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In Praise of Classical Music

Author profile picture Dale Joseph Ferrier
i
22 November
Dear Internet,

Our culture around the world is immensely varied with a myriad of arts, traditions, and literature. But possibly the most defining of these for each of our societies is music. The various ways we generate what would ordinarily be noise pollution is nectar for us - depending on our tastes.

This is not going to be about music in general, but rather just an area of it, although admittedly a very large one. I want to share a small slice of my passion for Classical music, which is something I have found to be a rarity in my age group. But first, a little disclaimer; I am not a musician, I am not proficient in music theory, nor can I recite whole operas, I am just a grateful and pleased listener of it. So, advanced apologies for any errors I may make in my observations. 

I know my passion for Classical began at a very young age when my Grandfather collected my brother and me from primary school, to wait to be taken back home by my Mother after work. Each time he had Classic FM tuned on the radio of his Ford, with its familiar melodies streaming from the speakers. This must have had a profound effect on my elementary self as today I too have the same station set on my car. 

Expressing my love of this genre wasn’t always straightforward. As a child and then a teenager I seemed to treat listening to Classical music as a guilty secret like I was indulging in a kind of musical drug, less I was ridiculed by my family for not being into modern stuff like a ‘normal’ person. Their ridicule was never malicious, but it instilled a sense that I had to hide my musical tastes.

This does though bring me to why I love Classical. I am not a musical Luddite, I do enjoy plenty of mainstream music and some of the more popular genres like rock and folk, but I find that these cannot seem to move me, in the same way, Classical can. With most of it without any lyrics, it is remarkable just how much emotion it can convey. From melancholy to triumph, from bright and cheery to creepy. Applied appropriately, it can set alight any writing, any film, and our imagination. I remember an occasion when I was walking down from some moors towards a reservoir through a blanket of fog, which was raising to unveil the waters. It reminded me of one of the final scenes of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail where King Arthur and Sir Bedevere the Wise board a mysterious boat to cross a lake to the Castle Arrghhh. This scene was set to Stanley Black’s score The Promised Land, which transported us from a comedy to a medieval epic. We temporarily forgot the punchlines and gags, and for a moment or two, were transported by the gravitas this scene painted. I played this out loud on my phone as I approached the artificial lake - wary of bumping into an unsuspecting, and doubtlessly puzzled stranger. But this just helped me recreate that scene in the real world before me. I could have half expected that very same boat to appear out of the fog, with its two passengers. The Holy Grail was released in 1975, but what Black’s score did was timeless, which brings me to my second reason.

Classical music is a living connection to the past. Some of history’s greatest composers like Bach, Chopin, and the most famous of all Mozart appear to be an ever-present part of our culture despite being dead for centuries. The earliest music is thousands of years old, but certainly, some of the oldest that we can recognise as Classical can be around a thousand. You can argue that the reason Classical has been able to transcend all this time is due in part to its standing in high culture, unlike that of many local folk music since lost to time and that until the 20th century and the explosion of new genres, Classical was one of the only types of music around. But regardless, transcend the centuries it has, bringing alive the history of when they were first released to us.

But Classical music, despite its name, is not necessarily old music. New compositions are being made every day taking the genre to new and wonderful heights. Take a look at film scores, or game soundtracks, you can see that Classical composition is alive and well. These two areas of Classical are quite recent additions, which again brings me to another key reason for my love of it.

The Classical music genre is massive. The kaleidoscope of different interpretations and types makes exploring it an expedition of its own. I have already mentioned films and games, and there are periods of history when Classical music developed into new chapters such as going from the medieval to the renaissance, to baroque, to the romantic era. However, there are many branches and sub-branches within these. The main branches are concertos, symphonies, suites, opera, sonatas, and chamber, where within these there are more branches still. The music is also regional with German, French, Russian, British, and even American compositions each having their own unique flavours. Vaugh Williams is very different to Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and both are different to Aaron Copland, but all three I feel epitomise the essence of their native lands.

There are also more unusual types like the ironically named quiet style, light music, miniatures etc. Spotify used to have a Classic section that appeared to reflect the sheer girth of this genre, until they decided to simply it enormously, much to my irritation.

I have the firm belief that there is a piece of Classical for everyone. It’s so varied that there must be, akin to the infinite monkeys with typewriters idea.

I could prattle on for much longer, but along with the reasons mentioned, it can either be a familiar background friend or an exquisite earworm, and that’s why I adore it.

Dale Joseph Ferrier

Author profile picture Dale Joseph Ferrier

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