I am not a huge fan of classical music. Despite my inattentiveness to classical music, I was actively exposed to it from a young age because of my mom’s persistent push on raising musically “cultured” sons. Along with that desire, my mom always said that “music is what you make of it,” and enforced an interesting idea to both my brother and me. She repeatedly encouraged both of us to make a story out of the music that we heard. Some of the stories that we made were pretty bizarre. Once we listened to Vivaldi’s Winter and said that the composer must have fought with his wife when he wrote this piece. I did not appreciate my mom’s persistence when I was young but now I am extremely grateful that she has taught me well. I agree with Copland that “all music has an expressive power, some more and some less” (12). However, I would like to take a radical turn and say that music is what you make of it.
I am not particularly sure of what Beethoven intended to say through Beethoven’s 9th Symphony First Movement. And in that sense, I guess it is hard to pin down what it “means.” But I think that is the case for most classical music for most of listeners. Unless you have extensive knowledge on the composer and the context of which the song was written on, it is almost impossible to analyze the meaning of the song to its full potential. So, if I were to return to my seven years old self, I will say that I can picture a man with extremely frequent mood change walking through a park.
Although I was exposed to classical music from a young age, I do not know what to predict from a piece of music. I think this is one advantage that I have as a non-classical musician. Just because I do not know what to predict from a piece of classical music, I can listen to a piece solely focusing on the part that is playing at the moment. For me Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake was just as unpredictable as Beethoven’s 9th Symphony which made both pieces interesting.
