[This essay is part of a planned series about collecting classical music recordings. This post may serve as a prequel to the one that preceded it, and the ones which will follow.]
In 1993, when the compact disc was already ten years old, I owned none. There was no compact disc player in my home, and I didn’t know anyone who had a car stereo that could play CDs. It wasn’t that the compact disc was rare then. I’d see them in all the record stores in their long-boxes. I’d see the advertisements for Columbia House in the back of magazines. I knew people who had them. But I didn’t because, basically, CDs were way more expensive than cassettes, and machines that could play them cost a couple hundred dollars. When I finally did buy a compact disc player in 1994—an Admiral five-disc carousel that cost around $125—my relationship with music changed completely.
As soon as I had a CD player I began receiving CDs as gifts, for my birthday or for Christmas, and it wasn’t long before some classical music made it into the mix. My grandmother had encouraged my excursions into the classical realm when I was quite young, buying me cassette tapes of Grieg’s Peer Gynt and excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen after I confessed some enthusiasm for those pieces which I must have heard in her presence. Soon after I obtained a compact disc player, she gave me a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, which she loved (a recording I still own and treasure and always will). More Tchaikovsky followed. And Verdi. I began to buy my own classical recordings: a disc of Wagner overtures and preludes; some Bach cantatas; Schubert’s Winterreise. It was just a bit here and there at first. Then came 1997 – the tipping year. After then my musical interests turned primarily toward classical music and never turned back.
By 1998 I was attending classical music recitals, listening exclusively to classical radio, and actively collecting recordings. I didn’t have much money, but what little I did have I would spend on compact discs. I distinctly remember going on a date with a pretty girl from my work, and after we had done something fun I asked if she’d like to go with me to pick up a special order I’d placed at the record store. She actually agreed to do it. Another time, I asked a different girl to help me pick out which CD set I should buy. I bought the one she picked. [Possibly unsurprising fact: I am not married to either of those girls.] In 1998 I was listening to classical music constantly and talking about it with anybody who would listen, but I had no coherent strategy for listening or collecting. Getting one was an important step.
In my next post I will describe how I began to develop my own personal musical preferences, and how those preferences shaped my collecting style and were themselves shaped by collecting.