Whoa! Didja get the numbers off that truck?!?

August 18, 2003 - 10:06 p.m.

Music, part whatever

I was on my way to the Depot of Homeness to get the aforementioned faucet, and I was listening to classical music, for a change of pace. Stravinsky�s Firebird Suite came on.

Wow.

I tend to favor DeBussy and Ravel, those wacky French composers for their use of rich harmony. But I�d forgotten how brilliant this piece was, despite the hisses and pops from the FM signal, it got to me just like a tearjerker movie.

After the stop at HD I went to my favorite record store to get a copy of that CD. Their classical selection sucks, it�s an afterthought at best. I did manage to find one and I splurged on a Telarc copy.

I�ve loved classical music for years, but I get emotional over this piece. It�s hard to describe why, but I�m going to try anyhow.

In order to appreciate classical music I had to understand jazz music. They�re as different as can be, but they share a common feature. Those of us born to rock and roll have been locked into music with a specific time signature. The beat is reliable and musicians hang their notes on it, like Christmas decorations. There is emotion in the lyrics, but the beat is a regular and predictable thing. It�s hard for many of my generation to move out of that mindset and experience music expressed as a wordless emotion.

You have to leave that reliability behind in order to appreciate jazz and even more so to understand classical music. Jazz is challenging because they start with a regular beat and then screw it all up on you. Jazz is thematic though, they�ll take a riff and walk all around it musically and interpret it for you in their own style. IMHO, no one takes a walk around a riff like Wayne Shorter.

Classical music is pure emotion. It took awhile for me to understand that. The stuff that really gets me is the music that describes a feeling; it paints a picture in my mind. The composer leads me along, describing a feeling, a question, a painting, an event� musically. There are no words required to express it, the chords and melody are all that�s required. That and the composer�s genius to paint that picture, to convey that emotion, to make me forget about everything except what he�s trying to show me.

Stravinsky�s Firebird is thematic in a way. The last passage is so brilliant and intense! It�s more powerful than any rock and roll song could ever hope to be, because it affects my heart. Classical music has such dynamic range too. You�ll never hear that anywhere else. The volume knob on my car stereo has to be all the way up in order to experience this; I have to feel the impact of the bass drum.

Present day composers sing about love. Classical composers make you feel it.

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