Why the sudden change of heart?
Today being the glorious, sunny, 80-degree day that it was, I decided to take a trip to the beach with some friends. I splattered on sunscreen, stretched out a towel and collapsed on the sand.
Soon enough I caught myself drifting off… all of a sudden I was Captain Plush, on a mission to destroy the sun monster. Feathered torpedoes zoomed around me and waves of heat blinded my eyes, yet I pushed on, determined to demolish the growling cookie monster eating the sun.
Wait a second… growling cookie monster? As I came to, trying to make sense of my dream, I realized the growling, devouring creature must have been the ocean. With its low grumble and howling waves, it made for a pretty good space villain.
But why was the cookie monster sleep-inducing? Why is the sound of the ocean so calming?
One of my friends proposed that the ocean must remind us of our mother’s embryonic fluids, the sticky sort we floated around in while in the womb. Though a charming idea, I was doubtful of our ability to identify with a feeling so… primal.
I think the ocean is calming because it is “white noise.” Like the sound of a trickling stream, a bedroom fan, the hum of an air conditioner, the static of a radio. It’s a constant, unchanging, barely discernible sound that floats in the back of our minds and washes away our troubles.
Picture yourself lying on the beach with the roar of the ocean in your ear… Now that’s relaxation. Where else can you experience that?
Why, in a symphony hall, of course! Or, perhaps on a classical music radio station!
I realized today that the classification of classical music as “calming music” stems from people’s perception of complex progressions and unusual instruments as “white noise.”
Just as I might turn on a baseball game for the sake of distraction while I cook dinner, or turn on the bedroom fan so I can fall asleep, the average person will listen to a classical piece of music and hardly hear it.
This reminds me of a time I spent in the car with my sister. We were driving a long distance so I turned on a Mahler symphony. Thirteen minutes in I’m on the edge of my seat, holding my breath as a chord resolves in a deceptive resolution, and I looked over to see my sister, who is in the passenger seat sending a text, biting her fingernails and asking if the song is over yet.
Unlike pop songs and hip hop singles, which can be easily recognized by rhyming lyrics over a weak, repetitive chord progression, symphonic and operatic repertoire floats in the deep end of musical intricacy.
I-IV-V-I is baby food for classical musicians. We have no appetite for it. We need something thick and meaty to sink our teeth into, to tear apart and savor, piece by piece.
To the untrained ear, on the other hand, a Brahms symphony is merely fifty minutes of I-IV-V-I progressions. (No wonder the old ladies are always nodding off in the front row. If that was all I heard, I’m sure it would put me to sleep, too.)
With this understanding, I’m left with an unfortunate lack of hope that average Joe (who is most likely a Coldplay fan) will ever truly appreciate classical repertoire. After all, average Joe has never played an instrument, read a music theory textbook, or even learned the notes in a C Major scale. Likewise, his elementary school level of music education only goes so far, and everyone knows he’s too cool to attend those classical community outreach programs.
What keeps the public, then, from tossing classical music into their database of white noise and storing it away until they need help falling asleep?
Unfortunately, nothing.
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