What I Meant by "Classical" Music!

I just wrote an article about using classical music to calm and soothe you. After writing the article, I realized a lot of people who read it may not really understand what I meant by "classical" music. So let's clear up some misconceptions.

To put it in perspective, by classical music, I mean the music of the masters- the stuff that's been around for generations -the kind of stuff you hear orchestras play.

According to Wikipedia, "classical music" is defined as: "Traditional genre of music conforming to an established form and appealing to critical interest and developed musical taste".

But that really limits the definition! It tends to make classical music "high-brow" stuff which only the trained ear can understand and appreciate.

Personally, I disagree with that definition completely! I tend to think of classical music as simply the POPULAR music of the day when it was written. It was written and offered to everyone who could hear it, just as is our popular music today.

There were no radios. There was no television, no internet. The only way people could hear music on a large scale was to attend the opera, or a concert. Those forms of entertainment WERE the radio and television of their day! And they were every bit as "big time" as rock concerts today! Everyone who COULD attend DID attend.

By the 1750s there were many flourishing centers in Vienna, Paris, Rome, and other cities, where "bands" of musicians congregated and played. The common folk who could not afford to go to the opera or the grand concert hall could often go to the coffee houses and other venues where these musicians "hung out", and hear them play and sing the stuff the great composers were creating! In other words, the popular music of the day.

The difference between what we call "classical" music, (THEIR popular music), and OUR popular music today is the style and magnitude of theirs as opposed to ours. Classical music is written on a much grander scope than our music today. It usually involves many different types of instruments, with many different musical forms and interpretations. It may be written for full orchestras, or just for one or two instruments, but it is grand theater- performed on a grand scale.

Our popular music today does none of this. It tends to be single-faceted, far more reduced in scope, perhaps easier to interpret because of it's more limited structure. Only a few of our most talented musicians consider using an entire orchestra, or putting together a grand suite of music today. Most modern musicians and composers simply don't know how!

My point is classical music was never written to appeal only to a certain group of people. The grand masters wrote what they hoped appealed to the masses. And, for the most part, it did. It's simply "high-falutin'" to claim only those with "critical interest" and a "developed musical taste" can appreciate it! How many people in Mozart's day, or Beethoven's day do you suppose had a "developed musical taste"? The masses certainly didn't!

Classical music is, in reality, any music that tends to last and be handed down for generations. We tend to associate it with the great masters of old- Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Vivaldi- but it can also be applied to modern composers like Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, Andrew Lloyd Weber and others. It's simply music that long outlasts the guy who wrote it!

The greatest thing about classical music is that anyone can learn to appreciate it. Especially when you know the stories behind the composers. A lot of them were anything but "high-brow". Some of them may have associated only with high society, but many were common, ordinary people who lived common, ordinary lives. Writing music was simply the way they earned their bread and butter! Really, is that any different than what musicians do today?

How did you learn to like the music you listen to today? By listening to it! It was a simple process. The more you heard it, the more you liked what you heard, and the more you listened.

The same is true for classical music. Sure, it may have a different "feel" to it than your music, but that's no reason to not like it, or even to think you couldn't like it! All it takes to begin to appreciate classical music is to listen to it!

Now that you know what it is, give it a try! You just might like what you hear!