The complete idiot's guide to classical music (5 page)

With the proliferation of cable channels and public television stations has come more and more programming dedicated to the arts. Televised symphonies, operas, and ballets are becoming easier to find all the time, and while most commercial networks would rather regale you with sitcoms and police dramas, even they will occasionally slip up and present an evening with the Boston Pops. The award-winning
Live from Lincoln Center
series has been presenting full productions from the Met and the New York City Opera and complete concerts by the New York Philharmonic and equally distinguished visiting orchestras.

In addition to these designated doses of culture, classical music wends its way into our consciousness in a number of subliminal ways. It shows up in commercials for cars and creams and other upscale items; there are dramatic programs where a character like Frasier Crane plays the piano or flips on some classical music on the hi-fi to demonstrate his high intellect and breeding, and classical pieces are often called into service as theme music. The fanfare that opens
Masterpiece Theatre
is a prime example: a few notes, and we’re primed for a high-level television experience. We may also credit its repeated TV usage with converting an obscure baroque piece (by Mouret) into one of the most easily recognizable and sought-after works in the whole classical repertory.

Even if there was a time when you bought into the foreboding “long-hair” description of classical music, you may find yourself less intimidated when it opens your favorite TV show or accompanies you on your morning jog in the park. As The Beatles once said, it’s “Here, There and Everywhere.” Enjoy.

There was a time when radio meant
Burns and Allen
,
The Shadow
, and
Jack Armstrong
,
the All-American Boy
. These days, the comedy and high adventure shows are pretty well confined to TV, but radio still talks, and, perhaps above all, radio means music, available any time, any place. Most radio stations carry rock, rap, middle-of-the-road, country, or other types of popular music, so you may have to do a bit of dial-shifting to locate a classical station, but keep trying, and chances are it’s there waiting for you.

Commercial stations are most likely to be found in the larger cities, but public radio has made its mark in cities and towns across the nation. Depending upon what hour you tune in, you’ll find symphonic programs, opera, choral music, and such smaller enclaves within the classical circumference as art songs or guitar solos. You’ll find the most familiar works of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms followed by brand new pieces by the best and brightest of today’s younger composers. You’ll hear the latest CDs and vintage recordings recalling artists who flourished nearly a century ago. The limitless world of classical music is yours on the radio: whatever your preferences, you’ll find them on the airwaves.

Outdoor concerts have become popular summer events in cities large and small, from casual programs by local community groups to major performances by the greatest orchestras and opera companies in the land. When the Boston Symphony plays at Tanglewood, or the Metropolitan Opera comes to Central Park, space on the grass is limited, and some avid concert enthusiasts arrive hours ahead of time to stake out their claims on the greenery—blankets, lounge chairs, and picnic baskets at the ready. To be sure, the sound can’t compare with that of a good concert hall. Aside from the amplification, with its uneven balances and distortions, there are the inevitable distractions from earth and sky, leading to such intriguing items as Bellini’s
Aria for Soprano and Barking Dog
, or Tchaikovsky’s
Serenade for Strings and Jet Plane
.

On the other hand, you can’t beat the price (zero, except maybe for a bottle of wine to go with the aforementioned picnic), the ambiance (utterly relaxed), or the atmosphere (totally nonthreatening). You can leave your suit and dress pumps home—a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers are the outdoor costume of choice—and if perchance you nod off a bit during the slow movement, your companion need not elbow you awake. (Try to be a good fellow, though, and take precautions against snoring.) What a great way to make the acquaintance of classical music! It’s informal, it’s festive, it’s fun. In fact, all you have to worry about is the possibility of rain.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
One of the most famous tunes in Bizet’s
Carmen
wasn’t written by Bizet atall: The “Habanera” is a fixed-up version of a song called “El Arreglito” bythe Spanish composer Sebastian Yradier. Bizet evidently thought he was using a traditional tune, but on learning of his mistake, he added a note to the vocal score of the opera, generously admitting that the “Habanera” was“imitated from a Spanish song,” and giving its proper source.

A recent commercial aimed at baby boomers pointed out that there is actually a whole generation of music listeners growing up that has never owned a long-playing record. Most folks over 50, meanwhile, probably haven’t encountered one of the breakable 78 r.p.m. discs that introduced their parents to great music. In the 1927 edition of
Groves Dictionary
, readers who wanted to know more about recordings were invited to see the entry under “Mechanical Appliances,” the erudite editors of that earlier era blissfully unaware of the major role recordings were already playing in the widening popularity of classical music.

It was in 1877 that Thomas Edison recited “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into a weird little contraption of his own design, consisting of a grooved cylinder covered with tinfoil and turned by a crank, and a tube connected to the cylinder by a sharp metal point. He called his little gadget the phonograph, little guessing the musical revolution that it would eventually inspire. By 1891, the Columbia Phonograph Company was able to issue a ten-page catalog of its musical cylinders, including 27 marches, 13 polkas, and 36 items performed by an “artistic whistler,” one J. Y. AtLee.

The first major improvement came from another American inventor, Emile Berliner, who converted the cylinder into a more useable shellac disc revolving on a turntable. Since Edison owned the word “phonograph,” Berliner inverted the syllables and came up with “gramophone.” Your great-grandparents, in other words, exulted in their gramophone records and—after the Victor Talking Machine Company produced an inexpensive machine to play them on—their Victrolas.

Shortly after the turn of our now fast-fading 20th century, some of the greatest musical personalities took their turn singing or playing into the primitive recording horns. The first in a long series of records by Dame Nellie Melba was produced in 1904 (with labels printed in a delicate shade of lilac), and other legendary singers as Adelina Patti, Enrico Caruso, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink followed along in fairly short order. Orchestral music was slower in coming to the market because of its greater complexity, but a complete recording of Beethoven’s Fifth (on eight single sides) was issued in 1913. Now that many of these early recordings have been reissued, we have a unique—and enormous—legacy to cherish and explore.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The first American-made recording of an orchestra came in 1917 when the 100 members of the Boston Symphony squeezed into a reconverted church and spent the better part of four sweltering days playing into the huge recording horns (primitive microphones). “Now everything is possible,” said Victor Herbert, when he heard those pioneering discs.

Meanwhile, we all know about CDs, the compact discs with crisp and brilliant sound emanating from everything from portable players weighing a few ounces to massive built-in sound systems. Here’s another easy and nonthreatening way to acquaint yourself with classical music: buy a CD (or borrow one from the library) and listen in the quiet of your own home. If you don’t like the Mozart, try the Chopin. Hate the Wagner? Opt for Tchaikovsky. You can skip the parts that bore you, repeat the sections that elate you, listen intently with the lights down low, or casually while you do the dishes. But listen: Take advantage of the fabulous opportunities that await the turning of a switch and the spinning of that little platter.

 

• The concert hall is the best place to enjoy classical music.
  
 

• Listening to recordings at home is second best.
  
 

• Classical music is more familiar to us than we think, appearing in movies, on television, on radio, and in many other familiar places.
  

Chapter 3
 
How Do You Listen to Classical Music?

 

• Background music
  
 

• How to listen to the instruments
  
 

• Tunes and melodies
  
 

• Feeling the rhythms
  
 

• Buying your sound system
  

It’s as simple as a flick of the remote switch or a push button on your radio dial—maybe. Few people can say they’ve never heard classical music, but hearing and listening are not necessarily the same thing. When it’s your choice of music—not something being pushed at you through speakers in an elevator or at the supermarket—chances are you’re doing some degree of active listening (paying attention to what’s being played or sung). The quality of that listening, of course, and therefore the quality of your musical experience, will vary depending on whether the music is the star or merely a supporting player.

We all know that it’s a lot easier to pedal your exercise bike with headphones on. And all that nice music helps make you forget that, like Robert Frost, you still have miles to go before you sleep. You can choose a lively march or an upbeat aria for the main event, and a quiet serenade may be perfect for the cool down. Music can make you less fearful while you’re cowering in the dentist’s chair, and sometimes even makes it vaguely tolerable to stay on “hold” while the %@#$%! computerized phone system foils your every attempt to reach an actual human being. Music stimulates the creative part of the brain, so in workshops and offices it just might help you to come up with clever and innovative ideas. On the other hand, classical music can be soothing as well, helping a reluctant child (or stressed-out adult) on the road to dreamland; and the next morning, it’s certainly more civilized to wake up to Mozart than a jarring buzzer.

 
Important Things to Know
In each of these scenarios, music performs an important role, but it’s still not the star player. Background music is exactly that: music in the background. When we choose pieces for that purpose, we often look for something familiar, so it won’t unduly distract us from the primary task at hand. Yes, we do get something from the sounds—energy, relaxation, creativity, company, whatever—but we are missing the full range and power of what the composer intended. For that, listening has to be its own point and purpose.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The great pianist-comedian Victor Borge hates background music because he starts concentrating on it instead of whatever else he’s supposed to be doing. “Once I went into a building,” he says, “and instead of Muzak in the elevator they were playing a Brahms Quartet. I rode up and down for 24 minutes before the damn piece was over.”

Close your eyes, open your ears, and let your mind (and possibly body, especially if you’re at home) go along with what you hear. Tap your feet to the rhythm, if you like, hum along with the main theme, but listen. Experience the full range of what the composer put into his score and the performers into their interpretation. The textures will be richer, the colors brighter, the impact more profound; in fact, it’s a totally different piece from the one that let you go that extra mile on the bike.

Okay, we know that’s what your music appreciation teacher told you, (if you’re old enough to have gone to school when music was still part of the curriculum), or maybe your wise parents urged it upon you during the Met broadcasts. Surprise! They were right. Try listening with full concentration, and instead of squirming in your seat, you may find that this strange “classical” music is enveloping you with its imaginative power. Suddenly you became aware of intriguing instrumental colors, the fascinating ways melodies intertwine, and all sorts of other things you didn’t realize were in the musical mix. A new awareness leads to a new understanding of what your teacher was trying to tell you in the first place.

Every instrument has its own special sound, and being able to tell one from the other enormously adds to your listening pleasure. Here’s where watching television concerts can help since the director will usually provide close-ups of trumpets sounding the alarm, flutes imitating the forest birds, or the kettledrummer stealing the composer’s thunder. Another good system: Take your kids to a family concert. While they’re enjoying the story of
Peter and the Wolf
, you’ll get friendly with the grandfather (the bassoon), the cat (clarinet), and the dopey duck (oboe). Soon, you’ll be able to tell the violins from their slightly bigger brothers, the violas; the low trombones from the even lower tubas; and the English horn from the French. Now you can hear not only sounds you never realized were there, but applaud your own musical prowess as well as the orchestra’s.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
A group of environmentalists picketed one performance of
Peter and the Wolf
because the wolf is portrayed as a mean, nasty animal. Barbara Dunkel has written a sequel to the story (using other Prokofiev music) where Peter has a change of heart and helps the wolf escape from the zoo back to the forest.

It’s easy to do with the visual arts. Look at a painting and you can immediately pick out the lines, colors, and shapes that make up the overall design (unless you’re at an avant-garde exhibition, in which case all bets are off). One reason is that, except with mobiles, the patterns don’t keep changing; you can stare at a piece of artwork for as long as you like, examine one section at a time, come back for a second look a few minutes later, and nothing will have changed.

Music allows you no such permanent display. The
melody
is constantly moving, the rhythms and harmonies forever shifting, ideas and sounds appearing, evolving, being transformed into new figurations. Music exists in time, and time, as we all know, refuses to stand still.

If your recording of choice is a Gregorian chant, you don’t have to worry about combinations. You won’t find any. The voices spin out a unison melody in a long, seamless flow. But move to music of a later period, and you’ll have to follow several voices, often moving in different directions at the same time. Be aware of shifting harmonies, the blending of instrumental or vocal colors and textures, and all manner of other nuances of rhythm and style. Sometimes one voice (or instrument) predominates, while others serve to enrich its theme or comment upon it. In other words, fine-tune your listening, and soon you’ll be able to tell which of the Three Tenors is singing without watching the video.

One of the most popular musical forms over the past four hundred years has been the
theme
and
variations
. Mozart wrote variations on the melody we know as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”; Beethoven wrote variations on an aria by Mozart; Liszt concocted variations on a Beethoven march; and so on. We can follow the chain right down to the present day where we will recognize familiar melodies.

 
Music Words
A
melody
is a succession of notes, varying in pitch and having a recognizable musical shape. A
theme
is a melody that forms a building block of a musical piece. Usually the composer will make sure listeners knows that it’s a theme by repeating it, sometimes exactly, sometimes changed or developed. Themes can do a lot of wandering, but if you listen intently, your ear can follow them through any and all permutations. Better still, you’ll be able to recognize and welcome each reappearance of a theme, just as you might greet a returning friend.
Variations
are what we call those changes to the basic melody.

You may think you’re the one person who can’t sing “I Got Rhythm” without feeling dishonest, but chances are you’ve just never given yourself a proper chance. Rhythm is the most basic element of music, as it is of life itself. Yes, it can get complicated in a symphony, with all those instrumental textures and interweaving melodic lines (though probably not as complex as the cross-rhythms produced by African drummers who never took a music lesson in their lives), but that’s just another reason for attentive listening. Rhythm, like the beating of your heart or the tapping of chorus dancers in the musical
42nd Street
is the pulse that propels a work forward. The elements of rhythm are meter (the basic pulse) and accentuation (the emphasis on one part of a phrase). Even if you can’t recognize a quarter note on paper (it’s the black one with the straight stem), you’ll have no problem stepping out to three of them in a waltz. And unless you have two left feet, you’ll march along to “The Stars and Stripes Forever” with the accent on the first beat of every measure.