Symphony, Life and Entrepreneurship Part 2: My Early Encounter with Symphony

  Symphony, Life and Entrepreneurship

Part 2: My Early Encounter with Symphony

I’d been listening to symphonies since the 1990s, without knowing a thing about them. I would put a cassette into the audio deck, close my eyes, and simply feel the music. Even a novice, I realised, can love a symphony. Because music written from the heart and played from the heart will always touch the heart.

Back then, I wanted to understand what a symphony really was. But books were hard to find, and the internet didn’t exist for us yet.

Later, when CDs arrived, I came across a box set titled World’s Greatest Composers—Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Tchaikovsky. It was expensive for my modest earnings, but I made up my mind and swiped my card. Holding that set in my hands, I was thrilled. I made it a point to listen to every single CD—but I still never felt the urge to understand the theory. For me, the music was enough.

Then I started reading about Ilaiyaraaja’s Valiant. That’s when the curiosity finally stirred. I could have asked ChatGPT to explain it all, but again, the old voice whispered: Music matters, not the theory.

But after witnessing the symphony live, something changed. That night, I finally turned to the internet to understand what a symphony truly is. And what I found surprised me. Beneath the structure, beneath the movements and the instruments, there was something deeper—something beyond music.