Listen with Father: How I Learned to Love Classical Music

Listen with Father: How I Learned to Love Classical Music

By Caroline Sanderson£35.00 + Shipping
Status: being funded
Publication Date: 03.07.2025Available
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About The Book

When I was 4, I fell in love with the music of Mozart and my Dad was delighted.

When I was 8, I fell even more in love with the music of Davie Bowie, T-Rex and Slade: and Dad couldn’t understand it at all.

For the rest of his life, he tried to help me to rediscover my childhood penchant for classical music, but I was too busy take proper notice and I never got around to playing the CDs he gave me. Then much too soon, my Dad died. And then there was mourning, and no more music.

One day, I listened to Mozart again, and the symphony of emotions that swelled in me led to a resolution. I would choose eight pieces of music that Dad loved – one for each decade of his life – and listen to each with great care and attention. To try and discover what it was he so appreciated about classical music, as I should have done while he was alive.

The result of this musical journey is Listen With Father, a memoir of a beloved father, evoked through the classical music he cherished. Taking in Mozart, Stravinsky, Kathleen Ferrier, Brahms, Robert & Clara Schumann, Sibelius, Chopin, Richard Strauss and others, it is also an idiosyncratic listening guide, and an intro to classical music for anyone who finds it a little intimidating – as I once did.

Blending memoir with biography, history and travel writing, it records my attempts to lend an ear and listen, at last, with father.


 

Blending memoir with biography, history and travel writing, this book records my attempts to lend an ear and listen, at last, with father.
Caroline Sanderson

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  • Listen with Father Spotify Playlist
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    Exclusive access to a Spotify playlist filled with music that Caroline and her father listened to together. [Please note...

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  • Updates From The Author

    Alive & Listening

    It’s been too long since my last “Listen With Father” update. My excuses: last autumn was a time of intense reading after I was appointed chair of judges for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize, UK’s most ...

    16.01.2023
    #ListenWithCaroline: Piano Practice

    At the beginning of 2022, I made a New Year’s resolution to play the piano every day. It’s not the first time I’ve resolved this but the pattern of sticking to it, and then not sticking to it is alway...

    24.06.2022
    #ListenWithCaroline: Lesson from a Chess Starlet

    Seventy years ago last week, when he was just 17, my Dad became the joint 1952 British Boys’ Chess Champion. From his early teens, Dad was an accomplished self-taught player, whose exploits regularly ...

    02.05.2022
    #ListenWithCaroline: Antonio Vivaldi: La Tempesta di Mare

    What more appropriate signature tune could there be for the vernal equinox and this sunny weather than La Primavera (Spring) from the Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, with all its uplifting zing. And ...

    21.03.2022
    #ListenWithCaroline: Fryderyk Chopin: Études

    I’ve been listening to Chopin’s Études this week. I was originally prompted to do so because 1st March is the composer’s birthday: he was born on that day in Żelazowa Wola in Poland in 1810. But durin...

    03.03.2022
    #ListenWithCaroline: Clara Schumann, Piano Concerto in A Minor

    When I was a child, it didn’t occur to me that my Dad listened only to the music of dead white males. Maybe because the the names of the composers he loved sounded wonderfully exotic to a small child’...

    02.02.2022
    #ListenWithCaroline: Clara Schumann, Piano Concerto in A Minor

    When I was a child, it didn’t occur to me that my Dad listened only to the music of dead white males. Maybe because the the names of the composers he loved sounded wonderfully exotic to a small child’...

    02.02.2022
    ~#ListenWithCaroline Rhapsody on Blue

    I’m writing this, my first “Listen With Father” update of 2022 on Blue Monday, apparently the most depressing day of the year. So a cheer-up musical thread is in order. Despite its title, George Gersh...

    17.01.2022
    #ListenWithCaroline ep 4

    As we approach the end of 2021, this week's #ListenWithCaroline is a listening suggestion for anyone who, like me, prefers a reflective New Year's Eve. Thank you so much for your support of "Listen Wi...

    29.12.2021
    #ListenWithCaroline ep 3

    Today’s #ListenWithCaroline is, of course, something Christmassy – Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. Whilst I love the tradition of singing the same litany of carols of every Christmas, the twe...

    22.12.2021
    #ListenWithCaroline ep 2

    Today is the 8th anniversary of my father's death from prostate cancer. It feels both a long time ago, and also all too recent and raw. Bereavement scrambles time, I've noticed. In my #ListenWithCarol...

    15.12.2021
    #ListenWithCaroline

    Hello everyone. If you've already supported "Listen With Father", I'd like to say a huge thank you: it means a great deal to me that you like the sound of what I've written. From now on I'll be postin...

    06.12.2021
    A Book of Remembrance

    Yesterday was Remembrance Sunday, the day when we come together to honour the fallen. It’s a collective memorial, but it was built of many thousands of individual bereavements, and to some extent stil...

    15.11.2021
    Watching the Reels

    Since "Listen With Father" launched a week ago, I've been reflecting on what a performance listening to music used to be. To play a record you had to ease it carefully from the sleeve without touching...

    01.11.2021

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