Soviet RAWR!

Sometimes, for fun, I read the backlogs of old musicology blogs. (I know, I'm a dweeb with a capital D.) The other day, in the midst of a dweeby backlog-reading episode on "Dial M for Musicology", I came across this lovely quote:

"What I've always appreciated about anger-driven music is its ability to vent those feelings without engendering them; I suppose the function is similar, in this way, to good songs about love or yearning. They enable a side of the personality to be tapped without making catastrophic life choices."

Isn't that just wonderful? I've often wondered about what exactly draws me to Soviet music. The fact that I feel very connected to it is no question at all. But so much Soviet music is (and I know that I'm generalizing here) angry and tragic and fierce and impassioned, and my general personality displays none of these characteristics. I was born in the South. I was raised to be sweet and meek and mild. I am one Georgia-peach-accent shy of a debutante.

Despite all of that, I love this strong Russian music, and the above quote explains exactly why that is. I can perform music like this, and it enables me to tap into all these emotions which are new and unique to me. It is precisely because I'm neither tragic nor angry by nature that I get so swept up by this music. I can express all of these near-forbidden emotions without actually becoming tragic or angry. It's like riding a rollercoaster. You get the adrenaline rush, but then you get to walk away with nothing left but the exhilarating feeling. To me, there is something very stirring about that, and my performance of the music is better for it.

This and That

I picked up Alex Ross' latest book, Listen To This, this afternoon. I've only read the title essay, but it's wonderful, and I think I need to let it sink in before I continue reading.

In the last few weeks, I've been wrangled into several conversations about how [insert musical genre here] is just terrible and worthless and really should just disappear from the face of the earth. Country music. 20th century classical music. Rap music. I find this to be incredibly frustrating, because no one ever wins. We just argue in circles about this music vs. that music.

I like the fact that music speaks so strongly to people. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I find it interesting that people feel so strongly not only about music that they like, but music that they very much dislike. Classical musicians, I think, are the worst about this. Because classical music is BETTER, right? It is higher up in the hierarchy of musical excellence. Any other musical genre is sub par. If you do listen to country music, you consider it a guilty pleasure, not music of the same value as, say, Beethoven.

I think that there's a deep problem in viewing music this way. Music is an art form. It is subjective. I believe that on its deepest level, the duty of music is to speak to people. In the words of my dear Shostakovich, it "lifts and heartens people for work and effort." Life is hard, and music makes life less hard. If you think about music through this (I will admit) rose-colored-glasses-view, then trying to talk about classical music as better than rap music or country music or any other kind of music just doesn't make sense.

What is unfortunate is that so few people relate to classical music. As Alex Ross so eloquently put it,

"The music does not lend itself to the same kind of generational identification as, say, Sgt. Pepper. There may be kids out there who lost their virginity during Brahm's D-Minor Piano Concerto, but they don't want to tell the story and you don't want to hear it. The music attracts the reticent fraction of the population. It is an art of grand gestures and vast dimensions that plays to mobs of the quiet and the shy."

I am one in the "mobs of the quiet and the shy". I grew up in a happy, sunshine-y world of flower-picking and finger-painting. In my brief foray into teen angst, I read nothing but Dostoevsky and pretended to understand him. Because of this, I love happy, sunshine-y Mozart and Haydn and irrevocably Russian Shostakovich and Kabalevsky, among others. I did not lose my virginity to the Brahm's D-Minor Piano Concerto, but that sounds perfectly lovely to me. My taste for classical music is certainly in the minority.

What I am trying to say is that classical music is wonderful, and it's music that speaks to me. Do I want to say that it's the best music? Of course I do! But if someone else is more moved by Nirvana than Mozart, who am I to tell him that his taste in music is bad or underdeveloped or simply just wrong? I can tell him that he might like Mahler (which is, in fact, exactly what I would do), but I cannot so boldly assert that he has no idea what he's talking about and that his opinions are grossly off-the-mark.

I understand that I sound sickeningly idealist right now, but I'm 21 years old. If ever there were a time in life to be idealist, I think this would be it. Also, if you have read this far, I applaud your patience.