In this small two part series I will discuss classical and country & western music. I have chosen these two genres in hopes that I can shed light on two types of music that I most often hear people say they either don't like or don't understand. One of the things that I encourage people to do who are learning about music, whether it be trying to expand an already existing collection, or venture out into an entirely new genre is to expose themselves to as many renditions of a particular piece of music as possible. With this advice I would add that it will help considerably for one to learn what the song is about, who is singing it and what the historical context may be, if any, specifically with music that is not in your language.
Thirty odd years ago I began searching Internet radio stations around the world in an attempt to find new sounds that would reanimate my ears. I had tired of Top 40 and imagined myself screaming if I had to listen to another American pop tune. I picked various countries, in random fashion, and tuned in to what was local. More often than not they were playing the same crap I was listening to in The States.
There is a downside to American capitalism and the downside is that we as Americans think we have everything to choose from at our fingertips, and in many ways we do, but in regards to music we don't. The rest of the world listens to American pop music as well as their own national treasures. Americans are given American music and if we are lucky, we have access to college or public radio stations that in small doses will play music from various other places or genres one might not be familiar with. Even these venues are often limited to genres that its particular listening audience supports. There is politics in music. What is heard, what is not heard. What genre is acceptable and what genre isn't. What language is allowed and what genre within an accepted language might be allowed. There are implications involved in what is made available and what is much more difficult to find.
Music is powerful. It is as powerful as love bringing us to the highest of places and equally to the lowest. It can change or sustain a mood, conjure up past emotions, calm or incite us. Much has been written of late about the music we listened to in the prime of our lives and why we may be drawn to it again years later. I fully understand the concept but I think one needs to look at why the prime of life may be limited to one or two decades. Each decade of my life, thus far, has held joy and vigor, happiness and events I wish to remember. Music often does accompany a life but to limit your joy to a few decades past is a disservice to yourself, your present and future self.
Exposing yourself to what young people, (anyone decades younger than where you are now), are listening to, what your neighbour from elsewhere is listening to or simply what traditional music from Nigeria might sound like is a way to grow emotionally and keep your brain fit. There is a correlation between mathematics, music and successfully aging. Successful being defined as aging with the memory intact.
Math and music stimulate the brain in the same way. Solving calculations and following music in your head or singing along with a piece, striving for the next note or knowing the pitch that's coming next your brain will perceive as the same activity. Those of us that failed math but hit the Karaoke on Saturday are doing OK. You don't have to sing well to benefit at all. You can even be tone deaf.
Classical Cataloguing & Opera
Classical music, historically, was for the most part written for the liturgy or for private consumption. Private consumption meaning I am a benefactor to your art, or I want a piece written for my wedding, and I hire you to do so. For example Handel's Water Music was specifically written for King George 1st so that he could boat down the River Thames accompanied by music. That example suggests that the commoner was not in the position to commission music for the most part. It was reserved for the church and those with money and power. Opera, commissioned in much the same way is classical music with drama. Think of it as TV before TV. People often imagine Shakespeare's work as having been performed for the wealthy but his work is often canonically understood as the earliest of the soap opera genre. He wrote for the everyman. The language seems alien to us today but his contemporaries understood his meaning and intent.
It's boring, I don't understand it, it has no words, often these are comments I have heard when individuals tell me they have some sort of aversion to classical music. All of these notions are quite understandable. Listening to classical music does take some effort. In some ways it is much more difficult to remember a song called Cantata 54, sung in German, than it is to remember a song titled, I Will Survive, with lyrics that tell a story, in English, of a woman's short history with a useless man.
Let me say this and I quote, (paraphrase), the late Blanche Honegger Moyse: Classical music, (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, et al.), has the ability to take one higher than words can express. Being written for the liturgy it has the ability to take us towards God where words become a limitation. It can uplift the spirit to spheres unreachable through action, words or intellect. When music is written with an expressed criteria or idea in mind the listener is limited to where the author wants us to go. There is nothing more to be added to or said when one listens to, I Will Survive. It is a complete concept.
I can remember driving around the backwoods of Vermont with Blanche and her revealing to me that when she first arrived to Vermont her and some of the other founders of Marlboro Music School would perform pop music. When I heard her use the word 'pop' I was quite startled because I assumed she meant something along the lines of The Beatles and I couldn't for the life of me imagine her playing such music. In fact what she meant was classical music that was familiar to, for the most part, anyone who had ever gone to a movie (think Boston Pops). They performed - and in this case, in order to train the lay person-, introducing their audience gently, to the concept and idea of classical music without intimidation. The first time I ever heard Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopédies was on a Blood, Sweat & Tears album and it was that piece that I remember all these years later. Often when we are introduced to something new by the trusted, the perceived hip, or simply at the right moment we can become hooked for life.
Like standards, music that is covered by a multitude of singers, classical music too is performed in various ways. The only difference is that there are much more liberties that can be taken with standards. For example one can add words, verses, replace gender pronouns, and sometimes change chords. But with classical there is far less room for interpretation though differences indeed occur. From my experience the differences are limited to tempo (how fast or slow a piece is played), how well a musician plays a particular instrument, or how well a musician feels, (internalizes), and interprets a particular piece. And each interpretation, be it classical or pop music, will appeal to any given individual. There really isn't any right or wrong, though I will say with classical one should listen to as many variations of a piece to really get an idea of what is magnificent versus OK. One might also be well advised to learn the lineage of a particular conductor, musician, or orchestra. There is something to be said for those that have studied with the greats. What sound is produced. Why tempo is important or even consistency. Mind you, there is arrogance tightly conjoined to classical music. It began in the hands of the elite and there is still the notion of it being a hoity-toity genre of music. Some will tell you that they listen to it for relaxation and others who still promote it as a music they listen to to lord something over another.
Let's look at how classical music is labeled and catalogued. Bach himself did not label his works, for example, BWV 32, this system was developed long after he was dead. He wrote pieces for specific occasions, and the title of any given cantata is simply the first line of the lyrics but keep in mind that scholars know what purpose a particular piece was written for: the first Sunday of Easter, lent, and so forth.
BWV - Bach- Werke- Verzeichnis- Bach Works Catalogue. The BWV is simply an attempt to make order where there was no order. The BWV allows anyone to ask for Cantata 56, anywhere in the world and get the same piece of music. So scholars attempted to group his compositions in a chronological order but also the order of concept: Chorales, Cantatas, Music for Organ, etc. to make finding things easier. Different scholars had different ideas and developed different indexing systems for Bach but the BWV is the most widely used and recognized and is only applicable to the work of Bach. Mozart's work was catalogued by a man by the name of Ludwig von Kõchel. The system applied to Mozart is with a K or KV (Kõchel Catalogue). We already have an unfortunate inconsistency. BWV is named after the guy we care about, Bach, whereas Mozart's catalogue is named after the guy who did the organizing.
Beethoven was assigned Opuses (Op.) or WoO - works without an opus. and no less than eight people have attempted to catalogue his works. Haydn was catalogued by a man named Hoboken and his work looks like this Symphony No. 9 in C major, Hob. I/9. Possibly, I don't know, a composer may have given the same name to a piece of work that another composer during a different time in history gave to his work... all you would have to do is take note of the catalogue and you would see it was a different composer and a different piece of music.
Simply, one needs to associate that catalogue name with the composer. It becomes a bit more complicated when you realize that despite these men being long dead, new sheet music is being found, academics glean new information, and footnotes (unfinished works, pieces published posthumously) can add to the confusion, but that complication need only be worried about by scholars and musicians.
Where do you start? How do you dive in? Most people remember the scene in The Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne locks himself in to the wardens office and plays a recording of two women singing a duet of some kind. Morgan Freeman's voice over, a fellow prisoner, doesn't know what he is listening to either but he tells us, the audience, that whatever Andy put on it suddenly allowed earthbound men to feel free and to soar. The scene was such a commanding moment in the film because it illustrates so beautifully just how powerful music is in its ability to transform and lift us up. People who despise opera or who've never heard one note of an opera listened to Sull'aria (The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart), and were as moved as the characters in the film. The music allowed us to relate to the imprisoned, and for characters and audience, time stood still while we listened to this unknown piece of music in all its beauty. With opera the music always suggests and echoes what is happening in the play. Music that suggests heartbreak accompanies a heartbroken character. When love is awakening or uncertainty abounds trepidatious music is heard. Rage and anger have is own formula as well. Seeing an opera performed is helpful so that one can understand what is transpiring. After, when one is more familiar with plots and such, you can listen to an aria and understand what is going on. Most famous operas are not written in English but we may recognize them nonetheless.
Below I will give some examples of classical pieces and their variations and interpretations by various artists. I have chosen examples with just the music and others where you can see it performed. One of the reasons that some people find classical music uptight is the affected way in which it is sometimes performed. You have to remember that the time and place of the original performance may have been in church; a conservative arena where wiggling or wild hand gestures and such might not have been tolerated. Too, the customs and mores of the time were very different from now and finally the musician may be eccentric in and of themselves. Of note would be Glenn Gould who often changed tempo midstream in his performances, or hummed along to himself. Bass players (basso continuo) are often the only people appearing to cut lose in classical music. The mezzo-soprano Cecelia Bartoli was often admonished for her performances because her facial expressions were considered too expressive for classical music, which in the scope of things says more about the snobbery in place criticizing classical music than a desire for quality.
The Videos
I'll begin with one of my favourite Bach cantatas, Number 54, Widerstehe doch der Sunde:
Our third rendition gives you a chance to see how this piece may have looked performed in the church for which it was written. Make note of the bass player (basso continuo) who, isolated, might be performing in a jazz band. The conductor looks as I do when I play this piece every morning when I wake. I find this piece incredibly uplifting, inspiring and of course gorgeous.
The soloist, I feel gets overpowered at times by the orchestra and sings too far at the back of his throat. That said, anyone of us would be well impressed if we could sing even half as well. Another reason for the stoicism associated with classical music, as I've mentioned before, is the setting in which they were to be played. Some of the expressions captured on camera of the musicians, the male cello player who looks lost as if he just woke up to find himself in an orchestra, would not have been appropriate expressions to be seen in churches.
All operas are not created equal. If you are going to venture in to the field, know where you are going. It is thought that the Italians rule opera but there are those that are more inclined to a Wagner or Mozart. I would begin with the Italian operas because like a soap opera you will know where the plot is going even if you don't speak Italian. They are easy to follow along with. The plots are almost always about love, impossible love mind you, (someone is a whore or scoundrel, someone has consumption and then someone dies too soon). Throw in rivalries, misunderstandings and jealousy and good old fashioned misery. But the music that flows through these performances is gorgeous and most of us, even if we aren't aware of it, know a tune from an opera. Wagner, though great in his own right normally chooses subject matter from mythology, and unless you are versed in mythology you might have to stretch your imagination to find identification with some of the characters portrayed. I'll begin with a piece from La Traviata that most people will recognize from somewhere. I have heard it played in bars at Happy Hour, at weddings and God only knows where, probably for commercials too. The Drinking Song,
Guiseppe Verdi, La Traviata: This rendition is a modern updated version with people dressed in suite and tie and fashionable dresses of a more modern time, rather than the period in which it was written, 1853. The male singer, Alfredo has just met Violetta, the female singer, at a party. He is toasting to life and having met her and she is toasting to life as a party that never ends. He doesn't know yet that she is a courtesan (in today's speak: A high class call girl), or that she has consumption, (tuberculosis), and will soon drop dead. But during all of this ing she falls for him and thinks she can change her ways and lead a respectable life with the right man and love. But as we already know this is an opera, so nothing will end well. La Traviata is a tragedy. Not a funny moment to be had here but the score is gorgeous and the plot is believable on many levels.
My second choice for opera is from The Marriage of Figaro, Sull'aria, Mozart, 1786. It is a comic opera which usually translates to a piece that is absurd in its plot with unbelievable twists that are nonetheless funny. This is the piece heard in The Shawshank Redemption. Here we see it acted out so we can better understand what is happening. The plot is about two servants, Susanna and Figaro finagling a way to get married and not loose their virginity to their philandering boss who is a lecher. In this scene Susanna and Figaro write a letter to their boss to trap him and to expose his lecherous ways.
My two last examples of opera come from Mozart, The Magic Flute, The Queen of the Night, 1791. The reason this aria is so famous, as well as rare in opera, is that it requires a coloratura to reach a high F which is almost what only dogs can hear. Not many singers are coloratura's (which means to colour) and it is interesting, at least to me as a singer, to watch the singers mouth and control as she sings this difficult piece. I've followed this video with another video of the same aria sung by a woman,- watch her mouth- who is too thin to be commanding and whose facial contortions suggest that her thin frame can not support the strength needed to perform such a piece. That and the fact that her elaborate tiara seems to be ready to
devour her. It is described, the opera as a Singspiel meaning that dialogue, spoken dialogue rather than sung, is combined with singing. The plot is imaginary, fable-like, maybe fairy-tale like is a better description. The Queen of the night has a daughter, whom she sings to in this piece, who is under captivity by someone. She attempts to get another man to rescue her but he discovers that he likes the man holding the daughter in captivity and decides to take sides with him, all eventually banishing the Queen of the Night and all presumably living happily ever after.
And here is a rendition which may explain why not too many thin people are seen in opera.
In closing, I would like to encourage all of my readers to venture into areas of music that have never been explored before. You not only learn history, but you will also learn what musical instruments you prefer over others. I'm a string lover and normally detest the piano. If one composer is distasteful to you, try another, they are not all the same. Or try modern classical composers like Phillip Glass or Arvo Pårt. There is something to be had for everyone and even those of you that believe it to be true that you don't like classical music, there is even something for you.
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