Read on to discover why it's worth making the effort to engage with classical music...
Is classical music really boring?
It's a taboo subject, but have you ever been bored in a concert of classical music? The natural impulse when your mind starts wandering in a concert is to blame the music or performers. But remember Dylan Thomas’s remark: ‘Someone’s boring me. I think it’s me.’ In other words, is the source of boredom what’s going on (or not going on) inside your own head?
In our modern, digital world, we crave instant gratification
Ours is an age that likes easy answers. Social media is full of people who apparently have a quick solution for every problem, even though they have no relevant expertise. Inevitably, the cultural world is affected too. Superficial assessments and instant verdicts are the modern way. If a piece of art or music eludes immediate understanding, we label it ‘boring’ and move on. In the words of another Welsh poet, WH Davies, ‘We have no time to stand and stare.’ Or think we don’t.
Easy ways in... Why we should engage with classical music...
A notable effect of this is that we seek easy ways into classical music. One way is to judge a piece simply subjectively – by how much it ‘moves us’. Another way is through biography or history: what does this piece tell us about the composer’s state of mind or the era in which it was written? And a third way is via razzle-dazzle: we are thrilled not so much by the music as by the virtuosity required to perform it.
All these entry-points have merit. But a lot of first-rate classical music, especially chamber music, resists being approached like this. It doesn’t immediately convey an emotional state that shakes or shocks. It doesn’t evoke revolution, war or the inner turmoil of a lovelorn composer. Nor does it require flashy showmanship from those playing it. What it requires are listeners who can aurally ‘read’ its musical language and grammar, and how its architecture is constructed. If listeners don’t have that ability, they may well find their minds wandering.
Teaching us to understand classical music... an old-fashioned concept?
The trouble is, teaching that particular way of listening – of being able to appreciate subtle shifts in harmony and tonality, or how ideas are bounced around and transformed, as if in conversation – is now regarded (even in university music departments, let alone schools) as terribly old-fashioned, even irrelevant.
Far sexier to talk about Florence Price’s struggle for recognition in 20th-century America, or the riot on the first night of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, or which distant love affair lurks behind those mysterious asterisks in Elgar’s Enigma Variations, or how the entire canon of great composers needs to be ‘decolonised’. Those are topics that instantly grab attention. Whereas how a composer such as Brahms subtly tweaks what very old music teachers still call ‘sonata form’ would be appreciated these days, I would say, only by a tiny percentage of any audience.
The tools to analyse music... why we should make the effort to engage with classical
Somehow, we have to give the audiences of today, and particularly tomorrow, the confidence and tools to analyse music they are hearing. The first step (perhaps the most difficult one) is for teachers, parents and those who write or broadcast about music to accept that serious classical music operates very differently from pop music. On the whole its timespans are much longer and its harmonic ambition considerably greater, meaning its material requires more organisation. That makes many more demands on the listener.
Treating music as a ‘fun pastime’ is OK. But with more demanding music it only gets you so far, as performer or listener. Unfortunately, in the UK we now have an educational establishment that greatly values STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), yet is paradoxically unwilling to teach music with the same emphasis on intellectual rigour.
How to engage with classical music... with our brains and ears
This isn’t the plea for us to turn back the clock and hand out Donald Tovey’s rigorous analyses of symphonic form to GCSE music students (as I was force-fed when I was 14). But it is a suggestion that we don’t dismiss a lot of fine classical music as ‘boring’ because, for whatever reason, we are letting it wash over us, rather than really engaging with it. Perhaps the music really is boring. Or perhaps it’s a case of ‘someone’s boring me - I think it’s me’.
There are plenty of excellent books around that explain how to listen – really listen, with our brains as well as our ears. But these days it’s regarded as ‘elitist’ even to suggest that audiences do a bit of work themselves. A shame. Those who make the effort often find themselves unlocking a whole new level of musical understanding.
