Dont Listen to Classical Music Read It

on a show of hands

how many people here enjoy listening to

music

probably the majority of us right and

because we enjoy listening to this music

i think the majority of us here have

probably heard of things such as youtube

spotify or even tick tock to listen to

this music

right whilst going to work going to the

gym or studying

i think we can all agree that music has

a very special place within

many people’s hearts now using your best

recollection skills i want you to ask

yourself

when was the last time that i looked up

the genre

classical music for personal enjoyment

has it been fairly recently or has it

been a while

and if it’s been a while ask yourself

why so

now you can argue that in today’s

fast-paced materialistic society

classical music can have a kind of hard

time fitting in right

if you ask any teenager today if they

enjoy

listening to classical music for

personal enjoyment

do you think the majority of them would

respond with yes as a sign of approval

probably not and i think you can also

argue that popular culture is constantly

changing right

so classical music won’t always be the

most popular musical genre

and that’s very true but i think a lot

of people enjoy looking back

to music from their past right from

their childhood like the beatles are

still fairly proper right

and they’re they were like from what the

1950s or so right

and i think a very common opinion today

is that

people don’t listen to classical music

because it’s not relatable

it’s boring it’s too complex for people

to understand

but i think this argument is very flawed

because

classical music was written for people

300 years ago who had the same

intentions

as us today to enjoy music that’s the

same purpose

so today let’s try something new let’s

try to portray classical music in a new

light

by tearing down the scary facade of i

don’t understand classical music

in order to reveal the beautiful

interiors that this art subject has to

offer

but before we begin i’d first like to

elaborate on the history of

western music

the four most major uh

history periods of history within

western music are the baroque period

from around 1600 to 1750 which saw the

rise of popular artists

such as js bach and george trevor candle

next we had the classical period from

around 1760 to 1820

and this period saw the rise of famous

artists such as mozart

beethoven haydn next we have the

romantic period

from around 1800 to 1910 and this

appears on the rise of very tumultuous

characters such as tchaikovsky

and grieg and schumann and finally

we have impressionist post 20th century

period music which saw the rise of

composers

such as ravel and wc so you can see

that the history of western music is

actually quite broad

and i think the term classical music is

used to denote a very broad range of

music

and i think we overuse it in a way

that’s not entirely accurate

because classical music actually is

specifically for the period of the

classical period

and today we’re going to focus on a

piece and this piece is going to be

specifically from the classical period

so i think the majority of people here

today have probably heard of the piece

of beethoven’s moonlight sonata if you

haven’t heard of it

it’s this very slow and melodramatic

piece

and just from hearing the title what do

you think this music is going to sound

like

well i kind of told you already but

let’s look deeper

i want you to ask yourself what does

this music

tell me as a person and what ideas do

you think this music

is telling me right and i’m going to

play a small excerpt for you

and i want you to listen

[Music]

so what did you hear well you probably

heard a lot of things right

but i think one of the biggest things

that probably everyone here

heard was data of repetition and

repetition of course is the repeating of

musical notes and here at the beginning

of this piece

we hear the repetition of a three-note

melody

and that three-note melody is g-sharp c

right and this three note matter pattern

is repeated throughout the piece right

it might be changed a little bit

and at first i think it kind of just

sounds

maybe like a little bit of background

music right just

butter and butter it might not sound

very important at first

and we also have this intuition that

this three-note pattern

has a sort of like makes a piece sound

quite sad right

and these ideas are all correct but

let’s look a little deeper

let’s imagine we’re listening to

beethoven’s moonlight sonata as if

we’re opening like a very famous novel

right

or we’re looking at some very famous

painting right for example

let’s imagine we’re looking at this

painting here

right um this painting what do you see

in it

probably see a lot of things right you

see maybe is that a moon in the

background

maybe it’s the sun and we also have this

body of water

and we have this lighthouse right

and if we imagine we’re looking at this

painting as if we’re

listening to this music do we find any

parallels between the details

in this music in this painting for

example

if you look at the tides in this

painting and we think about our music

do we see tides in our piece

well let me think about a tide what does

a tide look like or sound like when i

look at a body of water

well i think tides are like very

repeated right they’re like

in like waves right and i also think

they’re very repetitive right

do we see that in our music

maybe i think so right we have that

through normality it’s like

it’s very like it’s like a buoy right so

could beethoven be trying to portray

this idea that these three nope patterns

are supposed to be representing water

maybe but let’s look even deeper let’s

think about the other melody in this

piece right

we have this these long chords of

right and these octaves are very ominous

sounding right kind of mysterious like

you don’t know what’s out there right

and we look back to our painting we

could uh assume that the light in the

sky could be the moon

if we think about the moon isn’t it kind

of like ominous to see this like

bright thing in the sky at night time

when everything should be dark

but suddenly we see this huge thing in

the sky right

so maybe this these long cords could be

representing the moon

and then we have this high melody right

[Music]

and if we think back to our painting

once more and we look at the lighthouse

doesn’t the lighthouse kind of like

imagine like make you

think about like hope right light

represents hope right

so now that we have all these details

what does this mean

well out of this presentation what i

want to show you

is that classical music is more than

just notes

i think a lot of people see classical

music as a bunch of random notes that

i don’t know some composer put together

and they stop and they sound nice they

put them all together and they sound

whoa very pretty right

but that isn’t the case because

classical music is so complex

we have different nuances such as

dynamics which are the changes in

magnitude of sound

we have articulation which is like how

you play specific notes

and you have phrasing and you have

different like ideas you want to portray

right

in fact if you listen to any great

artists today any orches or any

orchestra in general

and you listen to how they’re listening

to their playing what you’ll notice

is that there’s not one orchestra that

sounds like another

there might be similar right some

artists may try to exhibit things that

are very similar to other artists

but in general each artist is very

specific and they’re very different from

one another

and these the ideas that they try to

portray are very much like that

of like stories and now that we have

our ideas our small details let’s try

to put our small details as if they’re

like little images and let’s try to

stream them on one long string

and let’s see if we can observe any

patterns of development

okay i’m going to play that excerpt for

you again i want you to listen this time

and think about if you think hear

anything different

[Music]

so

do

[Music]

so was there anything different about

this times hearing

maybe maybe he hurts me different or

maybe he didn’t

and that’s okay if you didn’t because

that’s not the point of this

presentation

the point of this presentation was to

show you that classical music

is much more than we think it is it’s so

much more complex

and what i personally want you to feel

is that

there are different ways to listen to

classical music

in my way of course is not always the

best way

you could argue that it’s not it’s not

correct there’s it could be a

completely false like idea right and

what i recommend to you

you may use but you might not use also

but what i’m trying to show you from

this presentation are these three ideas

number one listen to melodies not just

those of main melodies but supporting

ones

and whilst you listen to these melodies

i want you to think about your emotions

right because a lot of music

encapsulates emotion

and while some music may not have that

much emotion that’s okay

but for the majority of music i think

there is some or one piece of music that

probably connects to every person within

this world

and finally be attentive to players

the thing that makes classical music so

much more different from

every other other genre is that it

demands

people to look at how the musician is

playing right

classical music demands us audience

members to watch the person who’s

playing

and seeing what are they trying to say

out of their music

right and of course this is not one

one two three step thing you can just

manage to follow and

you might not follow it you could argue

it’s not correct but i think it’s a very

interesting way

to begin seeing music to begin seeing

classical music

specifically and of course i can’t force

you

to start loving classical music or start

listening to it

but i will encourage you to start giving

it a chance an opportunity

to start thinking about hey why don’t i

just start listening to classical music

and see if i like it i might not like it

but

at least i should try and see and listen

right and you might not ask michael

why should i listen to class music in

today’s modern sense still like what

else what

what other things is are beneficial

besides just listening to

classical music from my own personal

benefit well

there’s so much more and in today’s

world there’s a lot of problems one of

them being

the current pandemic of copen19

you see right now lots of musicians

are suffering from unemployment and in

fact

a study done in 2014 by the league of

american classical orchestras

found that there were over 1 in 224

classical orchestras out there in the us

and they generated

what they found what they generated was

that these orchestras generated

up to 1.8 billion towards our us economy

i think that’s a pretty significant sum

and now

because of the current crisis a lot of

these musicians cannot come together

as groups and spread music for us

and that’s a big problem because

classical music depends

on audience members and when audience

members don’t show up

they don’t have anything to play they

can’t play for anyone

but that’s where you and me you and me

come in

we can start listening to classical

music

when after this pandemic finishes or

maybe when it or maybe not right now

we if we start listening to classical

music we give class and

classical music a bigger chance we

extend its legacy

far beyond ours into the future

generations

to those even maybe cyborgs now isn’t

that an

interesting thought thank you

you