- Im not a classical musician, or only partly, definitely very rarely - I would like to thank my audience for your precious presence here with me from the deepest place of my heart and invite you to spend this moment together without any prejudices about Classical Music What is classical music? Nowadays, the word classical is employed to express something that is very serious, solemn, distant, only reserved for elitist people, inapproachable, without stimulant impact, only for people who had classical music education or worse, background music for elevator and restaurants, never chocking but only beautiful. I would like you to listen to Bach here without the old settled image of him as the father of music, music theorist, the mathematician or scientist of music,or father of counterpoint, etc. Please forget who composed this music but only be aware that this person was a normal man who utilized popular folk song themes for fugues, lived a life as a husband, son, father, a young man who flirted with a young girl in the church, slipped away during sermons and went to cellar wine(!) provoking complains of the consistory of Arnstadt church, and could have got fired, lived glorious moments, intense humiliations, failures, wanted to be a hero doing battles in the streets with friends , was a total crazy fan of the pop star of his time Buxtehude, lived as teacher and student, absolutely like you and me. When you want to hear counterpoint, please direct your attention rather to the convivial dialogues, voices of despair emerging one after the other, sometimes more louder than the other, determinative voice imposing one after the other, murmurs of lovers, one voice consoling another or sustaining and supporting, or everybody keeping voices very low so that one voice could be heard. If you want to hear strictness or severness, I am sorry for you but there is not such thing in Well-Tempered Clavier. There is yelling of suffering that is not intellectual or philosophic but the sincere and just very human yelling, yes. If you want to hear comfortableness Im also sorry, there is not such thing here. There is tenderness, always voluptuous and quivering, caresses, and sweet love that provoke chills, like when you think about your treasured and cherished one. Because it is never monotone and still. In his fugues, there are most diversified and thrilling expressions that we can experience in our life. In preludes, its expressed with the most improvised, free and lyric way, more on individual scale. The extreme rapidity of Bachs keyboard playing has breathtaken his contemporaries as mentioned in a lot of testimonies and letters, the extreme originality of his harmonies even led a church to forbidden him those during the messes. The popular composers of 18th 19th were idolized like the pop stars of our time. Classical music was the daily bread music that stimulated everybody like our society is excited by pop music. Then what happened to the classical music, why the percentage of classical music lovers became now so small? Could this assemblage of the words classical and music could be a false appearance that can be intimidating and keeping many people away from it, making them feeling hesitant? Is this source of confusion? Is Beethoven a classical composer ? Absolutely not. He even broke severe musical rules of his time because for him, there was no rule that you cannot break for the sake of beauty. If Beethoven heard us treating him as a classical composer after all the extreme musical things that he did, he would haunt us. Was Bach a classical composer? Certainly not. Was Chopin, Schumann, Prokofiev or Rachmaninov a classical composer? No! Why the majority of terrestrial population just ignores this so boringly called Classical Music when this is just the most jumping, exciting, innovative, magical, the greatest, the most beautiful and amazing music ever? I have no answer. But what I know is that this has to be changed. Lets begin together, this very moment, with you, together. HJ Lim
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 20:26:42 +0000
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