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

of why they wrote the way they did.

      Where to listen: the internet and audio technology

      If you can’t get to a concert hall or you are thinking about building up a library, then there are now a number of options for listening to classical music: whether you are a silver surfer or a teenager doing dodgy downloads, the internet is now making music highly accessible. Superb audio is coming to a computer near you and it’s worth getting a pair of high-quality speakers hooked up to your sound card (the bit of the computer that makes the noise.) For me a decent internet connection is the ideal way to encounter music.

      As a first step, if your computer can handle it and you have broadband internet access, you should be able to download Spot-ify. I strongly urge you to do so. Somehow it is able to give you access to almost any CD you care to listen to. There is a monthly fee for the advert-free subscription service but there is a free version which is frankly pretty good. But the reigning king of internet music is iTunes from Apple. I don’t know how I lived before iTunes. It’s possible to buy pretty much any music and download it instantly. The range is much greater than Spotify and if you are worried about losing your music in a computer crash then you can legally burn CD backup copies. Thanks to iTunes I have around 3,000 individual tracks stored on my mobile phone at a fairly high quality. The joy of this for me is in shuffle mode which picks tracks at random from your entire CD collection – it’s a great way to rediscover music.

      If you are interested in having the highest-quality audio then there is an audio format called FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Hyperion Records are now selling much of their output via the Web in FLAC. This is recorded at a higher quality than conventional formats like MP3 and WAV. If this is getting a bit geeky then let me just say this: a higher-quality file does make a difference to your listening but only if you have a decent pair of speakers. If you are listening on your kitchen radio with the fridge buzzing in the background then it’s simply not worth the extra effort of seeking out higher formats. If like me you sit in a darkened room with the best speakers you can lay your hands on then maybe it’s worth the extra money.

      The most exciting development that I’ve seen is the Super Audio CD (SACD) which gives you 5.1 surround sound and higher quality than CD. Those still lamenting the loss of the ‘warmth’ of vinyl probably abhor the thought of yet another digital format. To my ears (which I like to think are pretty reliable) there’s not enough difference between the CD and these newer formats to warrant the necessary expenditure unless you are an audiophile. Until the ordinary listener can hear the difference immediately and afford to buy the equipment I think that CDs and MP3s will remain the industry standard. (MP3 and other compressed formats such as M4A and OGG give quality sound for but use less space on your computer or iPod/ MP3 player. Compression is what we all do to our suitcase when coming home from holiday – we squeeze as much in as possible, and though it comes out in the same form – a shirt is still a shirt – it’s probably a little crumpled. Compressed music isn’t quite as vibrant as uncompressed music.)

      I sincerely hope to be proved wrong in this because I would love to have the opportunity for higher and higher recording quality. The difference for me is in the presence of the sound. If you are used to hearing nothing but recordings of orchestras then the real thing can be surprisingly vibrant. Recording flat-tens the sound and seems to put it into a box or behind glass. In pop music technical wizardry makes certain sounds pop out of the texture but that doesn’t work in classical music where fidelity to the natural sound is vital. Where FLAC recordings or SACD win out over MP3s and CDs is that you can hear the instruments ‘in relief’, there’s a more palpable sense of the presence of the instruments. This brings an added depth to the sound which means you can hear through the texture – this is especially noticeable in high-density orchestral scores or choral music where there is a lot going on. At a live concert you wouldn’t have a problem hearing the inner workings of the music but on MP3s especially the sound can become too full and detail gets lost – I get a sensation of too much busy-ness and noise. But if you are happy with your Roberts analogue kitchen radio from 1974 then stick with it by all means.

      If you want to watch classical music then apart from patchy access on TV there are a couple of internet opportunities: YouTube is a good way to find all sorts of hidden treasures but can be disappointing in audio quality. There’s some great stuff available but you might get lost trying to find it.

      The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra are pioneering a brilliant subscription internet service which at the moment is very reasonable: for a year’s subscription you can watch every concert live from the Philharmonie (their concert hall in Berlin). What is particularly exciting about this ‘digital concert hall’ is that it enables you to watch whatever concert you choose rather than the small number broadcast on terrestrial television – it puts you in charge of your viewing. The drawback is that you’ll need a very sharp computer – and, again, quality speakers for it to be worthwhile. But this technology is coming down in price all the time and pretty soon I believe most concert halls will be offering similar services. The advantage of watching live concerts over the Web is that it can connect you with the players more directly through pre-concert talks, close-ups and general familiarity. This helps prevent that rather disengaged way of listening I mentioned earlier.

      How we listen has changed

      As wonderful as it is to be able to listen to any music from almost any period of musical history, thanks to the invention of recording we now have something of a museum culture which pins down music for close examination, like a desiccated butterfly fixed to a board. Music that was once listened to in a vibrant atmosphere (taverns, salons and noisy opera houses) can now be played almost anywhere in the world on iPods, and that, I believe, cuts it off from its roots almost entirely. This can be like listening to music in a vacuum – it is rendered meaningless.

      How can we have a more vital and immediate way of listening to classical music? A listening that rescues diamonds from the past and shines them up anew? Well, it’s partly up to us to investigate the history and context of the music, but it’s also up to the performers to create performances that bring music back to life and which convey something of the original spirit.

      In the next chapter I’ll look at what you can do to create a more meaningful engagement with this music.

      Chapter 4

       A Hot Date with Music

      Getting to know you, getting to know all about you …

      Ever get the feeling that you are missing something? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tried to read the programme notes in the half-light during the concert without knowing the title of the music I’m hearing – or worse still, I’ve realised what the work was about as I read the notes on the way home. This is patently not the way to do it.

      Classical music benefits from repeated listening and sometimes it’s only by drumming a piece into your brain that you’ll learn to love it. There are pieces that you’ll fall for immediately, but sometimes that can mean the rewards are short-lived. Once you get beyond the ‘greatest hits’ of classical music, pieces will require more effort but yield more pleasure in the long run.

      We’ve talked about music that you might already know, or at least recognise. Once you move away from the familiar it can get a little more scary. In pop music there are lyrics that can draw you in, the song may well be in a style that you know and often it has been expressly crafted to be catchy. It is more difficult to find pieces of classical music that you are going to like once you move away from the easier stuff. It simply takes time … But it’s worth it.

      SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL

      For all musicians it’s a lifelong journey. The British conductor Sir Simon Rattle, who is blessed with a convivial manner and a knack for talking to the media, is currently Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, arguably the world’s most prestigious orchestral job. Rattle is a man you’d think would know everything there is to know about music. Not so; his constant quest to discover new music and to learn is an inspiration to all. On his accession to the Berlin job he commented, ‘This is a profession where you are always learning, always travelling and never arriving. I want that to continue.’