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

      

Grieg: Lyric Pieces, ‘Wedding Day at Troldhaugen’

      

Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture

      

Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries

      

Pachelbel: Canon in D Major

      

Rimsky-Korsakov, arranged by Rachmaninov: ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’

      

Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

      

Bizet: ‘Au Fond du Temple Saint’ from The Pearl Fishers

      

Massenet: ‘Meditation’ from Thaïs

      

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, ‘Choral’, Ode an die Freude (final movement)

      

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67, first movement

      

Verdi: ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ (‘Va’, Pensiero, Sull’ali Dorate’) from Nabucco

      

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor, Op. 23

      

Berlioz: ‘March to the Scaffold’ from Symphonie Fantastique

      

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, Andante (or the whole piece if you’ve time)

      

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 (‘Pathétique’)

      

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Op. 8, ‘Spring’, Allegro

      

Boccherini: String Quintet in E Major, Op. 11, No. 5

      

Verdi: Messa da Requiem, Dies Irae – Tuba Mirum (only if you are a Take That fan – it’s the beginning of ‘Never Forget’ … only it doesn’t have Robbie Williams in Verdi’s version)

      Hopefully you’ve found something which you recognise on this list. Familiarity is a useful tool with all music and I advise giving new pieces a couple of listens before giving up on them. For some more starting points for broadening your listening from the mainstream classical repertoire, see Appendix I.⁵

      From here on in you may not recognise the pieces I mention or if you do then you won’t have heard them on a TV advert. But just because they haven’t been plucked from obscurity to be used as a theme tune or to sell cars doesn’t mean they aren’t worth listening to. There is so much great music that you’ll already have heard … imagine how much more there is to discover.

      Chapter 2

       Why, Why, Why?

      Baggage handling

      However much you stick your head in the sand, or maintain a hermit-like existence, it is very hard not to experience some classical music in your life – even if it is while waiting for your bank to answer the telephone. Subconsciously, we all build up an impression of what this world of music is like, and the very idea of ‘classical’ begins to gather a lot of baggage and preconceptions, what with its penguin suits, clapping regulations, and people waving sticks around.

      The path to understanding is riddled with such potholes. Classical music is an activity that can trip you up with unexpected difficulty or drag you down with the weight of a piece you don’t understand. Like English spelling it has its own idiosyncrasies and traditions that must simply be learnt.

      That said, it may comfort you to know that there are many traditions in classical music that even some musicians don’t fully understand: Why is a violin made in that particular shape? Why do opera singers do that wobbly thing? I’ll deal with wobbly opera voices in Chapter 10 on singing, but this chapter aims to answer other bothersome questions. It’s not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the queries that most often come my way.

      Is classical music for rich people?

      Children ask this, adults ask this – everyone asks this – and I wish there was a simple answer. I strongly feel that the music is simply music and can be enjoyed by anyone – but the history of music reveals a complex relationship with money and royalty.

      Classical music has relied on the sponsorship and support of benefactors throughout its history. The first examples of written music (as opposed to improvised) were paid for by the Church, and indeed the Church is a source of income for musicians to this day. By the Baroque era (late 1600s to 1750) and Classical era (1750–1800) (more of which later) the most important patronages came from royalty. The ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV enlisted the services of composer Jean-Baptiste Lully; Joseph Haydn had a generous sponsor in Prince Nikolaus Esterházy; and both Mozart and Beethoven received money from Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria.

      Musicians have always tugged at the coat tails of the rich, who have in turn enjoyed the privilege of having bespoke music on tap. In the case of Lully, he was in the pocket of his patron; the music of Lully reeks of eighteenth-century regal opulence. Some of his slower dances would allow the most bloated aristocrat to saunter around the Palace of Versailles without breaking into a sweat.

      During the nineteenth century the middle classes became consumers of music as never before, at first through the dissemination of sheet music to be played on instruments at home: singing songs together or, if they could afford one, around a piano. Away from the large chambers of aristocratic homes people made their own entertainment in pubs; the local musician would have been a prized member of the community.

      The fashion for public concerts increased through the nineteenth century and, with the building of purpose-built venues, such as the Royal Albert Hall built in 1871, the Queen’s Hall, 1893 (destroyed in the Blitz) and the Wigmore Hall, 1899, music’s popularity increased. In the early twentieth century the invention of the gramophone and the wireless radio democratised classical music in a way that was impossible before; now anybody could own a recording of the complete works of Mozart and listen to it in their own house. This marked a dramatic change in our relationship to music.

      Before these inventions it was difficult for people to hear music without going to a concert. Believe it or not, at one time people would listen to full operas down the telephone. It can’t have sounded very good but the pace of invention during the twentieth century was startling: the wireless, a large radio receiving only a few stations, was an exciting window on to the world for my grandmother, who was born in a Welsh mining town in the 1920s, although her father chastised her for using it to listen to ‘modern rubbish’ such as Glenn Miller. Just twenty years later and my father had a record