Smelfungus's Blog: Classical music for people who don't like classical music

The comedian and writer David Baddiel presented an interesting documentary on Radio 3 last night titled My Trouble with Classical Music. He starts off by telling us how he was brought up in an aspirational lower class family, where his parents cultivated an interest in classical music in an attempt, according to Baddiel, to improve their social status. It is never clear whether they particularly enjoyed the music. It would explain why Baddiel was thoroughly put off the music if it was forced on him by parents who never truly appreciated the value of it (only its social value). But now Baddiel has, if I may say so, reached middle age, he is becoming bored with some of the popular music he most loves. His hope is that an exploration of classical music can offer works so wondrous and with such depth that he will never tire of them -- each listen would reveal something new. The programmes documents his quest to do so.

I was mildly irritated by some of the advice given to him. When Baddiel found a section of a symphony irritating, one chap advised him to 'close your eyes, stop thinking about it, and just let if flow'. That has to the worst, laziest, most useless advise ever. Frank Skinner was eager to share his taste in 20th century music with Baddiel who obviously was not going to enjoy it. (But one can hardly blame Skinner: we're all eager, often too eager, for other people to enjoy what we enjoy.) Baddiel was consistently clear about what he likes in music, and his tastes are perfectly reasonable. He likes more modest music -- 'stripped down' I think he said. He likes melodies, and he doesn't like the way there is seldom a straightforward melody in much classical music; the way a melody is heard once then again only in fragments and altered forms -- i.e. thematic development. He seems to react against the bloat and swelling and melodrama and overindulgence he perceives in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. I sympathise with all these (though I do nevertheless like Tchaikovsky a lot -- I would apply it more to Mahler).

What really annoyed me was that despite Baddiel repeatedly explaining what he likes in music nearly everyone recommended to him either capital-c Classical or Romantic or Late Romantic music. No one though thought to say to him that it is is not classical music that you dislike, but broadly a particular period or style of classical music. The trouble is that most people, including most classical music listeners and rather too many musicians, are so stuck in the 'long nineneeth century'. I like a lot of music from the period -- it encompasses some of my favourite music -- but I am perhaps more fond of so-called early music (broadly speaking, music before 1750) for some of the same reasons that motivate Baddiel. So I think that Baddiel, and indeed people like him, might find this older music, oddly enough, more familiar and attractive. I particularly recommend English song, and have made a selection for those who are interested:

Henry Lawes -- Have you e'er seen the morning sun