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Chapter 2

Why, Why, Why?

Baggage handling

However much you stick your head in the sand, or maintain a hermit-like existence, it is very hard not to experience some classical music in your life – even if it is while waiting for your bank to answer the telephone. Subconsciously, we all build up an impression of what this world of music is like, and the very idea of ‘classical’ begins to gather a lot of baggage and preconceptions, what with its penguin suits, clapping regulations, and people waving sticks around.

The path to understanding is riddled with such potholes. Classical music is an activity that can trip you up with unexpected difficulty or drag you down with the weight of a piece you don’t understand. Like English spelling it has its own idiosyncrasies and traditions that must simply be learnt.

That said, it may comfort you to know that there are many traditions in classical music that even some musicians don’t fully understand: Why is a violin made in that particular shape? Why do opera singers do that wobbly thing? I’ll deal with wobbly opera voices in Chapter 10 on singing, but this chapter aims to answer other bothersome questions. It’s not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the queries that most often come my way.

Is classical music for rich people?

Children ask this, adults ask this – everyone asks this – and I wish there was a simple answer. I strongly feel that the music is simply music and can be enjoyed by anyone – but the history of music reveals a complex relationship with money and royalty.

Classical music has relied on the sponsorship and support of benefactors throughout its history. The first examples of written music (as opposed to improvised) were paid for by the Church, and indeed the Church is a source of income for musicians to this day. By the Baroque era (late 1600s to 1750) and Classical era (1750–1800) (more of which later) the most important patronages came from royalty. The ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV enlisted the services of composer Jean-Baptiste Lully; Joseph Haydn had a generous sponsor in Prince Nikolaus Esterházy; and both Mozart and Beethoven received money from Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria.

Musicians have always tugged at the coat tails of the rich, who have in turn enjoyed the privilege of having bespoke music on tap. In the case of Lully, he was in the pocket of his patron; the music of Lully reeks of eighteenth-century regal opulence. Some of his slower dances would allow the most bloated aristocrat to saunter around the Palace of Versailles without breaking into a sweat.

During the nineteenth century the middle classes became consumers of music as never before, at first through the dissemination of sheet music to be played on instruments at home: singing songs together or, if they could afford one, around a piano. Away from the large chambers of aristocratic homes people made their own entertainment in pubs; the local musician would have been a prized member of the community.

The fashion for public concerts increased through the nineteenth century and, with the building of purpose-built venues, such as the Royal Albert Hall built in 1871, the Queen’s Hall, 1893 (destroyed in the Blitz) and the Wigmore Hall, 1899, music’s popularity increased. In the early twentieth century the invention of the gramophone and the wireless radio democratised classical music in a way that was impossible before; now anybody could own a recording of the complete works of Mozart and listen to it in their own house. This marked a dramatic change in our relationship to music.

Before these inventions it was difficult for people to hear music without going to a concert. Believe it or not, at one time people would listen to full operas down the telephone. It can’t have sounded very good but the pace of invention during the twentieth century was startling: the wireless, a large radio receiving only a few stations, was an exciting window on to the world for my grandmother, who was born in a Welsh mining town in the 1920s, although her father chastised her for using it to listen to ‘modern rubbish’ such as Glenn Miller. Just twenty years later and my father had a record player in his home, though he had such a small collection of records in his Glasgow flat during the 1940s that as a child he would listen endlessly to the same two recordings of the tenor Beniamino Gigli. When I was a child growing up in south London in the 1970s and ’80s I had a record of Peter and the Wolf narrated by Peter Ustinov with the Philharmonia Orchestra (recorded in 1960); my version played at 33 rpm and had to be turned over halfway (remember that?). And now I have the complete symphonies of Beethoven on my mobile phone recorded at a quality that would have stunned people even ten years ago.

So where are we now? Surely anyone can access this music? With the CD-buying public as benefactors, classical music has bifurcated into the mainstream and the specialist. More complex forms are available for those interested in musical self-improvement or expanding their knowledge (maybe that’s you …) and simpler, more accessible forms are there for those looking for a less bumpy musical ride. This can be seen clearly in the difference between BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM, where one offers in-depth analysis of a broad range of specialist works and the other caters well for a more populist palate, offering more easily digestible bite-size chunks.

Those who are more affluent can afford the tickets to see music at the more complicated end of the spectrum. At the best international venues with the finest orchestras, music is painstakingly pored over by professional musicians at the height of their powers. Gaining an introduction to the more complex forms of music tends to require an investment of three things: some musical education, time to go to concerts and the money to pay for tickets. It’s little wonder that the people who attend the best concerts have these three in abundance.

“In Europe, when a rich woman has an affair with a conductor, they have a baby. In America, she endows an orchestra for him.”

EDGARD VARÈSE, composer

Today, American orchestras rely on donations from private sources. In Europe too it’s more likely that a lawyer, businessman or banker with a passion for music will be the ‘angel’ behind a concert, since royal patronages have all but finished. These investors can be a godsend for arts organisations but the situation is not without its problems when venues require large injections of liquid cash for upgrades. When the Royal Court Theatre fell into disrepair in 1994 the Jerwood Foundation were on hand with a large amount of money, but one of their requests was that the theatre should be renamed ‘The Jerwood Royal Court Theatre’. Thankfully the theatre resisted and the historic name remains above the door. It’s a tightrope between getting money and not surrendering your artistic independence.

In 1999 the Cuban-American philanthropist Alberto Vilar promised £10 million towards the regeneration of the Royal Opera House in London. Vilar was fêted as the most generous man in opera; the ROH named its Vilar Floral Hall after him and the Vilar Grand Tier at the Metropolitan Opera in New York was a testament to the influence of his chequebook. But this relationship turned sour in 2005 when he failed to make the final payments (he was rumoured to be around £5 million short, a not insubstantial sum for the opera house). A further shock was in store for the opera community when Vilar was jailed for fraud in 2008. It’s easy to see how this situation arose because without these sorts of donations organisations would simply not survive. Nobody could have predicted that Vilar would turn villain. His name has long since been scrubbed off the ROH’s walls and replaced with the names of other generous (and unimpeachable) organisations – the Paul Hamlyn Foundation gave its name to the Floral Hall and the Oak Foundation’s vice-chair Jette Parker gave her name to the young artist programme. Though the name of Vilar has been excised, it’s a salutary lesson for the arts world which walks a tightrope between artistic independence and financial dependence.

Music itself is, I believe, essentially classless, requiring no more than a pair of ears and a brain to comprehend it. However, to write or play this music professionally requires years of study at the best conservatoires. Who but the wealthy can afford to pay for the necessary sort of private tuition? Even if a child begins lessons at school there will come a point when somebody needs to buy an instrument and pay for music festival entries or youth orchestra subscriptions. It’s under fairly exceptional circumstances that somebody becomes a professional classical musician without any financial support from their parents.

The more complex the music, the more expensive. A 100-piece orchestra means 100 player fees, 100 chairs to set out, 100 scores to print, 100 shirts to press, etc. In orchestral circles the pay is quite modest. It’s certainly not equivalent to a professional footballer and yet the training and skill required is equivalent to that needed for brain surgery. That is what your ticket is paying for: it’s not going into the coffers of plutocrats.

Until we educate everybody in the country to the same musical standard (lovely in theory but expensive in practice) and convince schools that classical music is important regardless of class (an uphill battle in some institutions) it will remain the preserve of those who are introduced to it in the correct way.

What is a key?

This is straight in at the deep end, but we may as well get this out of the way. No way of explaining the key of a piece captures all of its subtleties, but that’s part of the beauty of music: you can’t put it into words. It’s an important concept to get your head round because it’s central to the development of classical music.

My father tells a story of entering a singing competition at a holiday camp in 1964.

‘Do you know “Always Something There to Remind Me” by Sandie Shaw?’ he asked of the resident pianist.

‘Er. Yes I think so,’ came the reply, although with a worrying hesitation.

The moment came and they faced the audience. Now if you know the song then you might recall that the tune begins low in Miss Shaw’s voice and then builds up to the high notes of the chorus. My dad was just a few notes in when he realised the song was quite simply far too high for him (a bass-baritone) – the pianist was playing in the wrong key. Family legend has it that he stood on a table to try to reach the top notes; I doubt that helped.

Many famous songs build to similar perilous climaxes: songs like Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’, Liverpool FC’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and anything by Michael Jackson have busted many a larynx when sung at a karaoke bar. These songs are written in a key that is comfortable for the original performer but which may not suit lesser mortals. Also we are born with a particular voice, either high – soprano/tenor; medium – mezzo-soprano/ baritone; or low – alto/bass. There’s nothing you can do to change this.

It wouldn’t matter if you were only singing in the shower, but if you have foolishly agreed to perform at your friend’s wedding you need to work out a way of being able to hit those high notes. Mel Brooks used to tell a story of a singer who started a song on a key note that was too high and ended with a gut-wrenching high note and a hernia. Beware – singing can damage your health. If you start a bit lower in pitch, that will allow you to hit that high note at the end of the tune (which will also be correspondingly lower). Problem is, when it comes to the wedding, how will you remember which note you have to start on? You could sing the note, find the note on the piano that sounds the same, and that will help you find the ‘key’. The ‘key’ is the musical area where your tune lies.

KEYS, SCHMEES

Each note on the piano has a name and that can be the name of a key. So we name C major after the note ‘C’ because pieces in that key feel related to that note. They seem to orbit around that tonal centre (another way of describing key) like planets orbiting the Sun. In the key of C major the note ‘C’ is the Sun and all the other notes are still there but in orbit. If we change to the key of G then the note ‘G’ becomes the Sun, and the centre of the Solar System. Keys are held together by natural forces like gravity. There are twelve keys in total named after all the notes of the scale.

But hang on, you say, there are 88 keys on a piano, not 12. Yes, but if you look at a piano keyboard it has a pattern that repeats as you go from left to right. It’s a bit like a clock face, returning to the same starting point: C, D, E, F, G, A, B … then you are back to C. So there are lots of Cs on the piano, but there is only one ‘key’ of C.

The thing to remember is the idea of labelling the starting notes of your tune. At the risk of sounding like the late great Humph milking his metaphors on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, your tune is like a mobile home, which needs a place to sit. Your mobile home can be moved up or down the mountain (hopefully along with the lovely Samantha). And just as in life, if you move your home, it is quite dramatic. That is called a ‘key change’. If you listen to Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’, you will hear him change the key of the piece at the end.

What is a composer?

Speaking of Stevie Wonder, why is it that he is mostly called a songwriter, or someone who writes great tunes, but Haydn is called a ‘composer’? Composition is the art of organising sound in time. I’m being that vague because there are composers such as John Cage (1912–1992), who wrote a piece called 4’ 33” which is entirely silent. Yes, silent – except it isn’t really, because although the performer is told not to make any sound, it makes you realise that there is always some sound going on, even in a room full of people trying desperately not to cough, which I think was Cage’s point. Next time you are in a ‘silent’ place, count the number of sounds you can hear. You’ll be amazed. (In December 2010 the work reached number 21 in the pop charts as a protest purchase by people angry at Simon Cowell’s X-Factor machine.) Another of Cage’s pieces involves only metal instruments and it sounds much like my attempts at cooking. So in the end there are as many strange examples of what people define as music as there are examples of what people consider to be art.

In the traditional sense a composer is somebody who writes down notes for other people to play. Sometimes composers imagine the notes in their head and then pour them out on to paper. Mozart was said to have been able to do this, as was the French composer Ravel (1875–1937), who wrote the famous Boléro, until he suffered from a degeneration of his brain which tragically left him unable to put pen to paper, a condition known as agraphia. ‘The opera is in my head,’ he said. ‘I hear it, but I will never write it down.’¹ Many people have music inside them, but it takes great discipline and skill to be able to translate that on to the page for somebody else to play and it takes years of practice to write it down in such a way that you can have it played exactly as you imagined.

Not all composers can just put it straight on to the page like that. In some cases, composers use a piano to work things out, although some composers claim this makes what they write sound like piano music – rather than, say, a flute piece. If you are writing for a flute, they say, it’s better to imagine the sound of a flute playing than to listen to the sound of a piano impersonating the flute. Having little pianistic ability is not necessarily a block to becoming a composer: Irving Berlin, the great American song-writer who gave us ‘White Christmas’ and ‘How Deep is the Ocean’, was famously bad at the piano and would only play the black notes. ‘The key of C,’ he said, ‘is only for people who study music.’² (You get the key of C if you play on the white notes.) He even had a piano made with a special lever to change keys.

Some composers are professional musicians, some of them are also conductors and others just do it in their spare time. There is no one rule. Composers are often consumed by their desire to write music; some are meticulous about detail, concentrating on a small output, while other composers are prolific, producing works to order. Henri Duparc (1848–1933) was so self-critical that he destroyed most of his own compositions, leaving only thirteen songs with which he was satisfied. Compare that to the output of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) who wrote 106 symphonies.

Recent technological advances have meant that many composers now use computers to print the music physically, a process that took hours in the past. Preparing 100 parts for the musicians can now be done at the touch of a button and the computer even allows the composer to hear a version of their score as they are composing. How different from when Bach was writing his music for the weekly church services in Leipzig from 1723 to 1750. He would only have a week to compose, write, prepare parts and then rehearse an entirely new work. Imagine what a computer could have done for him! I’ve heard musicians complain that computers lead to a lack of rigour in the writing of scores as young composers become lazy and allow the computer to do too much of the work. I believe the same is said of university essays, many of which have been copied from the internet. Either way, we have come a long way from quills, parchment and candlewax.

As for how composers choose those notes, the techniques are almost as varied as the musicians themselves. People have used maths, chance, improvisation, philosophical schemes and systems galore to create new sounds and musical ideas. Thankfully a lot of the process remains mysterious. As film-maker and scriptwriter David Mamet once said when asked where his ideas came from, ‘Oh, I just think of them.’

I’ll talk about how composers write melody and harmony, along with how they structure their work, in later chapters.

How strange, the change …

Musicians always talk about ‘major and minor’. What are they? How do I know if a piece is ‘minor’? Firstly there’s an important distinction to be made between ‘a major work’ or a ‘minor work’ and pieces in a major or minor key. Major/minor has nothing to do with importance. It’s about the musical character of the piece. You can have C major and C minor, just as you might have ‘Gareth cheery’ or ‘Gareth contemplative’. Simply put, pieces in ‘major keys’ are more sunny and bright, those in a ‘minor key’ tend to be more moody and dark.

These aren’t random associations but they are reinforced by the music we are used to hearing. Minor keys sound more unsettling than major keys because they contain barely perceptible dissonance (notes that clash). To the untrained ear this is hard to hear but without going into the science of harmonics (and feel free to look into this yourself) I think that’s really all that is necessary to understand at this point.

Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, first movement – minor key

Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, first movement – major key

Who decided which instruments made up an orchestra?

Nobody sat down and planned the orchestra, and even now it’s not absolutely fixed. Each time a composer writes a piece they are at liberty to use pretty much whatever instruments they like (within reason and subject to the confines of budget: those cannons in the 1812 Overture aren’t cheap!) The orchestra is like a greatest hits of the instrumental world, because there have been countless instruments created in the history of music but the orchestra is a condensation of all those variations into the best modern examples.

A large modern symphony orchestra will have a certain number of musicians in its employ: on average about 60 strings, 13 woodwind, 12 brass and some percussionists. Music from earlier periods used fewer instruments; conversely, modern composers can use an extremely large number (more than 100). For large-scale works this orchestra might employ ‘extras’, such as a piano or harp, that aren’t used by every composer in every piece, or something more exotic such as an electric guitar, saxophone or theremin (an eerie electronic instrument popular in 1940s–1960s sci-fi and mystery films such as Spellbound and The Day the Earth Stood Still).

Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, uses a huge orchestra and is only performed on special occasions. Its subtitle is due to the huge personnel required to mount a performance. This is the apotheosis of the nineteenth-century orchestra.

SYMPHONY OF A THOUSAND

piccolo	celeste
4 flutes	piano
4 oboes	harmonium
cor anglais	organ
4 clarinets	2 harps
bass clarinet	mandolin
4 bassoons	strings (violins, violas, ’cellos and basses)
contra-bassoon	offstage 4 trumpets and
8 horns	3 trombones
4 trumpets	3 sopranos
4 trombones	2 altos
1 tuba	tenor
3 timpani	baritone
bass drum	bass
cymbal	boys’ choir
tamtam	double chorus (usually more than 200 singers)
triangle	double chorus (usually more than 200 singers)
tubular bells	double chorus (usually more than 200 singers)
glockenspiel	double chorus (usually more than 200 singers)

There’s classical music and music from the Classical ‘period’ … I’m confused

The Oxford Dictionary of Music describes the term Classical as ‘vague’, then goes on to list four completely different definitions. To clear things up, there is a particular musical period that we refer to as ‘Classical’ and there is a broad term ‘classical music’ which encompasses both the ‘Classical period’ and all of the serious music from the last thousand years.

Mozart is an example of a composer of the Classical period (note the capital letter), so he can be accurately described as a ‘Classical composer’. His music conforms to classical principles of beauty and form. It’s music from a time when, in art and architecture, people were looking back to ‘classical antiquity’ or ancient Greece for inspiration – hence the term ‘classical’. To be pedantic, according to that definition Webern, Schumann, John Adams and Stravinsky cannot be described as ‘classical composers’.

When I was at school, trying desperately to understand the chronology of music, my school music teacher refused to refer to any music other than that written between 1750 (the year of Bach’s death) and 1897 (the year of Schubert’s birth) as ‘Classical’. He preferred ‘serious music’ as a moniker for anything outside the popular realm. This is a useful definition as far as it goes: classical music is a serious business. But what about other forms that are equally serious: jazz, folk or ‘world’ music, for example?

Outside the ivory towers in common parlance ‘classical music’ is everything that isn’t jazz, pop, folk or world music. It is confusing that we use the term to mean pretty much any music written in the last thousand years. But then the term ‘pop’ is too generic a term to describe adequately the commercial music of the last fifty years.

If you wince at this double meaning every time you encounter it you’ll end up with a sore face. Accept it and move on, is my advice.

If it’s classical does it mean it isn’t popular music?

Calculating how many fans an art-form needs in order to call it ‘popular’ is anyone’s guess, and even within classical music there is a divide between populist material and more esoteric or specialised music. Sitting in a packed Royal Albert Hall for a Prom certainly gives off a sense of popular appeal, but how will the figures stack up against a pop music tour?

The Arts Council³ divided the audience for musical events in the UK into broad churches⁴ (classical music performance, opera or operetta, jazz, other live music event – rock and pop, soul, R&B and hip-hop, folk, country and western, etc.) and gathered audience attendance figures for 2005/2006. It concluded that opera had the smallest reach of all music: 4 per cent of the population attended at least once a year. For classical music that figure was around 9 per cent. However, even the very broad ‘other’ category, which encompasses pop and rock, only adds up to 26 per cent of the population, again, attending a gig at least once a year.⁵

Classical musicians tend not to crave the lifestyle that goes with mass popularity, being more dedicated to their art than to their public image. If we are going to measure by record sales or by numbers of tickets sold, then, yes, classical equals fewer sales than other forms. But there are good reasons for that: once a classical music fan has bought a recording of Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz they may well listen to that recording without need for another one for the next forty years. This is not the case in more popular forms which have innovation as one of the driving marketing forces.

There are clearly exceptions, where a popular appetite meets the classical world. In 1994 The Three Tenors (José Carreras, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti) achieved a level of popular success hitherto thought impossible. Not since the great recordings of Enrico Caruso in 1902 had the operatic tenor voice been such a recording sensation. The association with football must have helped it, but achieving a Guinness world record for best-selling classical music with the Three Tenors in Concert CD shows that a great tune, well sung, has mass appeal even if it is classical.

But don’t be too heartened; the general trend doesn’t look great. A December 2010 article in the Daily Telegraph reported:

The classical market share has now sunk from nearly 11% in 1990 to 3.2%. According to figures drawn from the major retailers, the sector has seen sales in the last twelve-month period drop by a staggering 17.6%. This contrasts starkly with a 3.5% drop in pop recordings.

The CD market has been adversely affected by the rise of the internet and most classical fans who bought large collections of CDs in the 1990s don’t feel the need to replace them with iTunes downloads. Because I’m passionate about this music, I don’t care about numbers or sales as much as I care that there is enough of an audience to keep the art-form developing. People who are into classical music become obsessed by it and give time and hard-earned money to attend concerts. It’s popular in my house and I hope it will be in yours too. It’s not supposed to be as easy as Coronation Street, it’s meant to be deeply rewarding.

Why do classical players need things written down? Other musicians don’t

As with every form of music there are conventions which dictate how players train and how they learn new music. The ‘Western classical’ approach relies on over 500 years of musical notation. This enables an orchestra to play any music that is put in front of them, even at first sight. This has obvious advantages for playing new music. Of course there are exceptions. It is unusual for opera singers to use a musical score because they are expected to act and to face the audience. The same is often true of soloists in a concerto – a kind of piece that crops up a lot in classical music (see Chapter 9 on structure for a definition).

Concertos have been around for about 400 years and involve one soloist who plays in tandem with the orchestra. The style has developed from its beginnings where the soloist was a part of the orchestra (see Handel’s Concerti Grossi or Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos) to the Romantic concerto which makes a feature of the virtuosity of the soloist, who is placed out in front of the orchestra, normally in a fancy outfit (see Rachmaninov’s piano concertos or Bruch’s violin concertos).

It is usual for the concerto soloist to play from memory (although in very complex modern works they may be seen with a score). This requires a different sort of musicianship that, although partly a bravura display of technical wizardry, is mainly a form of sustained communication with the audience. If a player is hidden behind a music stand with their head buried in the score it can make it harder to reach the audience with the performance: there is a physical barrier. Because a concerto requires much study to perfect, a soloist might tour the world playing a few pieces from memory with different orchestras, whereas the orchestra itself will play a much wider range of music.

Orchestras have two or three rehearsals before a concert and always read from a score rather than memorising; what is sometimes lost is the sense that the music has been learnt not just from memory but is somehow ‘in their bones’. In some instances, due to budget restrictions, orchestras go out to play a concert on too few rehearsals and it tells in the final result – especially in new work which can take a while to become familiar. That said, during the course of a violinist’s professional life they could expect to play every Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert symphony many times with many different conductors. So core repertoire will always be played without feeling that the players are hanging off the score.

The atmosphere at an early 9 a.m. rehearsal after playing a big concert the night before is always subdued, and players are not always sure what the orchestra will be playing next. They bumble in with their cappuccinos, warming up briefly before launching into the next major work. The prospect of removing the sheet music would fill most orchestral players with horror; they have become accustomed to this way of playing. Many would admit to being incapable of improvisation and reluctant to play from memory, a skill that is a requirement of so many other types of music. But few rock guitarists would be able to play a five-hour gig one night then get up the next day and rehearse an elaborately arranged musical composition they had never previously played, before jetting off on tour to play something they haven’t played for several weeks. Such are the rigours of orchestral life.

Does listening to Mozart make you more intelligent?⁶

In 1993 there was a widely reported piece of research by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky. They played a Mozart sonata to students, who subsequently showed an improved IQ test result in the area of spatio-temporal skills. For musicians and classical music advocates like me who constantly try to assert the value of classical music (especially for young people), it was as though all prayers had been answered; here at last was proof that this music was good for you. The world’s press were delighted with the idea that the Sonata for Two Pianos in D-major, K. 448, could ‘make you smarter’. This was the trick that every parent had been seeking, and for a number of years a lot of children were subjected to Mozart whether they liked it or not.

As is so often the case with science in the media, the facts of the study were stretched and the original findings of 1993 have since been widely challenged. Quite simply the research had never suggested that it ‘made you smarter’. But the idea had made a great news story and gave rise to a whole industry of Mozart-for-kids products.

Although discredited, the ‘Mozart effect’ lives on in other guises, and people claim to have observed the calming effect of Mozart on people in stations, children with special needs – and cows. In Germany a study found that cows who listened to Mozart produced more milk. How much milk I’m not sure. Whether the milk was more creamy I cannot say. Behind this strange idea lies some fairly questionable science and the deification of Mozart.

Does Mozart make you cleverer? I don’t think so. However, there is compelling evidence from MRI scans that playing an instrument or taking singing lessons actually changes the size of sections of your brain. (Steven Mithen took singing lessons for a year whilst writing his book The Singing Neanderthal; by the end of the year there were physical changes in his brain.)

The ‘Mozart effect’ is actually a massive red herring – playing any music will develop your brain, but then so will learning golf, or learning to ride a bike. The difference with music is that it is one of the most complex activities the brain can engage in and so develops the parts that other activities cannot reach on their own. For this reason it is beloved of primary school teachers and parents of young children because of the palpable effect that practical engagement with music has on the developing mind.

If it won’t make you cleverer then what does Mozart do for you? It may make me sound like Oscar Wilde, but I believe it’s important to have beauty in our lives. It makes us aspire to be better people. Mozart’s is some of the most pleasing and mentally stimulating music ever written; it excites our brains into action. Beyond that I don’t see the need to prove that it makes us cleverer. Those of us who are devotees of Mozart will always be passionate about its transformative power and those who aren’t convinced will just have to live their lives devoid of Mozart’s positive effects.

Is all classical music religious?

At one time the Church was one of the few places where people would have had access to music. No other organisation has done more for the development of music. But no, it’s not all religious. Composers have been moved and inspired by landscape (God-created or not), science, politics, war, philosophy, football … There’s even an opera about the life of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. (I’m definitely going to that one.)

Let’s be honest, there’s a great deal of religious classical music and some of the most beautiful is sung by choirs. Choral music in particular is associated with cathedrals, cassocks and candles – John Rutter’s carols and other religious works are immensely popular – but choirs can also sing modern pop songs, as proved by the hit TV show Glee. Speaking of Rutter, I am a huge fan. He has a technical expertise and a way with melody that has made him not only a composer of international note, but his harmonies have become for many (myself included) the sound of Christmas.⁷

How can you ‘understand’ music? Isn’t it just about emotion?

In the same way that a picture of a man running can simply mean ‘man running’ or be the symbol for a fire exit, music can be rich with meaning. Certain musical meanings are almost universal, and have gathered meaning through repetition. ‘Happy Birthday’ is widely known, and as soon as you hear the melody you know that it’s someone’s birthday, whatever language you speak. If you juxtapose that music with a rendition of the third movement of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 (yes, you do know it, it’s the Funeral March) then the meaning becomes cloudier … Did someone die on their birthday? Are there two events going on simultaneously? The music itself gives rise to potential meaning.

Much music of the nineteenth century has clear titles giving a sense of the meaning. This is known as programme music: Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave, for instance, is an attempt in music to describe the experience of an encounter with a geographical feature; Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (‘A Hero’s Life’) is a wordless musical representation of an entire life. It is not literal; rather it aims to sum up the feelings of the protagonist as he progresses through life. The musical meaning is clear to the listener, as is Strauss’s vision of this character. Programme music will sometimes feature musical effects designed to illustrate, for instance, the singing of birds or the babbling of a brook, but may attempt to express emotions such as joy or grief.

Of course not all music has such clear associations. We call this absolute music. But even in music by composers who apparently give no clue to the meaning you can deduce what the composer means, if only on an emotional level. It may have a stylistic meaning – a scherzo (Italian, meaning ‘jokingly’), for example, is a section of music that is fast and lively. If this is followed by a lento (Italian for slowly) then the abrupt change will have an effect on the listener. The meaning of music is abstract and highly personal.

Why is a violinist the ‘leader’ of an orchestra?

This is partly tradition and partly practical. If you think about how the violin is played, with the bow held high in the air, it’s very easy for other players to see the movement of the bow and thus when the music begins. The violins usually play more music than the other sections – note for note it’s not as tiring as playing a brass instrument. Moreover, you can play the violin while looking in almost any direction, and the player’s face can still communicate to the other players (try doing that while playing a trombone). Look carefully and you’ll see that the ‘leader’ uses exaggerated movements to indicate the style of playing to the entire string section. In the days before the dominance of the conductor, either a keyboard player or a violinist would have directed performances.

Why does the orchestra tune to an oboe at the beginning of a concert?

Unless you’ve been to an orchestral concert you wouldn’t be aware that in order to keep in tune with each other the orchestra must adjust their instruments just before the concert. This can’t be done outside the concert hall because temperature can affect tuning, as instruments contract and expand with heat. The oboe provides a steady tone (normally an A) which is easier to tune to than other wind instruments. The oboe is less likely to be far out of tune when taken out of its case than other instruments. String instruments can be wildly out, so it’s important for them to have a clear example of a note that the orchestra can agree on. The signal to tune the orchestra is when the leader enters and stands in front of the orchestra. The note ‘A’ is played and the different sections take it in turn to tune. In his Ninth Symphony Beethoven starts the work with a section which sounds very similar to the orchestra tuning up – it’s a kind of ‘in’ joke.

Why do some composers deliberately use unpleasant sounds? Shouldn’t music be lush and beautiful?

I’ll deal with the whys and wherefores of harmony in Chapter 7. The short answer is that many composers believe that the purpose of ‘serious music’ is not to send you to sleep but to invigorate and challenge the listener; in order to achieve this, composers have used some arresting sounds. If a piece doesn’t sound lush it may be because the subject matter does not require it: should music about war or death be beautiful? Discuss.

Is it OK to be bored by classical music? (I often am)

Chapter 12 is about surviving a concert, and I use the word surviving deliberately. I don’t wish to hoodwink you into believing that all classical music is exciting and every concert is a masterpiece. I have spoken to many professional musicians who readily admit to finding certain music boring. It’s OK. Seek out the music that stimulates and reject that which, after a good listen, turns out to be boring. The composer won’t mind – he’ll most likely be dead.

Good point – on that subject, are all composers dead white guys?

No. But, as in many professions, women and non-Europeans struggled for recognition. At one time classical music only existed within the European world, but as the music becomes increasingly international, interesting forms of music are emerging that are influenced by ‘non-Western’ musics. Recording has been a help here in spreading high-quality music right around the globe.

There are many examples of music written by people who are not white Europeans: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) was a successful black English composer born in 1875 who studied at the Royal College of Music and won the support of Edward Elgar; Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), the Brazilian composer; Tan Dun (b. 1957), who writes with a distinctively Chinese voice; Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992), who elevated the Argentinean tango to a form of art music. It is no longer the preserve of a small group of white men from central Europe.

In fact there are constant efforts by the classical music world to reach out to communities who are not traditionally associated with this music. I’ve been involved with many such projects, and they work: I’ve taken Rachmaninov to African Carribean communities in Hackney; singing projects to predominantly Muslim schools in Tower Hamlets; and run composition projects at Alexandra Burke’s old school in North London (I think she was there at the time but I don’t remember her …). I stand in admiration of El Sistema in Venezuela which teaches classical instruments to underprivileged children. This chimes with the dream of many classical musicians – that anybody can appreciate this wonderful music. The world famous tenor Plácido Domingo is said to have cried when he heard the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. A handful of musicians may enjoy the prestige that comes from the exclusivity of classical music but in my experience most of us would like everyone to feel the same as we do.

Apart from composers such as Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth-century abbess; Fanny Henschel, Felix Mendelssohn’s sister; and Judith Weir, one of Britain’s most successful contemporary composers⁸, unfortunately most people don’t realise how many female composers there are. There are also many, many composers who are not dead. It’s just that it often takes a while for their music to be recognised internationally – by which time they may well be deceased.

Who is the greatest composer?

J.S. Bach … no wait – Mozart. Hold on … Schubert. Stop! Stravinsky. This is impossible to answer and changes every day according to my mood. In my opinion the greatest composer is whoever is holding your attention.

Are musical geniuses made, not born?

All music requires hard work to perfect. Even to reach a rudimentary level on an instrument takes several years of practice, and to reach a professional standard a person must start at a young age while the brain is still adaptable – I’ve never met a professional classical instrumentalist who started their instrument after the age of twenty. Some composers have to work harder than others at their craft. Some composers are more formal in their approach to music; others are more instinctive, but for all of them it’s a craft, and that takes work.

Perfect pitch, which is the ability to recognise the name of a note without access to an instrument, is a musical gift that emerges in childhood; it often goes hand in hand with early training and other musical abilities. You’d suspect that this would only exist in a small percentage of the population; however, neuroscientist Daniel Levitin has proved (through some very innovative experiments) that in fact most people have the ability to some degree. They do not realise they have this capacity because it is not as highly developed as it would be in a musician.⁹ Who knows how many Mozarts exist who never had the chance to play a piano?

It’s not that perfect pitch is the mark of a musical genius but it has always been considered an ability of the most highly gifted musicians. To discover that in fact we all have the potential, given the right circumstances, to develop musical gifts does not detract from the achievements of a Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. They were born with the same mental faculties as the rest of us – they just worked harder.

In the case of Mozart, who was the son of a successful musician, he had just the right combination of circumstance and talent to start him composing. His prodigious mental gifts enabled him to complete musical tasks that others would struggle with, and sheer hard work got him there in the end. Had Mozart been raised by the local blacksmith I doubt he would have been the composer he became at the age of eight, when he wrote his first symphony – his upbringing, which by modern standards might seem like pushy parenting, enabled him to succeed. It’s a lesson to all aspirational parents.

I think that the whole concept of genius does a disservice to the brilliance of our great composers. It’s a nonsense that a composer can write a great symphony on inspiration alone. It takes at least ten years and thousands of repetitions to learn any new skill; becoming the architect of a great piece of classical music means you’ve probably discarded a lot of rubbish first, and that you’ve developed calluses on your hands from practising your art.

Can a voice be made, not born?

This is another matter altogether. We are born with a voice that is uniquely our own. No amount of money or training can make a small vocal instrument into a big one or an ugly one into a beautiful one. Training can improve the sound hugely but if you fundamentally sound like a goat then there’s not much that can be done about it.

Were ye olde instrumentalists better than now?

That depends on how you define ‘better’. Listening to recordings from the early twentieth century I’m struck by the difference in playing style. The ready availability of quality recordings has pushed standards higher and higher. Grade VIII used to be the standard required for admission to music college; that’s no longer a guarantee. As demand for places has intensified, young players get better and better.

Unfortunately, although evidence exists in some of the reviews of the time,¹⁰ we’ll never hear Bach’s unparalleled mastery of the organ, or Mozart’s keyboard extemporisation. To my ear there has never been a better time to listen to music. Audio equipment is cheap and of high quality. Recordings from the last century are readily available and you can hear playing of immaculate accuracy in most modern concert halls for a reasonable amount of money.

Why don’t classical musicians improvise?

It’s easy to forget that classical music used to involve a lot of improvisation. This can still be heard in certain pieces although it might not be immediately apparent that it’s made up – mostly because the musician will often practise their extemporising. Soloists in music of the eighteenth century played cadenzas (which is Italian for cadence) towards the end of a large instrumental work. This gave the soloist a chance to show off their technical skill. As American musicologist, composer and pianist Robert Levin says: ‘In the 18th century all composers were performers and virtually all performers composed. Furthermore, virtually all the music performed was new. Today’s gap in popular and art music did not exist then: each involved spontaneity within a language idiomatic to the time.’¹¹

Mozart was one of the first great composers to have a piano in his study, and his improvising talents were noted very early in his life.¹² In his memoirs,¹³ a priest called Placidus Scharl recalls hearing the six-year-old Mozart at the keyboard:

One had only to give him the first subject which came to mind for a fugue or an invention: he would develop it with strange variations and constantly changing passages as long as one wished; he would improvise fugally on a subject for hours, and this fantasia-playing was his greatest passion.

Organists are still very familiar with the idea of extemporisation (in his organ recitals, my old music teacher Stephen Carleston would include improvisation on a theme brought in by a member of the audience on the day). Many composers still use improvisation as a way of generating ideas – but as classical music has tended to separate the idea of the player and composer, and has become very concerned with replicating exactly what has been notated in a score, improvisation has taken a back seat – even though it is alive and well in other music, such as jazz. Twentieth-century and contemporary composers, however, have brought back the idea of chance and improvisation, and some players schooled very heavily in faithfully reproducing the ‘dots’ enjoy the very different kind of playing improvisation offers. In some very early music, too, the notation is only part of the story, and singers are required to decorate and elaborate on what is written down in order to bring the music to life.

Why do orchestras (mostly) wear black?

It’s cheap and doesn’t show sweat. It also denotes smartness and comes from evening dress, which was the traditional wear of classical musicians for many years and still is at many concerts. At one time the audience too would have worn evening dress for concerts. Another reason is that musicians in an orchestra, as performers, are in service to the music rather than being exhibitionists who are promoting themselves, and in this sense black allows them a certain visual degree of anonymity. Some younger ensembles have attempted alternatives but generally it’s hard to find something that is readily available, appears fairly neutral so as not to distract from the music and looks like the orchestra have made an effort. So I think for the time being black is here to stay.