In his book In Defence of Classical Music (ABC Books, 2005), Australian musicologist Andrew Ford lists and discusses some popular misconceptions or cliches related to classical music. I just thought I'd put these out there for members here to comment on. He discusses in detail why these cliches are misleading, but I don't want to infringe copyright by copying all of his chapter, so here is his "list" along with some key quotes detailing Ford's responses to the cliches. Some of them are contradictory, this is simply because many of the cliches out there are exactly like that...
1. You need a special education to understand classical music.
"...you don't need a special education, anyone at any time can appreciate classical music, just by listening to it."
2. With classical music, you should just lie back and let it wash over you.
"As with any worthwhile music, listening is active, not passive. Classical music will not do all the work for you."
3. People who like classical music are snobs.
"Well some of them are. There are also folk-music snobs and techno snobs and blues snobs, God knows, jazz snobs. It is human nature to believe that the things you like are the best."
4. Classical music, especially Mozart, will make you more intelligent.
Ford talks about experiments on lab rats - a certain Mozart piece helps them find their way around a maze. He questions the utility of such experiments & whether this can also be applied to people.
5. Listening to classical music will make you a better human being.
"This is a particularly insidious myth, but fortunately an easy one to dispel. Here is how you do it. Write a list of all those composers from history who were drunks, drug addicts, lechers, liars, debtors, grasping ingrates, appalling paranoid whingers or insufferably arrogant pricks. Now cross their names off the list of all the composers who have ever lived. You will find you are left with the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen and perhaps three or four others. If classical music is composed by reprobates of that order, why should it be morally improving to listen to it?...Art does not affect your morals. Art is art and life is life and if you cannot tell the difference, you are to some degree deluded. And I include in that category fundamentalist wowsers of every religious and political hue."
6. Composers are mysterious and unknowable
"Well, yes and no...I strongly believe that we all compose, all the time. A surprising amount of speech is music. It is how we communicate with each other...The meaning behind human speech is in the music as much as the words. More so, in a way. When we speak, the words can say one thing, the music something else...To that extent, composing is certainly a mystery, but it is a mystery we all share. And the mystery includes saying what music is about."
7. Symphony concerts are intimidating.
"It is often maintained that if only orchestral players were cool and wore jeans, people would flock to concerts. Today's orchestras are determined to seem modern and relevant at all costs. And I do mean all costs: the money spent on image, as opposed to music, would probably astonish most concertgoers...The ritual associated with orchestral concerts - when to clap, when not to talk - are part of the experience. Even the black and white clothes are there to aid the audience's concentration on the music. And if the listener is able to concentrate, and assuming there is money left after the orchestra's image makeover to pay for adequate rehearsal time, the music is frequently thrilling..."
8. Opera is highbrow.
"...Far from requiring a higher degree to appreciate it, much opera benefits from suspension of intellect as well as belief. The plots of comic operas tend towards farce (with a regular admixture of slapstick), while the tragedies are frequently melodramatic tear-jerkers. Of course if you poke around beneath the surface of even the most popular operas - say, those by Donizetti or Verdi - you may begin to discover some of the same complexities that are present in Wagner. But you don't have to do this to have a good time."
9. Chamber music is more intimidating than orchestral music and more highbrow than opera.
"Unless it is intimidating or highbrow to concentrate, this cliche provides yet more nonsense. Concentration is not as easy for people today as it was before television - in other words, when most chamber music was composed. But the concentration required for chamber music is not necessarily just a matter of time - some chamber pieces are quite short - it is an inward sort of concentration...With a few exceptions, chamber music is classical music at its most conversational, at its most intimate and intense. And the experience of chamber music can be equally intimate and intense."
10. Classical music is better than other music.
"Western art music is one of the great achievements of our civilisation in the last millenium, there can be no doubt about it. But there is very little point in comparing Rossini with the Rolling Stones, Elgar with Eminem or Stravinsky with the Scissor Sisters because they have so little in common. One type of music is not inherently superior to another...Classical music is not better than other sorts of music, but different..."
1. You need a special education to understand classical music.
"...you don't need a special education, anyone at any time can appreciate classical music, just by listening to it."
2. With classical music, you should just lie back and let it wash over you.
"As with any worthwhile music, listening is active, not passive. Classical music will not do all the work for you."
3. People who like classical music are snobs.
"Well some of them are. There are also folk-music snobs and techno snobs and blues snobs, God knows, jazz snobs. It is human nature to believe that the things you like are the best."
4. Classical music, especially Mozart, will make you more intelligent.
Ford talks about experiments on lab rats - a certain Mozart piece helps them find their way around a maze. He questions the utility of such experiments & whether this can also be applied to people.
5. Listening to classical music will make you a better human being.
"This is a particularly insidious myth, but fortunately an easy one to dispel. Here is how you do it. Write a list of all those composers from history who were drunks, drug addicts, lechers, liars, debtors, grasping ingrates, appalling paranoid whingers or insufferably arrogant pricks. Now cross their names off the list of all the composers who have ever lived. You will find you are left with the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen and perhaps three or four others. If classical music is composed by reprobates of that order, why should it be morally improving to listen to it?...Art does not affect your morals. Art is art and life is life and if you cannot tell the difference, you are to some degree deluded. And I include in that category fundamentalist wowsers of every religious and political hue."
6. Composers are mysterious and unknowable
"Well, yes and no...I strongly believe that we all compose, all the time. A surprising amount of speech is music. It is how we communicate with each other...The meaning behind human speech is in the music as much as the words. More so, in a way. When we speak, the words can say one thing, the music something else...To that extent, composing is certainly a mystery, but it is a mystery we all share. And the mystery includes saying what music is about."
7. Symphony concerts are intimidating.
"It is often maintained that if only orchestral players were cool and wore jeans, people would flock to concerts. Today's orchestras are determined to seem modern and relevant at all costs. And I do mean all costs: the money spent on image, as opposed to music, would probably astonish most concertgoers...The ritual associated with orchestral concerts - when to clap, when not to talk - are part of the experience. Even the black and white clothes are there to aid the audience's concentration on the music. And if the listener is able to concentrate, and assuming there is money left after the orchestra's image makeover to pay for adequate rehearsal time, the music is frequently thrilling..."
8. Opera is highbrow.
"...Far from requiring a higher degree to appreciate it, much opera benefits from suspension of intellect as well as belief. The plots of comic operas tend towards farce (with a regular admixture of slapstick), while the tragedies are frequently melodramatic tear-jerkers. Of course if you poke around beneath the surface of even the most popular operas - say, those by Donizetti or Verdi - you may begin to discover some of the same complexities that are present in Wagner. But you don't have to do this to have a good time."
9. Chamber music is more intimidating than orchestral music and more highbrow than opera.
"Unless it is intimidating or highbrow to concentrate, this cliche provides yet more nonsense. Concentration is not as easy for people today as it was before television - in other words, when most chamber music was composed. But the concentration required for chamber music is not necessarily just a matter of time - some chamber pieces are quite short - it is an inward sort of concentration...With a few exceptions, chamber music is classical music at its most conversational, at its most intimate and intense. And the experience of chamber music can be equally intimate and intense."
10. Classical music is better than other music.
"Western art music is one of the great achievements of our civilisation in the last millenium, there can be no doubt about it. But there is very little point in comparing Rossini with the Rolling Stones, Elgar with Eminem or Stravinsky with the Scissor Sisters because they have so little in common. One type of music is not inherently superior to another...Classical music is not better than other sorts of music, but different..."