Headbanging with Beethoven

I'mma let you finish, but Beethoven is the best composer of all time. Of all time!

There. Post over.

... ... ...

Ok, so not really. Beethoven is among my most common go to composers. It's really not hard to figure out why, either. He speaks clearly, directly, and passionately. He's not afraid to get up in your grill and shake you by the collar until you break a vertebrae, but then he'll show you the most sublime stuff afterward that you realize that's what he was trying to get you to hear all along. You just weren't listening and he got frustrated. That's all.

If there's one thing I can say about Beethoven, it's his ability to speak to an incredibly wide range of people. Did you know the Japanese sing Ode to Joy, like, all the time? Did you know Beethoven is usually listed among the favorite listenings of metal heads of all stripes? Heavy metal, Death Metal, Black Metal... In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize metal heads have a somewhat peculiar affinity for classical music in general, not just Beethoven.

Perhaps it's the fact that metal is more virtuosic than your average bear. They don't just want the picnic basket, they also want the ranger's head on a pike. Not to say that metal is more complex than pop or regular rock, necessarily. It, like almost everything in life, depends on the case. But usually, metal solos are wickedly difficult to perform. Listen to the riffs of Metallica in their prime and compare them to Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, and you can probably hear some resemblance. The primary differences are modality and amplification.

Speaking of amplification, there is no doubt in my mind if you gave Beethoven a tube amp, he would blow the thing out in, like, 15 seconds.

But moving on. The main reason I bring this up is simple. The old guard of classical music was, and still is in many ways, quite exclusionary. Either it was classical and good, or it wasn't. Nowadays, that is changing, but I think we can do a lot to speed up the process. I think the main thing getting in the way of classical music's popularity is image. The idea that classical music is some stuffy, moth-balled, hoity-toity music that is irrelephant to the demands of contemporary culture.

Some of this is valid criticism. Stuffy? Perhaps. In fact, likely. Classical music performances are rife with hidden rules and rituals that are not intuitive to newcomers. Also, for some reason, clapping between movements of a longer work is received like somebody just kicked a puppy. Harumph harumph harumph! Clapping between movements! What an ignorant neophyte! Go to your shame hole and think of what you have done! Harumph harumph harumph! As for moth balls, well... It is not unlikely some sort of artificial preservation is going on with certain people in orchestras nowadays. I'm not going to point fingers, but maybe possibly we should rethink our idea of tenured musicians.

But irrelephant? First, that's not even a word. Second, I will paraphrase Steven Fry: "If you cannot find a way to connect with music of the past, that is more a reflection of your own lack of creativity than a fault of the music of Bach." Now, I personally think Mr. Fry is being a little harsh, there. People walk into a concert with assumptions about how music works, and sometimes classical music can, in fact, be rather overwhelming to a new listener. Heck, I didn't like Brahms until I was 25, and that was after studying music for 14 years. However, I think Mr. Fry has something of a point. What we have, here, is a failure to communicate.

How do we bring people into the fold? The primary focus has been on 'music appreciation.' This is one of those well-meaning but utterly misguided attempts to connect with people that has plagued classical music since the late 20th century. Lets put it this way. Do you think people "appreciate" the music they listen to over and over again? No! They love it. Otherwise, they wouldn't listen to it more than once. Do we want people to merely appreciate classical music? No! We want them to love it! That's what really brings people back, is the connection they make to it. Trying to educate people about how classical music works might open some doors, but the interesting details lurking beneath the surface (things like form, melody, harmony, progression, counterpoint, etc) are all secondary to the fact that the composers loved the music they wrote. All of those details are merely technical points which are incidental to that underlying state of mind. Bach wouldn't sign ever piece "With thanks to God" unless he really, really loved what he was doing.

So if not music appreciation, then what? How about this. One of my friends learned of my utter distaste for opera. He told me: "Look, full operas are dumb. You don't really go for the whole thing. You go for the one or two arias that you really like. Then, after a while, you start seeing how those arias connect to the other stuff around it. Pretty soon, you won't think opera is dumb any more."

Arias: They're like gateway drugs.

But he has a point. When you look at concert programs, they usually focus on one or two large pieces, with maybe a smattering of smaller stuff. But if we're trying to attract new people, this is exactly wrong. They've never heard classical music! They don't know what's out there! They don't realize how diverse and multifaceted classical music is! If you only ever present one or two pieces at a time, and new audience members don't connect with them, they're not coming back. But if you present a sampler platter... Now we're talking.

Then, a new audience member will hear the stark contrasts between Baroque and Romantic, Classical and Modern, Empfindsamer Stil and aleatory. Then, maybe, just maybe! One or two of those pieces will hook them. They'll go, "I want to hear more of whatever the heck that was." And you give it to them.

This is all well and good, but ultimately, it comes down to one thing. Passion. And this brings me back to Beethoven. Beethoven, more than any other composer I can think of (except possibly Shostakovich) knew how to cut to what was important. As musicians trying to bring these pieces alive for a new generation, we have to do the same. It is not enough to play the notes. It is not enough to play with feeling. We must play like our lives depend on it, like we will die if we do not say what we have to say. We have to pick people up by the collar, shake them, and show them the heights and depths classical music has to offer. We have to try again and again with piece after different piece to find a way to connect with each audience, one person at a time. And we have to trust that the composers we near worship truly had something worthwhile to say.

And if we find we can't perform in such a way? Then perhaps we'll have to admit that the composers we deify didn't have something worth saying. How do I know that's wrong? Because every fiber of my being revolts against such an idea. But it's not the audience's job to find the connection. It's ours.

Post-Script:
People head bang to metal because they're lost in the music. When people literally move to classical music, we'll know we're on the right track.