All The More Reason

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 is a delight to the ears. The Pastoral charms both the heart and the mind. These last two sentences could be written about almost any piece of classical music ; such is the nature of the rhetoric of classical music. It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way, and there are certainly writers who go to great extremes, perhaps at the risk of being awkward, to avoid this sentimental manner of writing about music.

Hopefully one of the possibilities of this blog in 2007 will be to explore some of the ideas classical music has in common with reason. Why do we listen to classical music? Will future generations listen to the music written during our time? Is the concert hall a vestige of another time? How is our relationship to music changing? So many questions… And even though a large percentage of them have been explored elsewhere, perhaps sifting through trodden territory may yet uncover deeper and richer soil.

As for the Pastoral symphony, it truly is a delight to the ear. One can download a fantastic live performance to it here.

J.S.