You'll remember when we last left our heroine, she was rattling on about a tad bit (okay, a lot) of snobbism/elitism/pseudo-intellectualism that had crept in and run rampant about the music-school hallways...and how disheartening it was.
I mean, here we were sitting on several hundred years' worth of great stuff, musical feasts galore that could have kept us happily exploring, plumbing depths and nuances for the rest of our lives...only to be told, by those who were oh-so-much-further-evolved in this thing, that that was "irrelevant."
Our duty, it seemed, was instead to make up our own "brave new world" of music that required extensive liner notes and analysis to explain.
That challenged audiences.
That often puzzled, perplexed, and irritated the hearers, rather than uplifting their spirits, offering them escapes or dreams, or providing them something as "simple" as enjoyment.
Not surprisingly, audiences didn't like it...
...prompting many of these oh-so-enlightened folks to declare that they were hopelessly "hidebound"...perhaps, even brainwashed!
At the very least...unsophisticated.
And the way out of that unsophisticated ignorance was...you guessed it...not to be found in "Standard Repertoire."
It was to be found in the brave-new-world stuff, in "challenge" and "expansion of horizons" and "relevance."
(There's that word again...)
Fortunately, some of us ignored them.
And, instead, chose the adventure inherent in peeling back the layers of what was already on hand...and allowing ourselves to experience every crazy bit of it.
Because the best-kept secret of music school isn't about "brave new worlds."
It's that classical music--even "Standard Repertoire"--is a treasure trove of crazy.
Real, beautiful, inspiring, honest-to-God insanity.
That's the "secret handshake" we should be spreading to the crowd.
That's the "secret language" that, if we bother to teach, people learn to "speak" and "understand" so well that they pack the halls.
Listen to Gustavo Dudamel conduct Saint-Saens' Bacchanale. It's madness.
Watch Leonard Bernstein conduct Brahms' First Symphony, in performance, without a score. It's nuts.
And if you happen to be in the car while the "Great Gate of Kiev" section (the conclusion) of Pictures at an Exhibition is playing on your car stereo...you may have to pull over. I ought to know. I almost had to, one day, driving back from lunch for afternoon classes.
I was darn near still bouncing off the walls of the music building when I came in from the parking lot. And, as I was describing the way that music made me feel...one of my favorite professors started laughing.
Not at me, but at the sheer fun of my reaction.
Then, said something along the lines of, "Don't ever lose that."
Think about that for a second.
The Mussorgsky (especially in the Ravel orchestration) is "Standard Repertoire."
The stuff that was being called "hidebound" and "irrelevant."
And yet my music prof, possessing a doctorate from a major highbrow school, didn't scold me not to get so excited about the stuff...
...but to, if at all possible, keep that ridiculously nutty enthusiasm as long as I could.
Because he knew what the "brave new world" advocates hadn't caught on to yet:
That "relevance" isn't what art is about. Never has been. Never will be.
So, what does this have to do with writing stories, you ask?
A fellow writer shared a quote recently that, paraphrased, is along the lines of "writing that is effortless to read takes a great deal of effort to produce."
The parallel in music? That "hummable" doesn't equal "unsophisticated."
It equals accessible.
It equals simple, in music wrought from care. And effort. And love.
And, yes...more than a little craziness.
Done well, it takes people to a place outside themselves.
Expands their worlds.
Refreshes them.
Just the way a beautiful story can.
The "hummable" theme in classical music goes hand-in-hand with the "keeper" on your bookshelf. Both may look deceptively simple, when viewed from the outside.
Only when one plumbs a little deeper...or creates the "simple" thing from scratch...does one appreciate just what goes into either one.
These "keepers" (or "chestnuts," as the popular pieces of classical music are often called) are probably the clearest evidence of true communication with our audiences that we have--and the best proof that we, as artists, have done our jobs well.
In music...and in stories.
And so, the accessible--and enjoyable--are what I aim for every time I sit down at the keyboard, take out my box of words, and attempt to combine them in alchemy that will make music of its own.
Simple.
Hummable.
Genius.
Thoughts?
Janny
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