Listening to Classical Music

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Why listen to the Dead White Males   by Gina R. Dalfonzo

In a classic "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoon, Hobbes is listening to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture when Calvin comes along and asks what the booming sounds are. Hobbes explains, "Those are cannons." Calvin’s eyes light up. "And they play this in crowded concert halls?" he exclaims. "Heck, I thought classical music was boring!"
I’d hate to have to break it to Calvin, but orchestras generally manage to get through the 1812 Overture without mass destruction. But fans of classical music will tell you that it’s anything but boring. Granted, it takes some time to get used to it if you haven’t been listening to it from an early age. But those who have spent time learning to appreciate and enjoy this kind of music believe it’s definitely worth it, for many reasons. Here are just a few:
Classical music is timeless.
Many fans of popular music think classical music stuffy and outdated. The irony is that much of what they’re playing will be forgotten in a year, while people will still listen to Vivaldi, Haydn, and Brahms centuries from now.
C.S. Lewis wrote, "Look at the man who enjoys bad music, while he is enjoying it. His appetite is indeed hearty. He is prepared to hear his favourite any number of times a day. But … when that song or dance has gone out of fashion, he never thinks of it again except perhaps as a curiosity."
Someone mentioned Michael Jackson at my office the other day, and an entire roomful of people burst out laughing. I’d be willing to bet that in 10 years, Britney Spears and NSync will get the same reaction. But great music is like the basic black dress (or the basic blue suit, for you guys.) It doesn’t go out of style.
Classical music is relevant to our lives.
[bad text] Requiem and thinking of the brevity of the composer’s life. Tears came to his eyes. … Mozart had not only consoled him; Mozart had changed him somewhat—offered him a message, not unlike the kind a novelist can offer: a new, revelatory, transforming sense of what life can mean.
Listen to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker or the waltz from his Eugene Onegin suite, and see if you don’t feel a sudden lift of the heart or even a desire to dig those old ballet shoes out of the basement. Listen to Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto at the end of a long day and you’ll notice the tension starting to drain out of you. Or put on a recording of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — the "Ode to Joy" — and you’ll be bowled over by a tidal wave of gladness. (Then, if you really want to experience some emotions, consider that the composer had gone deaf and never heard what most consider his greatest work.) Great music reflects our own thoughts and feelings back to us in a new light and connects us with others who have been inspired by it.
Classical music teaches us about ourselves.
My mother is the most practical, least sentimental person I know. Yet every time I play a prelude or nocturne by the ultra-romantic Chopin on the piano, Mom is drawn into the room as if by a magnet. Similarly, I usually prefer fast music, like the third movement of Grieg’s passionate Piano Concerto or the bubbly first movement of Mendelssohn’s "Italian Symphony." But my all-time favorite is the slow, haunting second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. I’ve sometimes thought that if the Crucifixion had been set to music, it would have sounded very much like that.
Great music can unlock parts of your personality you didn’t know were there. It will surprise you to discover how many things you like that you would never have expected to appeal to you.
Classical music enriches our moral imagination.
This is not to say that listening to classical music automatically makes you kinder and gentler. I’m sorry to say that the only moral impulse I get from Mozart’s Piano Concerto #23, Smetana’s The Moldau, or Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is a desire to throw things at people who try to talk to me while they’re playing. As author Terry Glaspey points out, "I know a lot of cultured people who are moral and ethical wrecks."
But Glaspey believes that studying the arts, including music, helps us see old truths in fresh ways, and develops our own creativity so that we can share those visions more effectively with others. That’s why he says, "If we create a thing of real beauty, then somehow I think we have furthered the proclamation of the gospel."
Colson agrees. In his book How Now Shall We Live? co-authored with Nancy Pearsey, he tells the story of Górecki’s Third Symphony, written in 1976, which became an international phenomenon that even broke the top 10 on the pop charts. People hearing this piece on the radio for the first time actually pulled over to the side of the road to cry.
Persecuted for his faith by the Communist government of Poland, Górecki refused to stop writing the sacred music that the authorities hated. His Third Symphony includes text from a sacred medieval chant and a prayer written by an 18-year-old girl held prisoner by the Gestapo. Colson writes, "From the personal to the universal, Henryk Górecki shows what the courage of one man can do against massive evil. He shows us the incredible power of music to reach into the soul of a jaded world."
Consider Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony again. The composer spent the last years of his life in despair over the loss of his hearing. Yet it’s safe to say that no one has ever written any music as joyous as that last movement of the Ninth. Patrick Kavanaugh, director of the Christian Performing Arts Fellowship, suggests a reason: "Beethoven’s diary revealed that he turned more and more to God to find inner joy." That last movement is a powerful testimony to God’s redeeming work and to the possibility of triumph over the greatest obstacles.
Classical music connects us with our spiritual heritage.
Too many Christians assume that "Christian music" was invented in the 1960s and ’70s. Bach was writing SDG—for Soli Deo Gloria, "to God alone be the glory"—on his manuscripts centuries before that. Some of the greatest classical masterpieces sprang from their composers’ devotion to God, as Kavanaugh shows in his book Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers.
Conductor Robert Shaw wrote that "Western art music was born in and nurtured by the Church" and that even in the Romantic period, when many composers drifted away from the church, they continued to use religious themes and forms. (Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Choruses recorded an album of sacred choral pieces a few years ago titled Absolute Heaven, a good starting point for anyone interested in exploring music’s rich Christian heritage.)
Even today, the spiritual power of classical music is changing lives. Charles Colson writes that a revival of interest in Bach’s music in Japan has had the amazing effect of converting thousands of Japanese to Christianity.
"These students are learning about more than the music of the great composer—they learn about the spirit that moved him to write: that is, Bach’s love of God," Colson reports. Masaaki Suzuki, who founded a Japanese school specifically to teach Bach’s music, explains, "Bach is teaching us the Christian concept of hope."
Not bad for one of those dead white males who’s been outdated for years