Gareth Malone’s Guide to Classical Music: The Perfect Introduction to Classical Music. Gareth Malone

to be played in public. This can make it difficult for people to approach classical music because it takes more time for the music to reward the listener.

      In food circles there is an acknowledgement that time is important and that fast food has a detrimental effect on our health. The slow food movement, which began in Italy, aims to redress this balance. There isn’t a formal movement for ‘slow music’ or maybe ‘slow listening’, but perhaps there should be. This is not to say that all classical music is at a slow speed, merely that its creation takes more time and so does its appreciation. There is a difference between the fast-food approach – passively hearing muzak – which encourages our brains to tune out, and the slow-food approach – actively listening to classical music – which encourages us to listen more carefully. There is an enormous difference between hearing something and listening to it.

      It might be that for the first few listens you will, quite simply, find some of this music boring. I am happy to admit that I have been bored in classical music concerts. I once left an opera by bombastic and grandiose French composer Hector Berlioz before the final act: it just seemed so excessively drawn out. But I have also been bored by uninteresting sport matches, dull dramas on TV and most especially by pastel landscape paintings in art galleries, although I don’t stick all those interests in the bin because of that occasional boredom. The experience of being bored is often because you are in the wrong frame of mind, or the work in question simply doesn’t speak to you. Don’t worry, there are plenty more.

      Nevertheless, one of the central themes of this book is giving things a chance. In the next chapter I’ll discuss how to do the right kind of preparation so that even the most seemingly uninteresting music can tell its story and find a more receptive listener in you.

      But let’s get on to the music. Below I’ve tried to describe some different ways in which we listen to music and I’m sure you, like me, will move between these modes during any piece of classical music. Even the most practised listener can lose concentration at some point in a piece and even the musical novice may have moments of elevated listening in the presence of a truly great performance.

      

Not listening

      

Passive listening

      

Active listening

      

Creative listening

      

Comparative listening

      

Specialist listening

       Not listening

      Not listening is what you do when you are thinking about how long the concert will last or how long it will take to get home. My hunch (and that’s all it is) is that people will not listen to at least 25 per cent of a concert. It’s natural, normal and perfectly acceptable. Look around you at any concert. There will be at least one person asleep, and many of the rest of them will be doing a ‘this is moving me’ face. This face is especially prevalent right before the interval. Adopt a comfortable position and know that it’s OK to let your mind wander.

       Passive listening

      This is the aural equivalent of ‘taking in the view’. It’s listening to the music but only hearing the surface. I find myself listening in this way when I’m engaged in another activity – typing this text, for example, with Bach’s English Suites playing merrily in the background. It requires effort to listen to the music in a concerted way all the time, so there are bound to be times when I sit back and let the sound fall upon me. For a classical musician this feels almost naughty – surely I should be thinking a series of great and profound thoughts as I listen? No. I’m just enjoying the experience. When I eat chocolate I don’t always read the ingredients and analyse what makes them combine to such indulgent effect. I simply chomp and go.

       Active listening

      This is when 100 per cent of your attention is taken up with the music. I usually achieve this at the beginning of the concert and can wane after about fifteen minutes. It can take something especially interesting (a loud bit) to jolt me back into the music. At this point I will quickly put on my ‘this is moving me’ face.

       Creative listening

      When I was a child music would constantly suggest images, as though the music played out a kaleidoscopic film in my mind. This film was different for every piece of music. I think this is the same for many people. Music suggests atmospheres, feelings or landscapes. I suppose when I was a child I did not realise that these were part of my response to the music; I thought they were part of the music. This is creative listening because it’s your brain being stimulated by the music and coming up with a creative response. For many people this is part of the joy of classical music and as the repertoire is so varied you can be transported almost anywhere. For some people, and the composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) was one, these connections are unavoidable. He had synaesthesia, where one sense interferes with the other. Hearing certain musical chords made him see colours.

       Comparative listening

      This means that you’ve been to more than one concert and/or you’ve been listening to other pieces of classical music. It’s the basis of forming an opinion – from noticing that the lead violinist was playing particularly fervently on this occasion to appreciating aspects of the composition. Anybody is capable of listening in this way as we have been consuming music all our lives and have a huge basis for comparison.

       Specialist listening

      Once you’ve heard a piece several times you may start to notice differences between your recording and the version being performed. It might vary in any number of ways and you may feel that you can comment on these subtleties: the tenor isn’t as good, the strings are more vibrant, the brass sounded louder, they played it much faster, it wasn’t as emotional, etc.

      Why we listen

      Music connects with us at a primal level. We have an atavistic response to rhythm because we are rhythmic creatures: our walking, our speech, our daily lives are determined by rhythm and are accompanied by the constant beat of our hearts. However, merely hearing rhythm is not enough for us to be moved. My washing machine is rhythmical but I want to get far away from it when it’s on because it’s not musical. Still, when I listen to contemporary classical music it’s often the driving rhythm that I find exciting.

      As well as rhythm getting under your skin, certain sounds themselves can provoke an immediate emotional reaction: my singing teacher Janice Chapman, a champion of a scientific approach to singing teaching, describes how the range of the human voice is perfectly matched to the range of our ears so that we cannot help but have a physical reaction to a highly emotive sound:

      The resonance present in the newborn child is in the 3,000 hertz area, which corresponds to the most sensitive part of the human ear. A baby’s cries are ‘primal sound’ at its most potent as it is the only communication mode available to the newborn child, whose very survival depends upon its ability to communicate its needs when it leaves the womb. Babies practice vocalizations in utero and emerge from the womb with a highly effective vocal system ready for use.²

      Our reaction to sounds that hit those sensitive parts of the ears are instinctive, as anybody who has listened to a baby cry will know: you simply can’t ignore it, any more than you can ignore being hit on the head with a hammer.

      Even minute changes in rhythm and pitch can have a huge effect on us. An excellent example of how small variations in pitch and repetitive rhythm can make compelling music