John Mauceri is a protégé of Leonard Bernstein so no wonder I resonated (no musical pun intended) to For the Love of Music (2019). This book falls at the intersection of leadership and creativity, a place that has become infinitely more critical in the 21st century. Mauceri provides background on what Western classical music includes, addresses why it is important to the human condition, and invites readers to explore it more deeply through study and concert attendance.
Music of all sorts (i.e. jazz, folk, world, rock-and-roll) can be embraced at many different depths. One of the most important things for advocates of any type of music to do is to invite family, friends, and colleagues into enjoying it without arrogance of culture or training and with an open mind. Mauceri unapologetically defines “Western music” as being derived from the Western cultural cannon, which began in early Greco-Roman civilizations as one of the four quadrivium of knowledge. Mauceri further distinguishes Western classical music as the music most often performed in concert halls that was composed, and came to prominence, in the 250 years from early 18th to mid 20th centuries. He says that this music “celebrates community, nature, humanity’s aspirations, triumphs, and foibles, and our desire to apply form to chaos” (Introduction, locator 108). Most composers who we now view as part of the Western classical tradition are chronologically bracketed between the births of Bach and Handel in 1685 and concluding with the death of Richard Strauss in 1949. The only exceptions were Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and Sergie Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) who were eschewed for different reasons in their own days but in the 20th century were fully embraced in the Western classical canon.
Mauceri makes particular note of his early experiences with classical music and suggests that others' first encounters are pivotal in their appreciation of classical music. This is certainly my case in that my first vinyl LP records were of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Ravel’s Bolero. These two pieces are time stamped for me at age 10 when I first encountered them. I will always carry the people, places, and experiences related to these compositions with me as I engage and interpret the world around me. Although the setting may change and our understanding of a piece of music change over time, “our relationship with music is a relationship with an eternal and necessary unifying force” (locator 821).
Music is a unifying force for a variety of reasons but one is that, while compositions are unique, they share a number of common structures. It is these structures that offer just enough familiarity for listeners to be able to move from one piece to another while feeling somewhat “at home” with what they hear. Mauceri provides some basic insight into these structures including key structures, rhythm, melody, and overall compositional form. The creativity with which these structures are used is what causes listeners to resonate with them and sometimes the structure is quite compelling – for example the rhythmic persistence in Ravel’s “Bolero” or the upside down variation no. 18 of Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
Mauceri says that, “classical music is bound up in humanity’s desire to tell its stories through symbols” (locator 389). Although the Western classical canon is heavily dominated by men of Astro-German heritage, their compositions clearly tapped much broader cultures than just central Europe. And the Western classical canon includes a few female composers (many of them married to men whose names are more commonly known to us today) and extended to American composers such as George Gershwin, Aaron Copeland, and Leonard Bernstein. These three Americans were most appreciated for their incorporation of diverse musical languages into their compositions with African American, Jewish American, and native peoples most notable. Some classical music was composed to simply create something beautiful but other compositions were designed to communicate a specific message. Regardless of the purposefulness of the message, a listener’s appreciation is always enhanced by understanding the historical, social, and other context of the time when the composer conceived the piece. Here again, some compositions came quickly to their composers and others took years of labored inspiration or were part of a long sequence of compositions where questions of life and existence were explored through multiple musical lenses.
One of Mauceri’s most important messages is that classical music should never be portrayed or perceived as throwing up a wall to define any particular socio-economic, religious, cultural, or national group. In fact, much of classical music was composed to provide a bridge among people of all sorts. Although all compositions are created in a specific time, music is timeless as it speaks across boundaries and generations to send messages of love, warning, cataclysm, and triumph. Some pieces are short and profound (i.e. Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise"), some melancholic (i.e. Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata), and others, such as the symphonies of Bruckner or Mahler, may be quite long, and some are noted for their power (i.e. Beethoven’s Symphony #9 or Shostakovich’s #5). Loving a piece of music is often a matter of personal taste, what it communicates to you, or your experience with the specific composition. Mauceri makes it clear that study and contextual understanding may be required in order to deeply know a composition but he also says that, “You should never be embarrassed to reject the music you just don’t like” (locator 495).
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