Trashy Pearls | My Music Blog

Archive for the ‘Classic Music’ Category

ght (c) 2009 Jason Boehle

Any classical musician or lover of classical music will tell you that Europe was the birth place to most of the classical greats we know and appreciate today.

Unlike poets, writers, or artists, classical composers and musicians achieved notoriety for their works within their life time, and their music continues to flood our air waves. Some of greatest composers of all time, Tchaikovsky who wrote many great plays including the Nutcracker to Vivaldi who wrote The Four Seasons, were born and trained in Europe.

Any trip to Europe should include a live classical music performance, preferably at a festival. Today, there are many classical festivals to choose from, all celebrating the long European lineage of legends and looking forward to what the classical world holds in its future.

1. Bach Festival (www.bachfestleipzig.de ) Leipzig, Germany- Enjoy the sounds of the renowned composer with performances by the Academy of Ancient Music. There will also be performances from Handel and Vivaldi. Free daytime organ recitals will be available.

2. Puccini Festival (www.puccinifestival.it ) Torre del Lago, Italy- To satisfy your craving for high notes and drama, treat yourself to an opera performance. Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Puccini’s birth, the Puccinni Festival is full of performances from Puccinni’s repertoire. In addition to seeing great performances, you will be able to take a tour of Puccini’s lake side villa, which has been preserved as a museum, open to the public.

3. Salzburg Festival (www.salzburgfestival.at) Salzburg, Austria- Home to some of the most impressive churches and performance halls, Austria offers a culture rich in classical music. The Vienna Philharmonic will perform many works, including music by Wagner and Messiaen.

4. Monteverdi Festival(www.teatroponchielli.it) Cremona, Italy – In honor of one of the godfathers of Opera, Claudio Monteverdi, this 3 week festival mixes in many of the more famous 17 century classical works with the dramatic romanticism of the time period.

5. Richard Wagner Festival (www.bayreuther-festspiele.de) Bayreuth, Germany – Listen to the ear pleasing notes of Christian Thielemann who sets the atmosphere with the Ring Cycle. While you’re there, visit the eloquent Baroque Opera House and immerse yourself in the Hermitage gardens.

Europe has a strong appreciation for classical music, so seeing a live performance of your favorite classical performer is feasible for a quick European jaunt or a lengthy tour of the continent. There are both expensive performances and free performances because Europeans truly believe that classical music should be shared amongst everyone.

The average person considers music to be a singular language. It is one of the oldest vehicles of communication, capable of expressing emotion and often having a profound effect on its listeners. However, the ability to appreciate music in its multiple forms is often ignored. We agree that bilingual people have an advantage over those who only know one language. In October 2001, the Juilliard School of Music, renowned for its unparalleled classical instructors and performers, added jazz to its academic curriculum. The world’s finest music institution is only one of a growing number of supporters backing a combined education in both classical and jazz for children and young musicians.

To express oneself in any language, one must first understand the language phonetically (learning by ear) before learning to read and write. To read and write a language, one must be familiar with its structure. In parallel, someone foreign to a language may have a more structured and scientific understanding than a native speaker. As a child, I was always fascinated when my uncle, a doctor of linguistics, would ask me, “How do you say that in English?” He was asking how to express the language colloquially and with English as my first language, it was natural to me.

Children learn foreign languages naturally by ear. On the other hand, adults tend to learn languages logically and methodically, referring back to their native language for comparison. It is obvious which method is easier; if one is brought up in a specific culture, it is easier to learn that culture’s language via naturally rather than via studious reading. Furthermore, when one understands and grows up in their native culture, one can understand the nuances of its language. For example, English speakers have varied dialects that differ depending on geography. There are noticeable differences in dialects between people from Canada’s west coast, east coast and the prairies. They all speak the same language but exhibit nuances that are inherent within their cultural structure.

Understanding music requires a similar method. Before learning to read or sight-read, one should be familiar with pitch. However, this is rarely the case in music education where the emphasis is on reading and not listening. Both classical and jazz artists employ a musical alphabet, but they use it in different ways. Jazz is a sophisticated language that is commonly overlooked in lieu of a “traditional” classical music upbringing. Growing up as the only Korean children in school, my sister and I were told by our Grade 1 teacher not to speak Korean at home, supposedly as it would confuse our understanding of English. Nevertheless, our father spoke English to us, and our mother spoke Korean. As a result, we can both understand Korean but not speak the language. This example demonstrates why I firmly believe children must learn both musical languages – that is, jazz and classical.

le have the same complaints about classical music and poetry. Some say classical music bores them and poetry just does not make any sense. In reality, they suffer a problem very similar to culture shock, or in other words, they have not learned how to appreciate poetry or classical music. I should be clear that most people fall into this category. Even people who have studied the arts often times do not put forth the energy required to appreciate some classical music or poetry. A look at how people listen and appreciate might help to understand what a listener or reader really has to do if they want to avoid being bored to tears by T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” or Pier Gynt’s Hall of the Mountain King. How to Listen Spoiled by popular music, most people have never been taught how to listen to classical music. Popular music tends to consist of about three chords, has a repetitive ‘hook’, and nearly always consists of a four-four beat, three verses, and a chorus, except when it’s even simpler than that. Most popular music will repeat the important bits multiple times with a catchy rhythm just in case you didn’t hear it the first time, so you can learn the words to a song without ever really listening to it. In fact, anyone who happened to sit down and do nothing but listen intently to all the chord progressions, the lyrics, and the subtleties of the popular genre will most likely get really bored, really fast. Although they will come away knowing the song by heart. Which just emphasizes my point, popular music teaches all the wrong lessons for listening to classical music. Classical music also has a melodic ‘hook’, often call a motif. This motif goes around and around, but every time suffers important alterations. The casual listener often finds himself bored to tears as it seemingly repeats itself over and over, but only because s/he is only superficially listening. More careful attention reveals that the composer takes that melody and flips it upside down, sideways, backwards, high, low, fast, slow, and finally pulls it right side up again, all to the counterpoint of an entire orchestra. In other words, you cannot do other things while listening to classical music. Cleaning the house to the sound of the Beatles will work fine, but listening to Mozart’s Requiem with the vacuum cleaner going will make it range from inaudible to noise. The secret to enjoyment lies in paying attention and ignoring outside distractions. I won’t promise that this way of listening will make classical your favorite music, but at least you will know what you’ve been missing. Reading Poetry Poetry compares to popular novels like classical music compares to popular music. Reading a poem one time through and then saying, “I don’t get it” only emphasizes that s/he doesn’t know how to read poetry. Try the following process: Read the poem, read it again, stopping to take note of allusions and new words, look them up and read it again. You’ll appreciate it more. For more information on a classical music, visit http://concertmicroblog.com and http://poetrymicroblog.com