The Genius of the "Hummable Tune," Part 1

There is such a thing as knowing too much.  

Now, if you know the CWC at all, you know there are things she infinitely prefers people do know about, especially when it comes to the written word.

She prefers people know the correct word for what they're expressing.

She prefers people know how to spell.

She prefers people know the difference between verb tenses, and which one is right for the moment.

She prefers people never, ever, ever, ever-ever make a plural with an apostrophe.

(Did I mention "ever"?)

But, I'll say it again: there is such a thing as knowing too much.

Or...maybe...just thinking we do.

And we're missing a splendid opportunity for real genius when that happens.

Let me illustrate.

Long ago, in music school, I was surrounded by a whole bunch of people who were all convinced classical music needed to be "refreshed."

And so they did unspeakable things to pianos and called the music for "prepared" instruments.

They made noises on electronic devices and called the music "multitonal."

They composed "music" like John Cage's "4'33"."

They brought in spoken word, and gesture, and slide shows, to "liven things up."

Why?

Because, in their estimation, "Standard Repertoire" (or "Western Music," or any other term you want to use for it) was filled with "timeworn, hackneyed 'chestnuts' written by a bunch of dead white men" that needed to be "thrown out" because "it wasn't meaningful anymore."

They were especially disdainful of music that people loved because "they could walk out of a concert hall humming it to themselves."

Why?

I didn't know then. And I still don't know now.

Let's face it: classical music is not necessarily the first music of choice for a general population. Many reasons abound for this, but at least one of them has to be that because, unless they find a comfortable way to get a good dose of it, they don't feel like they can "walk out of a concert hall humming [it] to themselves."

And that's a shame. Because there's some great stuff out there...

...if someone cares enough to bring it to them.

We see this happen all the time. 

Most of us learned our first classical music not from a venerable record collection in our parents' homes, but from background music for Looney Tunes.

Not to mention the use of Strauss in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ravel in 10, or Pachelbel in Ordinary People...among countless instances of the music in movies. 

What happened after that exposure? People went nuts for those pieces. 

So, can you imagine what would happen if they were exposed to even more of it?

Yeah. 

Only these people, with whom I was going to school, didn't see that possibility at all. 
To them, classical music audiences only loved Beethoven, and Bach, and Brahms, and Haydn, and Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Wagner, and Schubert, and Stravinsky, and Chopin, and Gounod, and Franck, and Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky, and dozens more pieces of music by those and other "dead white men" because "they didn't know any better." And that it was the job of those in the art to "enlighten" the audience.

(If this sounds suspiciously like both snobbism and elitism...you're catching on.)

Because an attitude like this has to have as its foundation the assumption that what you are throwing out, you're already thoroughly familiar with, and have found useless and/or boring. In other words, the attitude toward traditional classical music at that point becomes, "Seen it all, heard it all, next."

Only, speaking quite bluntly? For most of these people, especially for the college-age folks I encountered, that would have been completely impossible.

Haydn wrote over 100 symphonies.

Mozart wrote over 40.

Dvorak wrote 9, Beethoven wrote 9. And so on. And so on.

That's not even touching opera--or talking about Puccini, or Verdi, or Bizet.

Or oratorios (Handel, anybody?). Or cantatas, of which Bach alone wrote over 200.

Or march or waltz music (Strauss, Sousa, and a host of others).

Nor is it venturing onto the shores of polyphony and/or counterpoint of the likes of Vivaldi, or Palestrina, or deLassus, or Mouret, or Lully, or...

That's a whole lot of "notes" that, in terms of the general population--and even music students themselves--is stuff they've never heard before.

Stuff that, once heard, can change their lives forever.

And leave them wanting even more.

(I know. I was a music student with precious little background, and I drank the stuff up like a college kid at a kegger party.)

But all that was what these people wanted to dismiss, en masse, as being "irrelevant."

Because...people could hum it walking out of a concert hall?

Because...it was unsophisticated? 

Because...it wasn't profound, or deep, or meaningful?

Since bloody hell when?

(I defy anyone reading this to immerse yourself in Brahms' Fourth Symphony and not find sophistication, profundity, depth, and meaning in it--while you're humming it to yourself!--but, I digress.)

I'm here to tell you, as I wanted to tell them, that they'd not only missed the point of the art in the first place...but they'd missed the bus, the train, the ship, the plane, and the Concorde in the process. 

Because "relevance" isn't what makes music, or any art, wonderful...or valuable...

Nor has it ever been.

My dream is to write stories "people [can] walk out of a concert hall humming to themselves."

Why I put it that way, we'll talk about in Part 2!

Thoughts?

Janny