Importance Of Classical Music

Classical Music: Is it Relevant or Not?

Julia, a teen music lover, on one of her classes, is required to listen to classical music. Upon listening, she concludes that it is too boring for her taste despite being a music lover and thought to herself, “Why do I need to listen to classical music? What is the purpose of classical music? Is it really relevant to our music industry today?” Unbeknownst to her, classical music exists and is studied and performed for a reason.

What is classical music? According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, classical music is defined as “serious or conventional music that follow long established principles, more specifically, music written in the European tradition, when forms such as the symphony, concerto, and

It also has its own noble history like the rest of the music types and takes up a large chunk of the history of not just world music, but also world history. One can say that there are other types of music that are a part of history, but, classical music is the basis of them all since it is the foundation of all music. Historians are able to tell a culture of a certain place by their music at that specific period in time. If one studies the history of classical music, one can conclude that music evolves along with the milestones of history. “Romanticism was influenced by humanism. The era focused on finding and expressing human nature and the mystery they felt of creations and emotions” (Little, 2014). An example from our own history is the kundiman. Kundiman is the classic form of Filipino love song—or so it seemed to colonialist forces in the Philippines. In fact, in Kundiman, the singer who expresses undying love for his beloved is actually singing for love of country. Because of it, we were able to sympathize with the history of our

Classical music is highly structured, organized and complex. “Classical music may take one melody and wrap, warp, invert, rephrase and re-tempo it all in one take, all at the same time” (Campbell, 2014). As a result, in order to understand a classical piece, one must be equipped with the proper theoretical and analytical skills. Because these are composed by geniuses, music theorists up to this day still continue to study and analyze how these composers wrote their music; how they can accomplish a piece that lasts for more or less an hour or how they can write a piece that requires more than a hundred instrumentalists. Thus, such a feat requires a God-given talent and skill. Another thing is the commonly known “Mozart Effect” that “suggests the improvement on the performance of spatial-temporal reasoning and short-term memory through the listening of complex music, such as Mozart’s two piano concertos” (Maglione, 2006). Also, some say that there are other tools that develop our brain, but it is classical music that lets us think and enjoy music at the same time. All of these suggest that classical music can help us in terms of improving our analytical