# Do you use classical music to "escape"?



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

I'm treading carefully here. The last thing I want to do is open a discussion of the particulars of why current events might incline one to escape them. Those in a mood for that will find many other places on the Internet to accommodate them.

But for me, classical music has - in a way that other genres of music have not - offered such an escape. Bach's sound world in particular is a much more pleasant one to spend time in than our own at present.

Does this sound familiar?


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Occasionally. It's great when you want to disengage, but it has be done in the old way: no computer, but played through the hi-fi and headphones, lights low while sitting in a very comfortable armchair.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I voted "Often" because I have an earbud in most of the time I am not at work. It is an escape of sorts while not escaping. So basically one ear is in the classical music world, the other ear in the day-to-day world.


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## Marc (Jun 15, 2007)

I voted 'never', because listening to any kind of music has been possible for me in these modern times, and during my life in these modern times I've always liked to listen to music that I like. Classical music plays a huge part in that life. So… no, it doesn't feel like an escape, it feels like a cherished opportunity to do something that I like very much.


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## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

ribonucleic said:


> I'm treading carefully here. The last thing I want to do is open a discussion of the particulars of why current events might incline one to escape them. Those in a mood for that will find many other places on the Internet to accommodate them.
> 
> But for me, classical music has - in a way that other genres of music have not - offered such an escape. Bach's sound world in particular is a much more pleasant one to spend time in than our own at present.
> 
> Does this sound familiar?


Escape? Never!

A reward for a life well led!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Of course classical music is a form of escape - but then so is all music. If you were at Live Aid watching Queen and the other bands - it's a form of escapism. When I listened to Bach's 48 the other week it was an escape from this world into the world of Bach. Nothing wrong with it, of course, as long as we don't stay there!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Some of us are not yet that old, nor have such a charmed life that it doesn't require disengagement now and then. 

I can't say I 'live' classical music; it's not some sort of proxy religion for me. I find that rather weird.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Of course. And of course not.


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## goatygoatygoatgoat (May 28, 2018)

_Of course_ I use classical music to escape (Baroque mostly) - that's the whole reason for listening, to escape the tedium of reality, to mentally move to a higher plane of existence. Why else?


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

I can't escape from my self, with any kind of music... Never.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I don't think I'm escaping anything when I'm listening to music, especially classical. If anything, I'm enhancing my existence. But I try to live in the moment, even the bad ones. (Maybe it's because of the Kafka books I read in college.) 

Having said that, when it gets so bad that I have to escape, I listen to the B-52s. They're so goofy, they seem to snap me out of whatever blue funk I'm feeling. My wife knows that when I'm listening to Rock Lobster, it's time to let me be to myself.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

I do, however use polls to escape. :lol:


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Escaping? Is that the right word when you get uplifted by music or excited or ... (your mood - even your consciousness - is altered)? Or educated? Or fulfilled? 

But I guess the OP is about whether we turn to music when the world is getting us down. I know I do that. And, as Manxfeeder says, it isn't only CM that might be what the doctor ordered. Different moods seem to lead to different music and the mood and the music interacts.

But if escape implies running from ugliness or things that need fixing .... I don't do that.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Yes, I'll confess that I take great delight in classical music. In fact, that was one of my motives for joining a classical music discussion forum.


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## rodrigaj (Dec 11, 2016)

Man Listening to Music in Aleppo

My signature reveals how I voted.


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Man Listening to Music in Aleppo

The BBC repeatedly use this shot in their news ads and I'm sure it's a fake. The tone-arm of the gramophone is 'playing' a standard HMV 78 rpm record from the left of the disc rather than the right. The old chap would hear the music backwards. I suspect it's been staged by a photographer ignorant of how wind-up gramophones operate.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

......and where has the old man put the record sleeve??

A staged photograph? Whatever next? It's still a very poignant and very beautiful image, and if it helps bring the plight of Aleppo to the World's attention, then great!


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## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

David Phillips said:


> The old chap would hear the music backwards.


Listening for Satanic messages, perhaps.


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## rodrigaj (Dec 11, 2016)

Man Listening to Music in Aleppo






Between 0:55 and 0:59 you can actually see and hear the record playing.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't want to escape from anything, and I don't want music to... do that to me, I guess, is the way to put it. I really don't like it when people talk about classical music as relaxing music for old people.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Using it to escape is not really the right way of putting it for me, although it certainly can transport me in a sense. I see it as more of a soul nourishment thing. Do people use food to 'escape'? I guess in a sense some do, but I just don't think that is really an accurate way of describing its function.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I usually use a crowbar, or just run if the door's already unlocked, expediency being of paramount importance in such situations.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I do want to escape, desperately so, but from reality itself. And music, unfortunately, cannot do that for me since it's part of it. Suicide doesn't help, either, since you don't actually escape because you don't exist anymore to indeed experience the escaping at that moment. Thus, it is, to my despair, an impossible task.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I used to. There is music that is so dreamy, that I made a compilation to get away. Faure's Pavane, Kallinikov's Symphony 1 2nd movement, Arabian Dance from Nutcracker, Banks of the Willow by Butterworth, Ravel's Pavane.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Yes. Ravel's Bolero.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I love settling in for a listen after work, or on a non workday after my errands are done. I wish that I could background listen more at work, because I am much more efficient when I am able to do so, but I share a work room with 2 other Docs and a Nurse Practitioner. While we all enjoy Classical Music—the NP had actually trained as an Opera Singer before going into Nursing-she and one of my other colleagues are distracted by any background music. Yesterday it was just me and Dan, my colleague that likes to have music playing, working, and it was so much more pleasant.
I’ve mentioned before that my wife is a Chemotherapy Nurse at a large tertiary care medical center. It’s a very stressful area for Patients, Families, and staff. A couple of years ago they changed the Music in the waiting areas to Classical and she swears that had a marvelously calming effect


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I voted 'seldom'.

To 'escape', I need to relax and be taken out of myself. A lively Scots reel or a poignant English folk song will take me out of this present time and into the timeless realm of my imagination. These traditional tunes are deeply rooted in my being - I'm half Scots and half English - though a saucy Irish jig works the same way.

I am new to classical music and trying to learn, so there's a part of it that's serious, a sort of 'listening duty'. Even though I love the music and love to learn, it isn't (quite) an escape.

There are some pieces of 'classical music' which do take me out of myself and that I could listen to for solace and/or escape. Medieval dances, for example - or Lully's dancey tunes and marches - or the utterly absorbing Stabat Mater of Vivaldi.

So - *seldom*.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I don't see why there is a certain aversion to the word "escape" with regards to music. As if it diminishes the quality of the music or the integrity of the listener somehow. If you can "escape" through music that's simply one of the positive effects that music can have. Escapism. 
You lie down, put on headphones, close your eyes and listen to your favorite music. You're temporarily transported to another world and that takes your mind off everything else. If that means you "escape" from every day reality, even for just a short while, then that's perfectly fine. I would say it might be healthy even.
There's also nothing inherently wrong with using music as a means of relaxation, or with music that has relaxing qualities.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Yes, music can be considered an "escape" from the immediate present, into a reverie, where I am engaging in an exchange of ideas with a composer. Listening to Mozart's 40 and 41 the other day, I was calmly and interestedly taking in each musical idea, each variation, as my own personal present from Mozart. This is music for me, for my "being." Mozart somehow knew that he was communicating with a larger entity, God, Mankind, the Overmind, that I was presently a part of in this particular incarnation, looking back at his now long-gone particularity, yet transcending time and being through the medium of art and music. A 'record' of our being, shared in much later times, amazingly effective and personal, transcending time, as if time did not matter, in light of the overwhelming present!
That large presence of consciousness that we are all a part of, the wellspring of being...we are all a part of the same thing, and Mozart surely knew this, and acted on it. He took it as a 'given.' The axiom of being, of which we are all part of...our particularity is a brief interface with this, a small chance to "synch" to the larger grid...in grid we trust...Mozart surely did not waste his chance.


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

for me there's no such thing as escape, reality is always there.

I listen to music to bring it into my reality, not to escape my reality.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Classical music is my gyroscope . . . my entire life revolves around it . . . I could not live without it. 

As for it being an "escape", perhaps there might be a better word like being settled or calmed.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Very often--several times a week--I wake up early and my mind is racing, and classical music is the only thing that can get me calmed down.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I voted often. 

The truth is that I would like more time to just relax when listening to music, but more often than not I am doing other things. I often listen when cooking, doing chores, having a meal and so on. Lack of time dictates this, as does restricting listening to home.

As a side note, there is no shame in using music to relax (or as a form of escapism). In terms of classical music, it was for a long time nothing more than parlour music for the aristocracy. Apart from its use in the courts, music was used for church services. After that, basically with the rise of the bourgeoisie, purely functional aspects gave way to philosophical arguments about music being elevating humanity and self improvement. 

I'm not going to comment on this other than listening for whatever reason is fine. Perhaps Mozart is laughing at us from his grave, since we are listening so seriously to some divertimento (literal meaning: diversion) penned for some silk stocking's party.


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## DBLee (Jan 8, 2018)

aleazk said:


> I do want to escape, desperately so, but from reality itself. And music, unfortunately, cannot do that for me since it's part of it. Suicide doesn't help, either, since you don't actually escape because you don't exist anymore to indeed experience the escaping at that moment. Thus, it is, to my despair, an impossible task.


aleazk - I say this with all sincerity--I hope you seek and find help. Feelings such as you describe are neither healthy nor necessary. Wishing you all the best.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

adrien said:


> for me there's no such thing as escape, reality is always there.
> 
> I listen to music to bring it into my reality, not to escape my reality.


"Just Say No" to musical escapism...and fairy tales...and cartoons...and puppets...and stage plays (they're not real)...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

tdc said:


> Using it to escape is not really the right way of putting it for me, although it certainly can transport me in a sense. I see it as more of a soul nourishment thing. Do people use food to 'escape'? I guess in a sense some do, but I just don't think that is really an accurate way of describing its function.


Is music, then, a food or a drug? Should the FDA regulate it? Should certain forms of escapist music be declared illegal?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

aleazk said:


> I do want to escape, desperately so, but from reality itself. And music, unfortunately, cannot do that for me since it's part of it. Suicide doesn't help, either, since you don't actually escape because you don't exist anymore to indeed experience the escaping at that moment. Thus, it is, to my despair, an impossible task.


Nonetheless, you _*are *_a human. I've heard that opiates always work for this purpose. There's hundreds of years of evidence for this.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

4'33" is "reality" music, since it consists of listening to the sounds around us. Therefore, it is the _least escapist piece in existence. _It is true _"reality"_ music, since we are listening to the sounds which occur around us like we would listen to music (that is, should we decide to engage with the work).


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

DBLee said:


> aleazk - I say this with all sincerity--I hope you seek and find help. Feelings such as you describe are neither healthy nor necessary. Wishing you all the best.


I appreciate your kindness, I'm actually ok. It was just a philosophical disgression, somewhat tongue in cheek. But I also disagree, such thoughts are healthy and necessary, that's why they have been discussed endlessly in the philosophical literature. If done sincerely and with clarity of mind, it can lead you to appreciate what things are really important in your life.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Nonetheless, you _*are *_a human. I've heard that opiates always work for this purpose. There's hundreds of years of evidence for this.


I'm not sure that's what Jean-Paul would say  sounds more Huxley style.


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