What classical music means to me

Agnes Laurens
2 min readApr 19, 2018

Classical music is one of my favourite music genres to listen to!! I have played — and still, play the violin since I am seven years old. Since my sister played me a CD (yes, back then, there were still CD’s!) of the Tsjaikovski violin concerto. This was played by the Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov! And I immediately loved it very much that I wanted to all his recordings. This was during Christmas when I was about nine years old. Since then I am a huge fan of his.

Joy and fun
But there is another reason why I like classical music: I play the violin myself as I said. At the age of eight, I started playing in my very first orchestra. We played music from different kind of genres, like The Pirates of the Carribean, Le Nozze di Figaro by Mozart, and so on. But that was the foundation of the love and affection for classical music. I also have played in different orchestras, one of them is the Youth Orchestra of the Netherlands and we went on tour as well.

Now I play in Orchestra of Utrecht. We play so much classical music. It’s the joy I have and the fun with other musicians to make music and to play the music how the composer had the melodies in mind.

Benefits of playing and listening to classical music
There are some additional reasons to play and to listen to classical music. And these are some personal experience:
1. Peace with your body.
2. Smile all day long.
3. It makes you happy.

Peace with your body
When I play the violin, I feel some peace in my body. It’s like there is nothing on my mind then the connection with the music and even what the composer must have felt during the process of composing the music. Like I have been there when he composed it. Yes, I am an empathised person who feels things deeply.

Smile all day long
Like I said, I feel some peace in my body. And when I’m at peace with my body I feel some happiness. Then I can smile all day long! I realise how fortunate I am that my parents let me play the violin and participate in playing with other musicians in orchestras. It is also a foundation of my life!

It makes you happy
I can not deny it, but as I already told you, I will get happy when I play or listen to classical music!! I smile, I cry when the music hurts me or gets deep into my soul.

What kind of music helps you through life? What kind of music genre do you like and why?

Agnes Laurens

Agnes Laurens is a writer. She writes for the local newspaper. Agnes lives in The Netherlands, with three daughters. https://linktr.ee/alaurens