120 Music Masterpieces: An Album that Changed My Life

120 Music Masterpieces was a big, four-record set released in 1971 that included excerpts from great pieces of classical music. The television advertisements were narrated by English Tony Award-winning actor, John Williams, and marketed as a “priceless introduction” to the classics. It brought classical music into my life. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, 120 Music Masterpieces changed my life. 

Like many of us, I didn’t grow-up wealthy, or in a particularly musical home. Most of the music I heard in my small, rural town was either Pop, Rock, or Country. Classical music was foreign to me - something used in movies or played at fancy events that I never got to attend anyway.

Then, our local television stations began advertising 120 Music Masterpieces. I was enthralled with what I heard. Each tune seemed better than the last. I couldn’t get enough of it. I literally looked forward to this tv commercial. Eventually, I began begging my mother to buy it for me for my birthday, and she did! It was my birthday present in 1975, and an extravagant one too. In today’s dollars, that $11.98 price tag equates to around $60.

My experience with 120 Music Masterpieces is the reason I believe it’s important to keep playing the “old warhorses” from time to time on WNED-Classical. They’re familiar old friends to those of us who are regular listeners, but there’s always someone hearing that “old warhorse” for the first time, perhaps feeling enthralled with it, and perhaps beginning their own life-changing journey in classical music.

View the original television commercial at the YouTube link above.

It’s fabulous! Maybe you even remember it!