Classical Hardrock
I was pretty late coming to classical (or orchestral, or symphonic - whatever shorthand label you prefer) music. It coincided with turning thirty and acquiring my first CD player. The resulting expansion in my listening CV has been pure pleasure, but there is the odd associated niggling annoyance, mostly related to non-zealots' attitudes to "classical music" (whatever that is).
First, there's the belief that it's all really difficult, cerebral stuff, not for the likes of those who "just enjoy a good tune". Well, yes, if simple ditties are your bag, and you come home with an impulse-purchased heap of CDs by the likes of Cage, Messiaen and Alkan, expecting to be whistling your favourites after a quick listen or two, then you're going to become rapidly disillusioned. But an awful lot of classical music was originally written as dance music, back when the only discos were balls held by aristos who could afford an orchestra to provide music for dancing, and a composer to write the tunes. A disc of Strauss waltzes, Chopin mazurkas, or Handel's orchestral suites shouldn't challenge anybody who's simply after a good choon or ten.
Worse than the above misconception, however, is the rock fan who believes that classical music is all rather sedate, polite, and proceeds meekly at low volume levels. They also associate it with a lack of "attitude", and assume it was all written by ivory-tower-dwelling intellectuals. My personal favourite method of dealing with this belief-set is to persuade them to go to a concert featuring something like Shostakovich's mind-shattering Fourth Symphony. Or (the cheaper option) to sit them in front of a suitably cranked hi-fi and play them the CD - though this leaves the problem of convincing them that in a live setting, a symphony orchestra really IS that loud! That symphony has everything a rock fan could possibly want: pounding metronomic rhythms, deafening crescendos, and sections played at such speed that you can almost smell the smoke rising from the smouldering violin strings. But unlike most rock tracks, the music's constantly twisting and turning, changing shape, repeating itself just often enough to lodge itself in the brain, but not often enough to become comfy. And it lasts for over an hour. My wife turned to me after seeing it performed live for the first time, shook her head and said "Wow! That was like a real white-knuckle rollercoaster ride!". And the ivory tower? Well, Shostakovich (who lived in Stalinist Russia) had just finished writing the Fourth Symphony, when a scathing review of his Opera, "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (itself a seething cauldron of sex and violence) appeared in Pravda, expressing Comrade Stalin's personal displeasure under the headline "Muddle Instead Of Music". This spelt an almost-certain death sentence for the terrified Shostakovich, who was sure he would now be "disappeared". Desperately, he hid the equally-radical Fourth Symphony in his desk, and quickly wrote a symphony (the Fifth) as an appeasement, subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Response To Just Criticism". Shostakovich survived, but never again did he write anything quite so savage and uncompromising. The Fourth symphony itself was not premiered until well after Stalin's death. At a performance of the Fourth, late in his life, Shostakovich turned to his companion and remarked sadly that, had circumstances been different, he would certainly have continued further down the path indicated by the Fourth Symphony. There's poignancy for you!
So, if you're a rock fan reading this, and wonder what anyone could see in something as feeble and namby-pamby as classical music, please buy a CD of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (THIS is a really fantastic modern performance), turn up the volume, and give it a try. There's lots more around in the same vein. Classical Hardrock, if you like.
First, there's the belief that it's all really difficult, cerebral stuff, not for the likes of those who "just enjoy a good tune". Well, yes, if simple ditties are your bag, and you come home with an impulse-purchased heap of CDs by the likes of Cage, Messiaen and Alkan, expecting to be whistling your favourites after a quick listen or two, then you're going to become rapidly disillusioned. But an awful lot of classical music was originally written as dance music, back when the only discos were balls held by aristos who could afford an orchestra to provide music for dancing, and a composer to write the tunes. A disc of Strauss waltzes, Chopin mazurkas, or Handel's orchestral suites shouldn't challenge anybody who's simply after a good choon or ten.
Worse than the above misconception, however, is the rock fan who believes that classical music is all rather sedate, polite, and proceeds meekly at low volume levels. They also associate it with a lack of "attitude", and assume it was all written by ivory-tower-dwelling intellectuals. My personal favourite method of dealing with this belief-set is to persuade them to go to a concert featuring something like Shostakovich's mind-shattering Fourth Symphony. Or (the cheaper option) to sit them in front of a suitably cranked hi-fi and play them the CD - though this leaves the problem of convincing them that in a live setting, a symphony orchestra really IS that loud! That symphony has everything a rock fan could possibly want: pounding metronomic rhythms, deafening crescendos, and sections played at such speed that you can almost smell the smoke rising from the smouldering violin strings. But unlike most rock tracks, the music's constantly twisting and turning, changing shape, repeating itself just often enough to lodge itself in the brain, but not often enough to become comfy. And it lasts for over an hour. My wife turned to me after seeing it performed live for the first time, shook her head and said "Wow! That was like a real white-knuckle rollercoaster ride!". And the ivory tower? Well, Shostakovich (who lived in Stalinist Russia) had just finished writing the Fourth Symphony, when a scathing review of his Opera, "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (itself a seething cauldron of sex and violence) appeared in Pravda, expressing Comrade Stalin's personal displeasure under the headline "Muddle Instead Of Music". This spelt an almost-certain death sentence for the terrified Shostakovich, who was sure he would now be "disappeared". Desperately, he hid the equally-radical Fourth Symphony in his desk, and quickly wrote a symphony (the Fifth) as an appeasement, subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Response To Just Criticism". Shostakovich survived, but never again did he write anything quite so savage and uncompromising. The Fourth symphony itself was not premiered until well after Stalin's death. At a performance of the Fourth, late in his life, Shostakovich turned to his companion and remarked sadly that, had circumstances been different, he would certainly have continued further down the path indicated by the Fourth Symphony. There's poignancy for you!
So, if you're a rock fan reading this, and wonder what anyone could see in something as feeble and namby-pamby as classical music, please buy a CD of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (THIS is a really fantastic modern performance), turn up the volume, and give it a try. There's lots more around in the same vein. Classical Hardrock, if you like.
posted by PaulV at 22.9.04
1 comments
