Get Your Daily Dose of Classical with ClassiCal Music Calendar

By Kira Grunenberg

It seems ironic that fans love to [re]discover songs they’ve heard many times before, but classical music, with its terrible misnomer of a genre, tends to intimidate some people away from approaching the style.  For discovery purposes, the common trope tends to be, “it all sounds the same.” With an entire genre presented boasting a massive amount of repertoire, crossing centuries,  and referencing names that are often difficult to pronounce, where does a newcomer to the style start? Should they decide to give orchestral and instrumental material a try?

Coincidentally, there is a relatively new app that addresses both the above irony and “problem” at hand: the ClassiCal Music Calendar App by Diana Ziegler of the Germany based, Andante Media.

Back in 2012, SoundCtrl featured two apps with a calendar-related focus–Stagedom and Sound Calendar—but ClassiCal’s differentiation comes from its provisions for non-invasive educating and passive, approachable discovery of classical music. Originally launched in December of last year for iPhone, this app, which has since expanded to iPad and iPhone 5 optimization, just updated last week to provide a better experience for iOS 7 and better VoiceOver functionality.

Since the composers of the featured music on ClassiCal are long deceased (sorry, Beethoven will not be performing live at Madison Square Garden next month), this calendar is not about marking down a future show, as is the case for many other music-calendar hybrids. Instead, ClassiCal acts more like an informative classical consultant, showing the current date and a scrollable list of musicians and composers who were either born or died on that day in years past–much like an “on this day in history” guide. An info button placed in each birth/death listing takes users to the individual’s respective Wikipedia entry, making it much easier to get the quick rundown on who the person was, and for what they are best known. This simple organization of information helps users avoid feeling overwhelmed by esoteric text.

Aside from the list of births and deaths, a piece of music, with title, composer and performing musician/orchestra is listed under the calendar date and tapping the entry will bring users to a built in music player designed similarly to that of the native iOS where the “piece of the day” will begin playing. The piece is free and available for repeated playback after it has been added to a user’s library. Like apps or other purchases from the iTunes Store, the tracks can be deleted but then retrieved later if desired. The composer and performing artist metadata sorts automatically and neatly in the proper category between orchestra, pieces, composers and conductors. Downloaded tracks can be filtered within the app by these same groupings.

This is a straightforward app that takes the difficulty and intimidation out of starting and accruing both a classical collection and the accompanying knowledge to match. The pieces offered are out of Andante Media’s archives; an extensive collection, as the company is “one of the largest independent rights-owners within the German-speaking [sector]” as stated on their website.

Users should be aware that the “piece of the day” is offered for the first seven days after downloading the app, after which users need to subscribe. (The calendar list of births and deaths is still accessible without subscription.) There are plans for three, six and twelve month plans at $16.99, $25.99 and $42.99, respectively. Subscription is auto-renewing until cancelled 24 hours before the trial or current pay period is finished.

Perusing the app, the only other element that could use improvement or adjustment, is the Wikipedia linking. Yesterday for example, the first birth listing was for Italian composer, Arrigo Boito. Tapping through to his Wikipedia entry brought me to the right page but for the German Wikipedia, whereas other listings linked through to the English entries. While English is not the universal language, inclusion of a selector for routing to various language-specific wikis might be something worth adding in future versions.

As a last aside, it is worth mentioning that if you are planning to download this app, be sure to type in an extra distinguishing factor, like Diana Zeigler’s name, so as to avoid wading through in search. If anything, that is perhaps the only significant weakness to be mentioned. The capital “C” in the name and the compound word pun might be verbally clever when said aloud but it doesn’t do much in the way of separation when someone attempts to pull the app up in search—either in the iTunes Store or a search engine. Something as simple as a hyphen would do the trick in narrowing results.

If you are looking to explore some classical repertoire but want to take it slow, give the ClassiCal Music Calendar app a run for their 7-day trial and scope the music tidbits each morning. If it is something that inspires more exploration, subscribing for continuing daily songs is accessible right from the “Settings” menu.

You can find the ClassiCal Music Calendar in the iTunes App Store.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.

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