Name: Password: or

Music and Transfiguration

Where is the Passion?

For the past century classical music has experienced a decline in popularity. In consequence, we often hear of professional orchestra having budget problems and what not. It's often said that classical music suffers from a bad case of elitism. This much is true. I can say that I've dealt with my fair share of classical musicians and scholars who have elitist attitudes, and to speak bluntly, I abhor dealing with them. But what causes elitism? I believe elitism starts when one's passion has died out and all that is left is an empty shell. Let me give a few examples of scholars who have written, not out of arrogance, but out of a love for their chosen subject.

Thorough-bass (figured bass) teaches us to reduce to its simple, original, natural, and derived chords, every composition, for whatever instrument it may be written, and however florid the melody, accompaniment, or embellishments: it grants us a view of the unveiled innermost sanctuary, shows the whole wonderful construction of a work of art in a skeleton shape, stripped of all ornamental garb: by a mere figured bass, enables the initiated to follow correctly a composition of many parts, throughout all its turns and modulations: it is our sure guide and direction, orders and binds ideas, straightens paths, chains and unites that which without its aid would be separate and erring. Therefore let us all become intimate with this elemental science, as our great ancestors were, and it will fare well with us! - J. G. Albrechtsberger

He that hawks at larks and sparrows, has no less sport, though a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game: and he is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise, the understanding, who does not know, that as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is employed with a greater, and more constant delight, than any of the other. Its searches after truth, are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure. - John Locke

Just as Romantic art is a man's first glimpse of a moral sense of life, so it is his last hold on it, his last lifeline. Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a man's soul: its task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out. - Ayn Rand

It is rare to meet with such style in scholarly writings of the past century. The above quote by Ayn Rand being one of the few exceptions. I read books of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and the passion with which these authors wrote about their subjects is practically screaming at me. When I read the dry, lifeless articles and books of today's music scholars, it is no wonder that classical music is dying. However, as John Locke said, "Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning, and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade, either those who speak, or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge."