Listen to classical music !

Listening to classical music is an art. It requires close and accurate attention, sympathy, imagination and genuine culture. Listening to classical music is an art of high degree. Many derive exquisite enjoyment from it, for classical music is potent and universal in its appeal. To listen intelligently to classical music is an accomplishment few have acquired. Those who are fortunate enough to have been surrounded from childhood up by the choicest gems of the tonal language, and whose minds are of the deceptive order, will insensibly attain a refinement of taste and delicacy of perception no learned dissertation on classical music could afford. An acquaintance with form as the manifestation of law is essential to an intelligent hearing of classical music. The listener should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of classical musical construction from the simplest ballad to the most complex symphony. Having this knowledge it will be possible to receive undisturbed the impressions music has to give, and to distinguish the trivial and commonplace from the noble and beautiful. Classical music is far beyond words, and in attempting to translate it into these we miss its musical meaning, the best that is in it.

Even a well-cultivated ear and taste may often be baffled by the intricacies of a fugue, symphony or other great work of musical art heard for the first time.

The best listener beyond the pale of genius will at times feel as one astray in a labyrinth of beauty to which for the moment no clue appears.

A single representation will rarely suffice to reveal the

full worth of a masterpiece of classical music. By hearing it often, by admitting it, or some reproduction of it, to our own fireside, we will become familiar with its contents and learn truly to know it.

The oftener good classical music is heard the more completely it will be appreciated. Therefore, they listen best to music who hear the best continually. The assertion is often heard that a person must be educated up to an enjoyment of high class music. Certainly, one who has heard nothing else must be educated down to an enjoyment of ragtime, with its crude rhythms.

Beyond knowledge comes the intuitive feeling which is enriched by knowledge. Through it we may feel the breath of life, the spiritual appeal, which belongs to every great work of art and which must forever remain inexplicable.

Many are content to listen to classical music for the mere sensuous impression it creates as it wraps itself about the inner being, lulling a perturbed spirit to rest, or awakening longing and aspiration, joy and sadness, according to the nature of the music and the hearer’s mood. Some even take pleasure in formulating into words the sensations evoked by the ebb and flow of the tonal waves, and fancy they are thus deriving

intellectual profit from music.

The idea so largely accepted that classical music is an unfathomable mystery, like all half truths has wrought much mischief, and has greatly retarded musical progress in social life. Behind the Divine Art, as behind

Religion, lies the inscrutable mystery of Life, and in both there is a

Holy of Holies only the consecrated may enter. Before the portals of

this are reached there is a broad, fertile field for intellectual

activity that all may work to advantage, preparing the way to the inner

sanctuary.

 

About the Author

http://www.lesvoiesdelamusique.com

Bach / Art of fugue – Contrapunctus01 / Glenn Gould

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