Music Notes - Introduction

What is this site about?

You don't have to know where to begin.

Hello, I am Bruce Salem. This site is about a passion for music, especially the works of the serious repertoire, but all kinds of music. For me, this spans more than 40 years. I want to share this experience with you and to evoke curiosity and provide signposts to the treasures of the musical literature for you. Maybe you like many kinds of music and don't know where to begin with the serious pieces, or maybe you are a musician and studied the literature of one instrument and want to know about works for other instruments by that composer or others. I can help.

The best way to get to know music is just to listen and let your heart tell you what you like. Many colleges teach so-called music appreciation courses that spread the misconception that for serious music, especially, you need some special training just to listen. I don't think that is true, but learning about names of pieces and details about form and style have their place for listeners and performers. Generally, one should already be familiar with the pieces discussed in such a course, or even a literature class within a music curriculum long before one takes such a course.

Everyone has encountered music differently. Some got interested from pieces they were taught to play, others through hearing a recording or the radio. What music is about is universal enough that you don't really have to start at a particular place. And popular and serious or classical music have much in common. We will discuss tools that most people have that allows them to deal with any music, and how these tools might become honed and refined. People do seem to differ in how well developed these tools are. We will discuss that somewhat, too.

Another thing to point out is that music seems to consist of material that has a deep and universal psychological impact. One of the big questions for this stream is weather there are music archetypes that reside in a Jungian kind of collective unconscious above and beyond the commonalities understood from acoustics that apply to instruments and musical scales the world over.