to concentrate when reading or studying. It's not so bad when I am reading English (my native language) as long as the book is interesting, but nearly impossible when I try to read Spanish or a different language.

Now, I would rather us all be happy and don't like asking them to turn the volume down or turn the TV off, so I have begun to listen to classical music on my ipod with the volume just loud enough to drown out the noise while I read or study. I have found that this helps immensely and the music tends to help me focus, as it's usually something calm that I can just let come and go and not focus on. Now I can read or study in any room and don't always have to stay locked in the back room as far from a TV as possible.
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shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4232 days ago

747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 13 of 19
19 December 2014 at 8:37pm | IP Logged 
Classical music is based in Europe and so a lot of terminology would be European. Words like Symphonie, Concerto,
Partita, Suite, Prelude, etc. are European terms. If you want to learn French, Italian or German, there are a lot of
operas written in these languages. But if you get into Japanese or Korean, Classical music doesn't have much
connection to these languages.

Classical music stimulates the brain and makes learning easier although the connection to non-European languages
is limited.
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ScottScheule
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
scheule.blogspot.com
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645 posts - 1176 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French

 
 Message 14 of 19
19 December 2014 at 8:53pm | IP Logged 
I studied music in college and have remained a classical music buff since then. I started to learn Latin so I could understand the text of the mass. I started Hungarian so I could understand Bartok's (only) opera, Bluebeard's Castle, French so I could understand Debussy's songs, German so I could understand Beethoven's 9th. There's less available for Spanish--there are operas, but most are minor works. Usually, I simply intended to learn enough language to understand a particular piece, but once I had my toe in the water, jumping in seemed more and more inviting.
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Chung
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 15 of 19
21 December 2014 at 8:05am | IP Logged 
Classical music and learning languages aren't tied too closely for me. When I look at my playlists, most of my tracks are for non-vocal pieces. My longstanding coolness to the FIGS means that the jargon used (e.g. Leitmotif, nocturne, sostenuto) doesn't impel me to study the source languages.

However it's always a bonus to come across anything sung in my target languages that eventually sticks. In classical music, I always enjoy the following vocal pieces regardless of whether I've studied the language or not:

Luonnotar (Sibelius - Finnish)
Tulen synty (Sibelius - Finnish)
Vapautettu kuningatar (Sibelius - Finnish)
Petur bordala (from Act 1, Scene 1 of “Bánk bán”) (this is the opera with Hungarian subtitles) (Erkel - Hungarian)
Psalmus Hungaricus (Kodály - Hungarian)
Våren (Grieg - Norwegian)
Glagolská mše (Janáček - Old Church Slavonic*)

*or rather a valiant but arguably amateurish attempt at adapting the Roman Catholic Order of Mass for OCS. Correcting Janáček's lyrics would mean redoing the music which is otherwise very impressive.
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shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4232 days ago

747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 16 of 19
14 December 2015 at 6:02pm | IP Logged 
A lot of people including myself like Classical music both as a listener and someone who plays a piano / keyboard. This has little to do with language learning. When we were younger, some of us took music lessons. And we played simple pieces that have no lyrics. Definitely will stimulate the brain but we are not picking up any foreign vocabulary.

If you start listening to songs with lyrics you can actually improve your fluency overtime. Like JERO the African-American singer in Japan. He started singing Karaoke with his Japanese grandmother at age 9.


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