Question by sayuna: How useful would Russian be for a classical music student?
Specifically and classical piano student. I am planning to study music in Europe my languages know French and English.
I would like to learn Russian (add some variety to my languages), but I would also like to learn Italian.
So my question is, would Italian or Russian be more useful for studying classical music?
Second question (sorry) How useful would French be?
No, I don’t know where in Europe I want to study yet. I guess England, France, Italy or Russia.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Not R
If you’re looking at specializing in Russian music, you’ll certainly want to be able to read what the composers, performers, and critics wrote about it. If your interests are more general, German might be a more useful choice.
Give your answer to this question below!
Anonymous says
i would recomend learning the language of the country you would study in. depends on the music too. italy is famous for classical as well as germany and france and russia. if in my opinion i would say russian because i am learning it but this is only my opinion. i think that depending on your favorite artist i would go with their language so tchaikovsky is russian bach german ect.
joshuacharlesmorris says
The most useful languages for classical music tend to be German, Italian and French because these three languages have dominated musical culture for the past several hundred years. Russian, English, Latin and Spanish are probably the next most relavent languages.
Of course if you have a particular area of interest in Russian music you'll want to be able read about it in the original instead of a translation. And wherever you end up studying you should be fluent in the native language there.
Randy Syler says
Italian and German are used more than Russian in music, even by Russian composers like Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.
P.Raskolnikov says
Good luck studying in Russia… It is extremely competitive and a bit frightening to a new student. Unless you only are going to focus on Russian composers, learning Italian will be more beneficial. A lot of music enforces Italian language.
x Hana x says
russian's barely useful at all! Italian is far more useful in classical music, it's fairly rare to see any russian instructions written on a piece of music, 90% of the time it's in italian.
Sam Duncan says
If you want to do Russian music like Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff – then Russian is the way to go
but if your doing more European, then 1st Italian, 2nd German, 3rd French