A populist plea for classical music

By Caeli Smith

I often ride the subway with my violin, and the sight of the instrument's case slung over my shoulder as I squeeze into a crowded compartment tends to spark comments from strangers. "Oh, I played violin for four years in elementary school!"

As they reminisce, I begin to understand that they no longer have a relationship with classical music; it's all in the past for them. These conversations, although pleasant, leave me disturbed. If so many people studied classical music as children, why don't they take pleasure in it later in life?

It's well known that learning an instrument at a young age has benefits for one's cognition, dexterity, and discipline. But music can bring so much more to a person's life than a higher SAT score. Classical music helps us connect with parts of ourselves that we didn't even know were there. Whether it's rambunctious and crazy or sublime and spiritual, classical music provides us with channels for grappling with what it is to be human.

Sometimes I try to imagine my own life without classical music. I do enjoy top-40 stations, but they're sort of like sour candy: They give you a headache after a while, and you definitely can't survive on them alone. Sometimes I'll binge on fun and insubstantial music, but after a while, I'm dying for the musical equivalent of a juicy peach or a filet mignon. I can't imagine an all-pop diet with no "real music" to sustain me.

By the way, I'm not comparing all nonclassical music to Pop Rocks. There is plenty of music in other genres that is gorgeous and intelligent. But the thought of going through life without ever enjoying a symphony - as many people will - is heartbreaking.

I believe it's possible for someone with no formal musical education to be thrilled by even the most dense and supposedly inaccessible music. I have a fantasy in which I lock one of my best childhood friends - an imaginative and compassionate person who unfortunately has no interest in classical music - in a closet with nothing but a bag of sandwiches and a recording of Claude Debussy's String Quartet, forcing her to listen to it over and over. It might take a while, but I'm certain that she would emerge, blinking in the light, metamorphosed.

Of course, my fantasy is ridiculous, a wish for a kind of musical Stockholm syndrome. But I am sure that if my friend were to listen to the quartet during her lunch break for a few days in a row, she would begin to love it.

The deepest love isn't always love at first sight. You can groove to a pop song instantly, but there is rarely a lasting relationship like the lifelong romance you can have with a masterpiece. Love takes time and a receptive frame of mind.

When I first encountered Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony as a member of the orchestra at the Aspen Music Festival, I was bewildered by its fat, discordant sound. I felt as if I were wading through a murky swamp in the dark, with no clue where I was going. Yet by the third rehearsal, its camouflaged, ethereal melodies had revealed themselves to my ear. I was totally in love.

During a recent conversation with my older sister, Lauren, I launched into a passionate narrative, practically foaming at the mouth, as I tried to explain to her how I felt about Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé. Lauren said she connects with an unfamiliar piece of music better when she knows how others feel about the work - not "music education" per se, but a personal introduction. I'm now making a mix CD for her, which will include my heartfelt liner notes about each piece and why I chose it, as well as instructions for listening. I'll tell her to play each track four or five times before making a judgment. And my notes for the last movement of Mahler's Ninth read: "Lie down in a dark room with your eyes closed."

So what does it take to love classical music? Does it require hours of expensive lessons, reams of background reading, dozens of PBS documentaries? That sounds like enough work to make a lot of people stay away.

But all you really need is a little patience and an open mind. Given time, every human being can discover magic in Beethoven's quartets, or listen to Bach and feel something deep in the body that whispers a wordless secret about the universe.