[Ingélou]

I voted for 'I have two years or less classical training/experience'.

It was a mistake (senior moment ) as I was aiming to vote for the one below, 'I have 2 - 5 years classical training/experience'.

The thing is, I was dickering. Altogether, I probably have about nine years of classical training/experience, but it wasn't very concentrated or technical.

As a child, I learned the violin in school - took no exams, and learned no theory - didn't even play any more complex major scales, or any minor scales at all - and a lot of my playing was for school assembly, or the folk tunes scattered throughout the Eta Cohen tutor books.

You couldn't avoid hearing classical music on the radio or TV in the 1950s and 1960s, but ours wasn't a classical music family, so I didn't really know much beyond a few names, or what I picked up playing second violin in the York Schools Strings Orchestra (junior section).

Since I retired, I've taken up the violin again, and for the first three and a half years, I played classical music as well as the folk fiddle that I specialise in. I took a grade 3 violin exam (with distinction) but gave up exams after my teacher lost his temper with me and forfeited my trust as an adult learner.

For eighteen months now, I've played only folk fiddle, with a different teacher - although I plan to do a little baroque in the autumn again, because my passion is The Golden Age of Scottish Fiddle Music, and in the eighteenth century, there wasn't a huge rift between (baroque) art music and (patterned) Scottish traditional music, and the same musicians played both.

At the same time that I started violin lessons again, I became interested in classical music and tried to learn a bit more about it. I can read music, and I have a good ear, but I am rotten at rhythm if it's anything out of the common, and absolutely useless at anything technical or theoretical.

As an ex-English teacher I find most of my classical musical pleasure, outside listening, in reading about the personal lives of composers and following the dramatic interplay on TalkClassical.

 

[Ingélou]

I did not know you were an English teacher. How do you like Strunk and White's The Elements of Style? It is my favorite book on English.

Um - I haven't read it.
Actually, I'd never heard of it, before I read your post!
But I'm feeling a bit better now that I've googled it and Wiki says that it's 'a prescriptive American English writing style guide'.
After all, I'm an English-English teacher.
But I'll probably take a look at it if it's an important book across the pond.
Thank you, Florestan. :tiphat:

To keep on topic, I'll also add that I, like most British children of my vintage, learned the recorder at school. (I believe now that the ukulele has taken its place.)
However, precious little classical music was played - some would say, precious little music.