Beethoven & Co.

I wanted to add a short companion piece to Troels' explanation of why he listens to classical music, for I feel he made very important points.

And the most important he made is:

Music of high quality contains wisdom. It also contains beauty and health, but for me the possibility of gaining wisdom is the most important. Quality music is an important tool in the quest of coming closer to understanding the principles of existence.

This is something I absolutely agree with. Classical music always aspires to this goal because with the music, the art of the form is foremost.

In this it differs from much popular music. I am not saying that some popular music cannot reach very high artistic levels, for we all know it does, but it does not have to to exist and thrive.

With classical music there is always the pull towards something bigger than the music itself. The greatest engages the entire soul and leaves you wiser.

Everyone who loves classical music has experienced this. Every individual will find something in the enormous repertoire that grips them; some of us find considerable quantities of such elevating music.

Finally, to add a personal touch, the single most transforming piece of classical music I have ever encountered - and one that I can literally say altered my entire relationship with the world of sound - is one out of the recent experimental tradition.

American composer Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room is a tape piece that is made by playing a tape recording of someone speaking a few sentences into a room, recording that performance, and then playing the new recording back into the room, recording that, playing it back, recording and so on.

The net effect of this is that the recording picks up the natural resonant frequencies of the room which progressively amplify or muffle the speech that was the original source of the sound. After multiple cycles the recording bears no obvious relationship at all to the human voice, but is singing with the voice of the room.

I believe Lucier has fundamentally tapped into the otherworldliness of the natural world that we never appreciate with this extraordinary piece. I regard it as a one route into truly understanding our existence.

But that is my experience.

Everyone has their own path.

This is the modest beginning of the blog of a new group. As the blog title suggests the group is centered around Ludwig van Beethoven, but it will also be open for discussion of other classical composers and of classical music in general. This also includes music from the classical traditions of the ancient Asian cultures.

Come and sing with me.