Why Classical Music
'An amazing introduction to classical music which I am sure inspired them to re-think the bad press the name ‘classical’ has. The use of live music with a professional and fabulous cellist really clinched the show, they were demanded to be a great audience and listening was taught and experienced in depth.' Primary 7 Teacher, Wardie Primary School, 2007
Children will often have a huge resistance to classical music. They usually consider it to be boring, or for old people. They often say that nothing happens in it, or that it is rubbish. Who can blame then when they can listen to Rap, Rave, Dance, Pop and a whole host of fantastic, exciting and immediately funky music styles, sung by people that look modern, cool and how they, as children, want to look. Never underestimate the power of the contemporary image.
But children can still comprehend and make meaningful connections with classical music even though they may continue to say, ‘I don’t like it’. This doesn’t really matter. Connecting to Music is not about children learning to ‘like’ classical music, or even to understand it in a technical way. Rather what is important is to cultivate a sense of self in the child and engage them in a personal and creative way with the need to explore some of the complexities and paradoxes of being human. Music offers us a bridge to cross in meeting and exploring some of these complexities and paradoxes.
'The workshops exceeded my expectations. They have had very little exposure to different types of music and…they accepted these new genres without complaint.'
P7 Teacher, Edinburgh Primary School, Summer 2006
But why use classical music to stimulate this process?
Firstly the Edinburgh International Festival has always dealt in the business of classical music. Every year it brings some of the greatest musicians to Edinburgh to perform work by some of the greatest composers the world has ever known – all, as the original founders said, to ‘provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit’. Just as the founders were passionate about this message in 1947, so today we want children everywhere to be able to share in the wonderful experience that classical music has to offer.
Secondly, musicologist Julian Johnson in his book Who Needs Classical Music? (Oxford University Press, 2002) defines classical music as, ‘music that functions as art’. Classical music is sometimes known as Western Art Music, so the answer to the question - Why classical music? - lies in its name. It is art.
Johnson goes on to say, 'Art speaks to a fundamental human longing to realize ourselves as something greater than we are, a longing that forms both the core and the origin of genuine artworks'.
We need to speak to that longing to realize something other than the ordinary. We all need to allow ourselves to be a little bit like artists, to perceive and experience the world intimately and individually as they do. To hear, to see, to think and to feel a little more subjectively. With western art music, or classical music, we can learn to appreciate the skill and artistry of the great artists who created it, while using the unique sound worlds they created to help move us on a deeper and more emotional level than that offered by the everyday. Listening to music can help put us in touch with aspects of ourselves that we can often forget about or not even be aware of.
As the great conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim says in his book with Edward Said, Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (Bloomsbury, 2004) of the music of Beethoven, ‘It is a parallel of the inner process of the innermost thoughts and feelings of a human being'.
Try listening to practically anything by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827), but especially: Symphonies 1 to 9 (especially 3, 7 and 9) and his Piano Concertos 1 to 5 (especially 4 and 5). To listen to an extract from Beethoven's 9th Symphony click here.
To get basic information about classical music and audio excerpts to listen to, look at Essentials of Music in Related Links.
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