keninabu!

Listening to Beethoven while grading physics homeworks

I've forgotten how nice it is to listen to classical music from a long time back.

There's something stirring in the music, which are like pop songs without words, if you think about it.

I remember when I was in the Kennedy Center in DC, listening to the National Symphony, there was a talk about Beethoven: a talk cum performance of Beethoven's 5th, which I find extremely cliched. But it was interesting, because I had never really listened to anyone talk about the music before, in a structured fashion like a seminar.

The conductor put the music in context, highlighting bits that are normally buried beneath the key melodies, like the recurrence of a theme in a supporting instrument like, say, the trombone or the double bass, by asking these instruments to play their parts alone.

People forget that this was once the pop music of its day. And in those days, apparently NEWSPAPERS would publish music scores in the same way newspapers now publish crossword puzzles: it actually helped to sell the newspapers. Of course, this implies that the typical man in the street then was much more well versed in music than the man today.

Not surprising, really: these were the days before the telly, before the internet. Their only forms of entertainment were each other, and I wouldn't be surprised if many a child was forced to play music in front of the parent as entertainment...

Makes me wonder: 150 years down the road, will Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera only be listened to by upper-class connoisieurs of "good taste"?

posted by keninabu @ 4:15 PM