It seems like I just can’t keep from updating this blog! In Miami it was definitely weird, not being able to update the greater online world about my bassoon-ish exploits. Or my crazy larking about.
Hey, these things amuse some people. (And to all of you: I am forever grateful.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about classical musicians and classical music today, probably because I was listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade and am now listening to Radiohead’s In Rainbows. Should classical musicians be listening more or less exclusively to classical music? I’m torn.
For one thing, although I grew up listening to classical music (until I was around eleven, I thought pop music was all kind of dirty), pop music makes it easier for me to relate to the people around me. I can start playing a Beatles track and everyone in the room will catch the drift of whatever I’m trying to express. I can’t always do that with classical music, even if what I’m trying to explain is why the first minute of Rite of Spring always takes my breath away.
Furthermore, I frankly often feel intimidated listening to classical music. I rarely know the theory behind a given piece, and sometimes don’t know the history (yeah, I know this is not the usual complaint), and sometimes other classical musicians seem to act as though these things are required. And sometimes, to be honest, I don’t want to listen to an hour-long symphony. I just don’t have the time or mental energy to process.
But here’s the thing about classical music that always draws me back: It more consistently expresses thoughts and feelings more clearly and beautifully than any other music I can think of. The first movement of Resphigi’s Pines of Rome never fails to bring a smile to my face, and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto always takes me on a wild rollercoaster of emotions that transcends my powers of explanation. Anything by Samuel Barber is guaranteed to hold within it the nuances of so many feelings I don’t have the power to express in any way other than by experiencing that music.
I love these transcendent experiences, but all the same I feel as though the fact that I listen to a variety of music makes these experiences more powerful, and the music that creates them that much more important. And here’s the thing, too: sometimes music can be transcendent that isn’t classical, and sometimes some classical music just isn’t transcendent, to me.
In the end, can I say it’s a bad thing that I’ll listen to that magic second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and then skip over to Andrew Bird’s sultry “Skin Is, My”?
You should know I’m not going to say that. You should know that I’m going to keep doing it — and letting those choices and those moments of transcendent beauty continue to shape me as a bassoonist. Because, seriously? Someone has got to figure out some more sultry bassoon solos. They are way too few and far between.
