Classical Music History
4 December 2007 Tonya L Thompson
Classical Music History is crucial to understanding what Classical Music means to us when we listen to music today. Here's a brief introduction!
Many people associate Classical music with their memories and experiences, and it is sometimes said that Classical Music is history’s soundtrack. While this is a fantastic way to view it, few people understand the connotations of such an idea until it reaches a more personal level. Will you ever forget the song that played on your first date, during your first kiss… the music that filled the air when you first entered Notre Dame or Westminster Cathedral? That soundtrack of our lives - the melodies and verses that weave through our daily grind - is the undeniable force that colours our view of the world. Who hasn’t turned to music to give texture and background to an emotion felt at a particular moment? Or, who hasn’t heard a song, only to be transported immediately to a time and place in their life that was almost forgotten, the music like an aural time machine - and haunting?
Musical art lends depth to our experiences
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While the sentiment might sound trite, this is the literal magic of music. The composer’s art lends depth to our experiences - violins that cry with us, or drums that beat with the impassioned pace of our hearts. For the empathetic listener, there is no escaping the sadness of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the despair of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, or the hallowed reverence of Elgar’s Ave Verum Corpus. Elgar himself quoted poet John Ruskin on the score of Dream of Gerontius: "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another. My life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw, and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." What these men “saw, and knew” shaped their art, as their art shapes our own worldview and experiences.
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Yet, this is what beginner courses Classical Music History often fail to mention. The narrative of history’s most beloved musical works goes far beyond the biographies of the composers. The very etymology of the word history—from the Latin Historia—is “story”. There is a “story” behind every piece, every canon, that includes events that surrounded the composer and affected the art through which he or she spoke. Barber saw the bleakness of the Great Depression through the blurred eyes of a romantic. Beethoven believed strongly in the ideals of the Enlightenment, while realizing first-hand the hard truths of loving someone outside of his social class during an Age when rational thought was esteemed above emotion. Elgar saw the disillusionment and horrors of World War I, leading him to eventually hate his own ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ March No.1.
Elgar begain to associate his 'Pomp and Circumstance' March with the frustrations and upset of war
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The revelation that music brings to us is that this same “story” resounds in our own time: the wars, poverty, and struggles between ideals and reason, faith and logic. The same muse that found these composers distinctly finds us as we listen to their work, and in that sameness, we get a glimpse of the congruence of history, and the tie that binds us to our past. The love that inspired Beethoven’s masterpieces becomes the muse of the pianist who plays them, and the soundtrack in the lives of an audience who has also known love and loss. The same horrors of war that inspired Elgar to seek a higher power humbles us all, and resonates within us on a deeply personal level. When studying Classical music history, we must first grasp the importance of the world and events that shaped the lives of those we study; only then does the music truly become immortal.
