# 107yo French pianist explains the essence of classical music



## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

Last month National Public Radio (US public broadcasting service) broadcast an interview with the rather amazing French classical pianist Colette Maze, now 107 years old. You can access the audio interview, plus a complete transcription (including photos) here:
https://www.npr.org/sections/decept...ear-old-french-pianist-colette-maze-new-album

I happened to hear this at a time when I've been musing about what it is about classical music that so uniquely, so powerfully, so comprehensively engages us, enraptures us - i.e., what is its nature, its fundamental function. I had come to the tentative conclusion that fine classical music has some kind of unusually engulfing emotional power capable of permeating multiple aspects of one's being. Something that goes well beyond arousing mere fascination with clever composition, design, structure, mechanics, but invokes a far more profound complexity of emotional and cognitive response.

What particularly caught my attention in the Colette Maze interview was an observation that seemed consistent with my own thinking:

"I always preferred composers who gave me tenderness," she says. "Like [Robert] Schumann and [Claude] Debussy. Music is an affective language, a poetic language. In music there is everything - nature, emotion, love, revolt, dreams; it's like a spiritual food."

I'd be very interested to learn the thoughts of others regarding the peculiar power of music, and in particular great classical music.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

"It's like a spiritual food". Exactly how I feel. I believe that humans have inborn, natural attraction to and need for music. Different music for different cultures to be sure. But we have a desire for music that reaches the soul. And that means music people can connect with, not on an intellectual level, but on a more spiritual level, if you will. That's why for 100 years classical listeners have by and large rejected the serialism, atonalism, and other -isms where the music is more mathematics. Audiences want and need music that speaks to their inner being. The soul wants music that moves them, be it Bach, Beethoven or Patsy Cline. 

I also believe that music is a force for good. Music makes you a better person - provided the music is of a positive variety. I do believe that ugly, violent music is bad for the soul, bad for people and ultimately bad for society. There is some rap, which I cannot tolerate at all, that is so vulgar, crass, violent and obscene that it is destructive. A lot of heavy metal I put in the same category. Controversial, sure. Don't feed your soul junk food.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

The phases of composition are
1. Universal expressive timbre
2. Catchy counter-melody and melody
3. Gradual complication
4. Repeat
5. Optional, but most composers accept: Slight deviation from the above, so people notice you're original/memorable


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## neofite (Feb 19, 2017)

Naawdry wrote: "...fine classical music has some kind of unusually engulfing emotional power capable of permeating multiple aspects of one's being. Something that goes well beyond arousing mere fascination with clever composition, design, structure, mechanics, but invokes a far more profound complexity of emotional and cognitive response."

This is a very important point and very well expressed. It explains why, for example, serialism, despite – or, more likely, because of – its very clever mathematics or algorithm-based composition techniques, has failed to excite the passions of music lovers "so powerfully, so comprehensively" the way classical music has. Schoenberg and his contemporaries and followers were certainly geniuses, but rather lesser geniuses in comparison to their common practice period (roughly 1650 to 1900) predecessors.

Their desire to liberate music from what they regarded as the rigid confines of the common practice period composition rules was certainly an intriguing idea and should be greatly commended. This idea led to many diverse and truly fascinating experiments. However, they were largely failures, failing to attract the great mass of classical music lovers other for their fleeting novelty value, and also failing to attract the new generations who, with good reason, found popular music to have much more emotional power. They were failures because those composers who discarded the common practice period rules in favor of serialism, atonalism and minimalism either forgot about the overwhelming importance of "engulfing emotional power capable of permeating multiple aspects of one's being" or, more likely, did not have the ability to create it.


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

In my original posting, I noted: "I've been musing about what it is about classical music that so uniquely, so powerfully, so comprehensively engages us, enraptures us – i.e., what is its nature, its fundamental function." Much of what has actually been driving my "musing" is an interest in the contemporary direction of classical music: Where is it headed? What are classical composers and musicians fundamentally seeking to achieve?

I had begun to recognize that (by judging, at least, by my own case) the distinguishing attribute of classical music is its power to communicate, somehow, with one's "spirit" – i.e., the rather amazing complexity of cognitive and emotional functioning, and motivating animus, that seems to define and constitute each of us as a sentient being. Colette Maze's observations – particularly her understanding music as "an affective language ... like a spiritual food" – appear to corroborate and reinforce this recognition.

So how successful have contemporary, and contemporaneous, trends in classical music composition been in achieving this "affective", "spiritual" mission? Throughout much of the 20th century, at least, I think there have been monumental achievements – works of profound beauty and spiritual reverberance that have become firm staples of classical repertory. 

On the other hand, in my view, a considerable array of what passes for contemporary achievement in the classical music milieu might be characterized, at best, as merely interesting, or cognitively intriguing, and at worst, as conveying an enveloping spiritual greyness of perpetual neurotic distress, perplexity, despair. In addition to this, another trend I find fascinating is what I prefer to classify as "sonic experimentation with implications for human perception" (although I regard its inclusion in the classical tradition as somewhat puzzling).

So now, here in the third decade of the 21st century, where is all this headed? What are the implications for the future of classical music? Will new, contemporaneous classical composition deploy sufficiently innovative creativity to maintain the unique spiritual transaction that's so important to so many of us?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Nawdry said:


> In my original posting, I noted: "I've been musing about what it is about classical music that so uniquely, so powerfully, so comprehensively engages us, enraptures us - i.e., what is its nature, its fundamental function." Much of what has actually been driving my "musing" is an interest in the contemporary direction of classical music: Where is it headed? What are classical composers and musicians fundamentally seeking to achieve?


Firstly, IMO Classical music is not unique from other kinds of music, the practitioners and creators of any kind of music wish to communicate something of their spirit.

Secondly, contemporary Classical composers have generally the same intentions, aspirations, priorities, and purpose as Classical composers throughout the history of Western Classical music.

What changes is style, not the degree of serious intent, or a concern with the craft of musical composition.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> the practitioners and creators of any kind of music wish to communicate something of their spirit.


What about John Cage and the experimental music which came after? That's not a rhetorical question, you know more about this than I do.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> What about John Cage and the experimental music which came after? That's not a rhetorical question, you know more about this than I do.


I believe _all artists_ wish to communicate something of their spirit.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

I have never believed in the power of music by itself as a method for self-improvement. Music can be used that way, and a hobby or interest can certainly be helpful for one's mental health, but the greatest interpreter of Debussy who ever lived was a true-believer Nazi, and the nations which produced all the world's most beautiful romantic music in the 19th century spent the early part of the 20th century blasting each other to bloody chunks.

Entertainment is entertainment, even if what gives one pleasure is to listen to very affective, moving music.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Wow, she can still play? Would the bones in her fingers be alright if she plays Liszt?


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Firstly, IMO Classical music is not unique from other kinds of music, the practitioners and creators of any kind of music wish to communicate something of their spirit.


SanAntone's comments on this issue are thought-tickling. In my view, while the borders of genres can be blurry, the "spiritual' effects of classical ("serious", "fine-art-focused") music are distinctive and unique, and likewise the objectives (which we might call the "spirit") of classical composers seeking to create music of overpowering beauty. This leads me to surmise that the greatest composers - those whose greatest compositions continue to enthrall us with their compelling beauty - were driven by that objective, whether they have realized it or not. This then comes into play when we assess whether a composition, or style of composition, possesses that "unusually engulfing emotional power capable of permeating multiple aspects of one's being" and invokes the "profound complexity of emotional and cognitive response" I described in a previous comment.

I wonder to what extent that orientation continues within contemporary trends of classical-genre composition.


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