Declassified: A Low-Key Guide to the High-Strung World of Classical Music
320
Declassified: A Low-Key Guide to the High-Strung World of Classical Music
320Hardcover
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Overview
Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch’s life-long fascination with classical music has taken her through Juilliard and into the shiny world of symphony halls and international concert tours. She’s loved classical music her whole life. But she’s also hated classical music her whole life. After all, if you can like Beyoncé without liking Bieber, you can certainly like Brahms without liking Bach—especially since they were born 148 years apart and the thing we call “classical music” is really just centuries of compositions shoved into one hodge-podge of a genre.
In Declassified, Warsaw-Fan Rauch blows through the cobwebs of elitism and exclusion and invites everyone to love and hate this music as much as she does. She offers a backstage tour of the industry and equips you for every listening scenario, covering: the 7 main compositional periods (even the soul-crushingly depressing Medieval period), a breakdown of the instruments and their associated personality types (apologies to violists and conductors), what it’s like to be a musician at the highest level (it’s hard), how to steal a Stradivarius (and make no money in the process), and when to clap during a live performance (also: when not to). Declassified cheekily demystifies the world of High Art while making the case that classical music matters, perhaps now more than ever.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780593331460 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 10/11/2022 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 360,363 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
classical music isn't a thing
A Very Biased Overview of 1,400 Years of Music
When I was a toddler, I risked all kinds of hearing loss so that I could lie under my father's piano, listening to him play Bach's Goldberg Variations. This was before I'd seen The Silence of the Lambs.
It was also before I discovered the Queen of the Night, before I developed those throat nodules, and before I started violin lessons. It was back when I was a bit like that little girl from MontrŽal-when Bach was just "beautiful music," and my ears were little more than enthusiastic sponges.
Bach was my favorite composer for much of my childhood. His pieces were filled with mysterious puzzles and dark, echoing caverns and those dazzling blades of sunlight that pierced through the clouds on gray days. All things that fascinated me.
There was also something about his music-its puzzle-like quality, perhaps-that challenged me to create my own. So one day, a few years into my musical studies (when I was five or six), I sat down with a pad of manuscript paper and one of those tiny golf pencils that are always lying around my parents' house, determined to compose the world's greatest piece for violin. I scratched away for what felt like hours-experimenting with different combinations of notes, tearing off pages and dramatically crumpling them up, crossing things out and rewriting until I reached perfection. When I'd crafted a whole phrase, I brought it to my dad. Some of my noteheads were on backward, I knew, but the music, I was sure, was incredible.
And I was right. It was incredible. It just wasn't original. It was the first two measures of Bach's G-Minor Violin Sonata.
Vivaldi was another one of my favorites at that age. I didn't love everything of his-I didn't care for "Spring" or "Summer" or anything you'd hear in a commercial for cat food-but his double cello concerto, his aria "Vedro con mio diletto," and his "Winter" all shared a clarity of sound, a rhythmic drive, and a sometimes-dark intensity that drew me to them. I loved Vitali, too. And Corelli.
Baroque music-we'll get to what that is in a bit-was my jam.
Do you know what wasn't my jam? Medieval music. I hated Medieval music.
The thing is, though, that for years I didn't know I hated it. Or rather: I didn't know Medieval music was a thing that existed. All I knew was that once every so often, a sparse, skeletal-sounding piece-the musical equivalent of SNL's Debbie Downer-would issue from those Quad speakers and suddenly the sky would turn black and all the plants in our house would wilt and all the joy in my tiny child-heart would instantly shrivel up. Then the piece would end and everything would go back to normal.
I'd never heard of Baroque music, either. I knew that I loved Bach and Vivaldi and Vitali and Corelli, but I didn't understand that there was a link between these composers-that they all belonged to the same group. It wasn't until later, when I was eightish, and my mom put up a poster in our bathroom outlining the six different periods of classical music-that I made the connection. That bathroom was where everything started to come together in my mind-where I realized that nearly all of the music I hated came from one single era. And when I realized this, I was pissed no one had told me sooner-because with that one word-"Medieval"-I could have spared myself hours of torment.
Which is why we're covering the compositional periods here, in chapter 1.
Classical Music Isn't a Thing
My kid was a much cuter toddler than I was. He had to be-because feeding him was a pain in the ass. He wouldn't eat anything that was green. It didn't matter whether it was an avocado or a slice of kiwi or the last of the pistachio macarons that Dadda brought home for Valentine's Day. If it was tinted or flecked with anything from celadon to emerald, he fed it to the trashcan monster before anyone could get it within smelling distance of his face.
To him, the logic was clear: he'd tried a green food once before and hadn't liked it-so it stood to reason that he'd find all other green foods equally objectionable.
Most people approach classical music in a similar way. They've heard snippets of it in movies and commercials and elevators-snippets, mind you, that are often chosen to support whatever stereotype said movie, commercial, or elevator is trying to promote-and they think they know how they feel about the entire body of work. But just as kale tastes nothing like Granny Smith apples, which taste nothing like pistachio macarons, Mozart sounds nothing like Shostakovich, which sounds nothing like Wagner. (Who, by the way, was a giant asshole.)
Classical music, as most people think of it, isn't a real thing. As I said in the intro, it's really just centuries of (all sorts of) music shoved into one hodgepodge of a genre. It encompasses hundreds of contrasting musical styles. Sometimes I say things like "classical music is beautiful" or "I love classical music" (turn back, like, three pages), but I find plenty of "classical" pieces truly unbearable. Like everything that came out of the Medieval period.
People seem to expect this kind of picking and choosing when it comes to other genres. You can like Beyoncé without liking Justin Bieber. And most people, I believe, like the Beatles without liking Nickelback. But ironically, the differences between Beyoncé and Bieber or the Beatles and Nickelback are far less drastic than the harmonic and rhythmic differences between Monteverdi and late Schoenberg or Debussy and Bach. (And I'm not even mentioning-yet-the differences between quartets and operas or piano sonatas and symphonies-or the differences created by the musicians who actually perform these works.)
The point is: you don't have to like all classical music in order to be allowed to listen to some of it.
My dream for you, insofar as this book is concerned, is not for you to be able to say, at the end of it, "I like classical music"-but for you to be able to say, rather, "I like Beethoven." Or "I like Rachmaninoff." Or "I appreciate the impeccable proportions and lyricism of Haydn and Mozart, but I prefer these attributes in the edgier, quirkier, more harmonically dissonant context of, say, Prokofiev during his neoclassical phase."
Only, please don't actually say that unless you're speaking to someone who already hates you.
Compositional Periods
There are, in fact, two "classical musics."
I know. First I said there was no classical music and now I'm saying there are two. Just bear with me for a minute.
At first, there really was no classical music. But then, people-people who are dead, so we can't yell at them-came in and started labeling things.
Classical Music the Genre, in its broadest definition, encompasses most of the Western music composed between AD 500 and 1900-ish, as well as all of that music composed after 1900-ish that stems from the same tradition (i.e., not pop, not jazz, not folk). Most people, though, when they speak of "classical music," mean Western music composed between 1600 and 1900, plus the music of a handful of composers after that stretch.
Then there's the Classical period, which lies within the frame of the larger genre, spanning from approximately 1730 to 1820. Both the Classical period and the classical genre are labels invented by later generations (the composers of this period, like Mozart and Haydn, for example, didn't think of themselves as "classical" composers)-but the Classical period is the more useful label, for reasons I will explain below.
Composers, like pop artists and bands, have their own unique sounds. These can even shift-and often do-over the course of a composer's life. But there are also larger, universal musical styles and aesthetic trends that flourish during each era-and in the classical world we mark these trends, as they apply to music, with compositional periods.
The trends of these eras aren't isolated. They're a reflection and a part of society's broader mood swings-like fashion, speech, artistic movements, and so on. One of my early violin teachers, a strict but likable Polish woman whose only weakness was for red wine, used to have me study the contemporary art and architecture of whichever compositions she assigned me. It was a welcome break from the usual drill work she demanded-and a great excuse to stare at period clothes and naked bodies. But it was also fascinating to see how Bach's compositions echoed the religious formality of his seventeenth-century surroundings; how Mozart's works reflected the balance, proportion, and relative restraint seen in the architecture and artwork of the late 1700s; and how, over the course of the next two centuries, composers and artists moved herdlike toward expressivity and romanticism and then on to the abstract and nontraditional.
While there are still significant differences between the styles of individual composers within each time frame, the broader trends serve as helpful guidelines for anyone looking to determine or expand upon their listening preferences. If you like Mozart's general sound, you may also like the sounds of Haydn and Beethoven (during the latter's early and middle periods in particular)-or if you like Bach, the logical next step for you would be to sample Handel and Vivaldi-and so on and so forth. It's possible that these stylistic preferences even carry across artistic mediums: that those who appreciate the pensiveness and sublimity of Caspar David Friedrich's landscapes might gravitate toward Brahms, while fans of Monet might enjoy the glimmering scintillation of Debussy. Either way, a basic overview of these periods and stylistic movements is key to navigating the genre.
The seven basic periods that constitute the classical genre are: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque,* Classical,* Romantic,* 20th-Century, and Contemporary.
The three periods I've starred (Baroque, Classical, and Romantic) make up what is known as the "Common Practice Period." This contains most of the household names of the repertoire-your Tchaikovskys, your Mozarts, your Beethovens, and what have you. But in fact, the word "common" here, has nothing to do with popularity or renown. The "common" in "Common Practice Period" refers to the standardized (shared) practices adhered to by the composers of these eras-and more specifically, to the sound that we define as tonal.
The periods after the Common Practice Period (20th-Century and Contemporary) are of equal importance to the repertoire and include many names you're likely to recognize-like Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Hans Zimmer. The Medieval and Renaissance periods, on the other hand, while crucial in laying the groundwork for the music that followed, are generally considered fringe territory.
As for what all these periods sound like...
The best way to find out is to listen to them, preferably with a scotch. As much as I'd like to spare you the agony that is Medieval music, I don't want you to take my word for it that it's awful. Some of you may well love it-and it's your reaction that's important.
So here are some listening lists-one per compositional period-along with some quick facts and biased descriptions. Please keep in mind that: (a) all of the pieces listed below contain a wide range of characters and sounds, so what you hear at the beginning won't necessarily resemble what you'll be hearing half a minute or several minutes into the music, and (b) these lists, along with the others you'll find in this book, were my equivalent of Sophie's Choice. If you don't make use of them, my sacrifices will have been for nothing.
The Medieval Period
Time frame: AD 500-1400 (liberally) or 1150-1400 (popularly, if "popular" is a word that can be applied here)
Notable composers: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), Léonin (1150-ish-1200-ish), Pérotin (1155-ish-1205-ish), Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)
* Hildegard von Bingen was a woman. Enjoy the gender diversity; you won't get another taste of it for a while.
What it sounds like: Misery. Despair. Oppression. The Medieval period, as you've probably learned from history classes and/or computer games involving armored trolls and buxom elves, was a dark time. Its music was dark, too. This may be because it reflects the darkness of the environment from which it stemmed, but I would not be at all surprised to learn that it was, in fact, the cause of this darkness. Some of the pieces from this era are actually kind of cool, but the vast majority sound like the musical embodiment of the bubonic plague.
Early music was modal rather than tonal, meaning that it was based on alternative scales that predate our modern concept of harmony. They were a bit like prototypes of the scales we use now: eerie, children's-toy prototypes with wonky, soulless eyes and chillingly proportioned bodies. One of the more popular modes of the time was the Dorian mode: the single most depressing thing mankind has ever invented. I can't explain why this particular selection of notes is so upsetting, but if you've ever been in a very cheerful mood and then been confronted with the song "Scarborough Fair" and suddenly found yourself looking for some rope to wrap around a ceiling joist in the barn you don't have, you already know what I'm talking about. That is what the Dorian mode does to people. Which is why I always avoid music from the Medieval period-and Simon and Garfunkel-at all costs.
This period also encompasses Gregorian chant, an early form of liturgical music developed by the Roman Catholic Church. It's kind of like the primordial ooze of classical music. You've probably heard it before-if nowhere else then in that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the monks process by, droning in unison and hitting their faces periodically with planks of wood. Incidentally, this is exactly how I would react if I had to spend my days singing Gregorian chant.
What it might sound like to someone who hates it less than I do: Catacombs. Dark soulfulness. A lone tree stripped of its leaves. The search for reason. Or, perhaps, acceptance of the human condition-of the darkness of winter-of cold and hunger and pain.
What it sounds like, literally:
"Ave Maria, O auctrix vite"-Hildegard von Bingen
"Nunc aperuit nobis"-Hildegard von Bingen
"Je vivroie liement"-Guillaume de Machaut (BEWARE THE DORIAN MODE)
"Beata viscera"-Pérotin
"Viderunt omnes"-Pérotin
If you want to listen to Gregorian chant, just look up "Gregorian chant." It literally all sounds the same.
The Renaissance Period
Time frame: 1400-1600
Notable composers: Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474), Josquin de Prez (1450/55-1521), Thomas Tallis (1505-1585), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594), William Byrd (1539/40-1623), John Dowland (1563-1626), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
What it sounds like: A field trip to Medieval Times. It’s no wonder that Medieval-themed places use Renaissance-inspired music for their shows; no one would come if they used real Medieval scores. Or, at least, no one would come back because they’d all have killed themselves on the way home.
A lot of Renaissance music evokes court jesters and jig-like dances, but what I like most about this period are its songs and choral works. My hatred of the preceding era makes the celestial-sounding sonorities of Thomas Tallis all the more uplifting; his music sounds, to me, like the first rays of hope after a full millennium of utter wretchedness—like the first green buds emerging from the branches, or pushing up through the frozen earth. I’m not an expert on western religion, but if I had to make a guess based purely on shifts in the musical landscape, I’d say that at some point between the Medieval and Renaissance eras, religious officials started focusing a bit less on Hell and eternal damnation and a bit more on Heaven and salvation. It should be noted, however, that this period still offers plenty of pieces written in the Dorian mode for those of you looking to jumpstart your instant and lasting depressions.
Interestingly, many of the songs—and by this I mean compositions for single voice and accompaniment—from this era are much closer to pop songs in terms of structure, length, and harmonic simplicity than the compositions of the next few centuries. This is probably why Sting recorded an album of 16th century songs with lutenist Edin Karamazov back in 2006. Commercially, the album didn’t do as well as some of his others, but his performance of John Dowland’s “Come Again” (the same song my parents used against me as a weapon of embarrassment in their Words and Music class) did convince me that he deserves his status as a sex icon. So at least I don’t have to waste time arguing with people about that anymore.
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
1 Classical Music Isn't a Thing 1
A Very Biased Overview of 1,400 Years of Music
2 Talent Isn't a Thing, Either 31
Okay, Fine, So It's a Thing, but It's Less of a Thing Than You Think
3 Classical Music Is for Snobs 49
But It's Also for You
4 Conductors Are Assholes 61
And Other Popular Archetypes of the Classical Music Industry
5 Million-Dollar Baby Grands (and Violins) 85
The Literal Price of Excellence
6 Welcome to the Jailyard 103
The Truth About Competition in Classical Music
7 It's Easy to Get Lost 119
Navigating a Composition-and a Career in Classical Music
8 Sometimes There Are Curses 135
Beethoven's Hair, Mozart's Requiem, and Other Superstitions of the Classical Universe
9 They're Not All Symphonies 149
All the Pretty (Kinds of) Pieces
10 Romantic in the Candle-Lined-Hot-Tub Sense of the Word 181
Famous (and Not So Famous) Love Stories of Classical Music
11 Here Comes the Bride 205
The I Dos and I Don'ts of Wedding and Event Music
12 How to Be a Listener 223
How to Hear (and Truly Appreciate) Classical Music
Acknowledgments 257
One More Viola Joke 269
Glossary 271
Bibliography 281
Index 283
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