Conquering the Western Classical Canon — One Composer at a Time
🎼 Conquering the Western Classical Canon — One Composer at a Time
I started listening to composers one by one in November 2024, in a bid to find the best music ever written — thank goodness for technological advances that bring all the music ever composed into your living room.
I’m a musically untrained enthusiast with minimal theoretical background, but an ever-growing curiosity. My goal is simple: to one day return to my favorites and analyze them with a composer’s insight once I’m initiated into the dark arts of music theory.
🎩 1. The Haydn Experiment
It all began after reading a blog post by someone who listened to all 104 of Haydn’s symphonies.
Inspired, I decided to do the same. The Farewell Symphony, La Chasse, and La Poule already held a special place in my heart, so I figured: why not listen to them all and find more favorites?
From Haydn, I began hopping between composers — Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms — before realizing that my early approach (listening to every single work of a composer before moving on) led to fatigue.
So I evolved the system: instead of completionism, I now focus on major works — the pieces that define a composer’s voice.
📊 2. Quantifying the Canon
As of this post — nearly a year since I began — I’ve listened to 486 hours of classical music spanning 34 composers.
Most of this listening happens during research or writing sessions, where the music doubles as both inspiration and focus.
Each composer’s listening period is logged in Google Sheets — every date, piece title, and duration contributes to a living dataset that reflects not just what I’ve heard, but when and how intensely I explored it.
🧾 3. The Google Sheets System
Here’s how the sheet works:
- Date & Piece Title — entered manually when I listen
- Composer, Genre, Form, Movement, Year — fetched automatically using ChatGPT API via Apps Script at midnight
- Length & Rating — duration in hours, and my rating (Ok, Nice, Great, Amazing, or Gorgeous)
When I feel like listening to something random, I simply filter for Amazing or Gorgeous and choose one at random — guaranteed to move me.
🗂 4. Two Complementary Systems — Sheets & Raindrop
To complement the spreadsheet, I built a Raindrop collection that serves as a visual gallery.
While Google Sheets handles numbers, hours, and categories, Raindrop displays album covers and playlists — turning data into something beautifully browsable.
- Google Sheets → for stats, totals, and dynamic trends
- Raindrop → for the visual archive of every recording I’ve enjoyed
Together, they create a complete ecosystem: analytical and aesthetic, structured yet emotional — the LifeLoggerz way.
⏳ 5. Evolving the Listening Journey
Initially, I planned to finish the Western Canon composer by composer, in order.
Now, I’m taking a chronological-thematic route — for example:
- Baroque → Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Corelli
- Classical → Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
- Romantic → Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler
- Modern → Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky
Currently, I’m exploring the Italian Baroque, dissecting how early textures evolved into Classical structure. It’s the musical equivalent of tracing the genealogy of civilization itself.
💡 6. Lessons from a Year of Listening
- Patterns emerge — my attention span and emotional engagement vary by era and orchestration.
- Productivity correlations — faster tempos boost work output; adagios enhance focus.
- Rediscovery — favorites change when revisited months later, mirroring my evolving taste.
What started as a listening experiment became a mirror — one reflecting not just composers’ evolution, but my own intellectual and emotional growth.
🎶 Final Thoughts
Listening to the entire Western Canon might be impossible — but it’s the pursuit that matters.
Every hour logged and every spreadsheet cell filled represents both discipline and delight.
“The deeper you go into art, the more you learn about yourself.”
— LifeLoggerz
The next frontier: connecting my listening data to my Google Sheets analytics, so that each month’s total listening time and top composers auto-populate my LifeLoggerz dashboard.
Stay tuned — this is just Movement I: Allegro.