If you’re not sure where to begin with Classical Music, try listening to a short excerpt rather than trying to get through an entire symphony, opera scene, or chamber music piece. Even a two- or three-minute excerpt is sufficient for an initial listening. It allows you to take note of what is occurring within the music without having to understand the larger formal structure, the composer’s entire musical history, or even the entire time period.
For your initial listening, do a little bit less than you probably think you should. Play the excerpt, and simply ask yourself how it feels: is it bright, solemn, restless, graceful, weighty, playful, ceremonial, intimate? You don’t have to worry if it’s Baroque, Classical, Romantic, or Modern; that comes later. Mood is not the totality of music’s meaning, but it is a good way to let your attention enter the music.
Then for your second listen, you can start to ask questions about instruments and the texture. Listen closely to hear whether you hear a single, clearly defined melody, or several different melodic lines at the same time. Does the music feel clear and transparent, thick, velvety, pointed, delicate, or forceful? If you try to identify the instruments right off the bat, a first-time listener might easily get lost. But it is far more important, particularly for a beginner, to listen to the relationships: solo versus group, high versus low, a stable beat versus a free melody, heavy orchestration versus open space.
Thirdly, listen for recurring elements. One of the things that can make Classical music easier to engage with is recognizing repetition: a rhythm, a melody, or even just a change in timbre or volume that reappears as something a little different. You probably won’t be able to hum back a tune that you hear in your head, nor should you feel that you have to be able to do so; even noticing that a melodic contour you heard earlier returns, or that a rhythm you picked up on suddenly sounds a little louder, can transform an excerpt from a blur into a string of identifiable events.
Lastly, once you have listened to the excerpt, jot down one or two sentences about it in plain English. Keep the note short, asking if the music gave you the impression of being bright, solemn, or restless. What can you point out specifically about the music you heard in the excerpt, and where are you confused? If you note, for instance, that the music sounded dignified and formal at the outset, that the string instruments were the primary carriers of the main theme, or that the texture grew denser than the beginning, then you’ve written something far more important than copying down an encyclopedia article about the excerpt because at least this will describe what you experienced.
Only after you’ve completed your note on your personal experience with the excerpt should you do the research and read about it further. If the excerpt you’re listening to is from an opera, symphony, choral or sacred work, or a chamber music piece, it will be helpful to know what kind of occasion the music was performed for (a church service, a private gathering, a public concert, etc.). This can sometimes explain some of the musical characteristics you noted in your own observation. What might sound somewhat intimate in an excerpt of a sacred work from the baroque era may not sound intimate at all when the same excerpt comes from a piece written to be played at a royal garden ball. The Romantic era, known for pushing musical boundaries even further than those set in the Classical era, often features more emotionally charged music compared to the Classical era’s musical restraint. Context is more useful when it answers a question your ear already posed to you.
Rather than jumping from one new piece to the next, repeat that same short excerpt on other occasions. You may notice different, subtler details on each listening, such as a particular instrument you didn’t notice the first time, a rhythmic detail, or perhaps a clearer sense of the excerpt’s overall musical shape. It is typically in the second (or perhaps the third) attempt that the music begins to feel more familiar and understandable to the uninitiated. This is not necessarily because it actually becomes a simple piece, but because your ear begins to recognize points of reference in the music.