Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Classical Music: ...But Were Too Afraid to Ask E-Book

Darren Henley

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 329

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Just what exactly is classical music ...and why should it be a part of everyone's life? Who are the big names behind the classical hits ...and which are the best recordings of their music? What are you supposed to wear to a classical concert ...and when on earth are you supposed to applaud? 'Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Classical Music ...But Were Too Afraid to Ask' answers these questions and much more. In the pages of this book, Darren Henley and Sam Jackson set out to make the classical world not only accessible, but also disarmingly simple and utterly engrossing, as they share their passion for the greatest music ever written. Celebrating 20 years of the world's most successful classical music radio station, this book lifts the lid on the burning questions that Classic FM's listeners have most often asked over the past two decades. Three sections steer you through the terminology and etiquette of classical music, open the fascinating history of the genre and its key figures over the last 1,000 years, and provide a detailed reference guide. Since its transmitters were first switched on in 1992, the team behind Classic FM has believed that classical music can and should be a part of everyone's life, no matter who they are or where they live. So, whether you are a long-time listener or completely new to the genre this book equips you to begin your own personal journey of discovery into the world's greatest music.

Leseprobe

EVERYTHING YOU EVER

WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT

CLASSICAL MUSIC

BUT WERE TOO AFRAID TO ASK

EVERYTHING YOU EVER

WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT

CLASSICAL MUSIC

BUT WERE TOO AFRAID TO ASK

DARREN HENLEY AND SAM JACKSON

First published 2012 by Elliott and Thompson Limited 27 John Street, London WC1N 2BXwww.eandtbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-90764-249-4

Available as an ebook epub 978-1-90764-250-0 mobi 978-1-90764-297-5 PDF 978-1-90764-298-2

Text © Darren Henley and Sam Jackson 2012

The Authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this Work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset by Envy Design

INTRODUCTION

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

I GETTING INTO CLASSICAL MUSIC

1 UNRAVELLING THE JARGON

2 LISTENING TO CLASSICAL MUSIC LIVE

3 YOUR OWN CLASSICAL MUSIC COLLECTION

II A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

4 EARLY MUSIC

5 THE BAROQUE PERIOD

6 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

7 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

8 THE 20TH CENTURY

9 THE 21ST CENTURY

III STATS AND FACTS

10 WHO WAS COMPOSING WHAT WHEN?

11 THE CLASSIC FM HALLOF FAME TOP 300

12 WHAT THEY SAIDABOUT EACH OTHER

13 CLASSICAL MUSIC USED IN FILMS

14 WHERE TO FIND OUT MORE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Classic FM is the UK’s only 100 per cent classical music radio station. Since we began broadcasting 20 years ago in September 1992, the station has brought classical music to millions of people across the UK. If you’ve yet to discover for yourself the delights of being able to listen to the world’s greatest music 24 hours a day, you can find Classic FM on 100–102 FM, on Digital Radio, online at www.classicfm.com, on Sky channel 0106, on Virgin Media channel 922 and on FreeSat channel 721.

As we’re celebrating 20 years since we turned on our transmitters for the very first time, we thought that we would put together the guide to classical music that we would rather have liked to have produced for our new listeners when Classic FM began its life. Of course, we didn’t know quite as much about classical music back then as we do now, given that we’ve been able to enjoy a further two decades of accumulated listening.

We’ve also learned a lot about what our listeners like to hear – as well as some of the music that they are a little less keen on. Since 1992, we’ve researched hundreds of weeks of programming and listened to the thousands of new recordings that arrive at our studios each year. This book is the result of just some of the best things that we have learned during our first 20 years on air. Parts of it were first published a few years back as The Friendly Guide to Music, but this brand new edition has been considerably expanded to provide you with a far fuller guide to immersing yourself in all aspects of the world of classical music.

So, if you are standing in a bookshop reading this, wondering whether to buy a copy of this book, then please allow us to help you decide.

If you flick through the next 200 or so pages, you will quickly discover that there are a lot of things that this book is not. It is not the most detailed and learned book about classical music that you will be able to lay your hands on in any high street bookshop. It is not packed full of impenetrable musicological arguments about contrapuntal syncopation, or microscopic analysis of a long-forgotten composer’s unpublished work. In short, it is not going to be much help to you if you are already an expert in the subject, busily researching your PhD thesis.

Instead, this is the book about classical music for everyone else – and especially for people who wouldn’t normally consider buying a book on the subject, but who are, nonetheless, interested in developing a greater understanding of classical music.

If that sounds like you, then you will be pleased to hear that, just like Classic FM itself, this book is mercifully free of the jargon that is sometimes associated with the classical music world. At the same time, we will try to explain some of the terms that those in the know tend to use when they’re talking about classical music, so that you can confidently join in with conversations. We’ve also found that a working knowledge of the terminology can be helpful in getting a little bit more out of listening to the tunes.

The advent of pop music meant that, for a significant part of the 20th century, classical music came to be regarded as the preserve of a cultural elite. Those people inside the classical club didn’t seem to want to share the musical delights that they had discovered with those people who were outside the elite. For people looking in, classical music seemed to be surrounded by an impenetrable ring of steel.

The Three Tenors’ concert in Rome during the World Cup finals of 1990 marked a resurgence in popular interest in classical music. The belief that classical music can be enjoyed by everybody, no matter what their age, class or geographical location, is one of the cornerstones on which Classic FM was founded in 1992. It is an ideal to which we have remained absolutely true in the two decades since.

It is worth remembering that classical music was in fact the popular music of its day. In the days before radio, television, the internet and any recordings, what we now consider to be classical music was played in churches, palaces, coffee houses, concert halls and ordinary homes across Europe. The composers who created it were writing music that would be performed at specific occasions and enjoyed by audiences or congregations far and wide. Music and the arts were regarded as having a civilising effect on society, whether the particular works were religious or secular in their nature.

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS CLASSICAL MUSIC?

This is one of the questions that is most often asked of us at Classic FM. And we thought it was something that we ought to tackle up front, before we really get going.

The strictest definition of classical music is everything that was written in the Classical period (between 1750 and 1830), but today we understand classical music to be much more than music composed in just those 80 years.

Calling a piece of music ‘classical’ is sometimes done as a means of generically distinguishing it from ‘popular’ music. One of the major tests of whether a tune is or isn’t classical music has traditionally been whether it has a sense of ‘permanence’ about it, in that it is still being performed many years after its composition. This argument begins to fall down as the heritage of pop music becomes ever longer, with hits from the 1950s still being played on the radio today, well over half a century after their original release. It is also hard for us to tell whether a newly written piece of classical music will indeed attain that level of ‘permanence’ in the future.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music offers the following as one of its definitions of classical music:

Music of an orderly nature, with qualities of clarity and balance, and emphasising formal beauty rather than emotional expression (which is not to say that emotion is lacking).

It is true to say that much of classical music follows specific rules of style and form, which we will discuss further in Chapters 4 to 9. However, this definition is still not quite a catch-all.

One of the most striking differences between classical and pop music is the different way the two genres place their emphasis on the relative importance of the composer and the performer. In pop music the performer is all, but in classical music the composer is the star of the show. It is his or her name that tends to come first in the credits and it is he or she who is remembered by history. Take Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto as an example. Not many people remember Anton Stadler, the clarinettist for whom it was written, but everyone knows Mozart’s name. Conversely, if you ask most music fans whom they would most associate with that hardy perennial ‘White Christmas’; they would reply ‘Bing Crosby’, rather than the song’s composer, Irving Berlin.

Some of those self-appointed members of classical music’s ruling elite like to claim that film scores sit outside the world of classical music. Yet the first dedicated soundtrack was composed by Camille Saint-Saëns for the 1908 film L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise. Since then, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Prokofiev and Shostakovich have all written music for the cinema. If we go back to the time of Beethoven, we find him composing incidental music for the theatre of the day. Had cinema been invented in his lifetime, he would undoubtedly have written this genre of music too. Throughout classical music’s history, composers have always written music for those who pay, whether their patrons were rich noblemen or rich film studios.

Today, film soundtracks are among the most popular symphonic works being composed, with pieces by the likes of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore and James Horner providing an excellent gateway into wider listening to classical music.

Whatever the definition of classical music to which you personally subscribe, we think that the great jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong had things just about right, when he said: ‘There’s only two ways to sum up music: either it’s good or it’s bad. If it’s good you don’t mess about it – you just enjoy it.’

We hope that you enjoy uncovering the rich tapestry of sounds, emotions and stories that go together to make up classical music. And we hope that you will come to share our view that this is truly the greatest music ever written.

Darren Henley

Sam Jackson

April 2012

This is a book of three thirds. The first part of the book is a guide to immersing yourself in the world of classical music, with everything you ever wanted to know (but were too afraid to ask) about all sorts of subjects, including instruments, orchestras, musical terms, going to classical concerts and creating your own classical music collection.

The next six chapters of the book take you on a journey through the five main eras of classical music: Early, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and the 20th and 21st centuries. You will find handy ‘At a glance’ guides to each of the main composers featured in the book in the boxes throughout these six chapters.

This is intended to give you an overview of classical music’s development from its earliest times right through to the present day. There is so much classical music that has been composed over the years that it would be impossible to include all of it in this one slim volume. Instead, we have concentrated here on the main composers and pieces of music that you will hear played regularly on Classic FM. We have added in one or two other composers whose music we play less often but who have had an important role in the development of classical music.

Towards the back of the book, we have put together a reference section, packed full of classical music statistics and facts, which you might want to draw on to drop into the odd conversation, as the need arises. We have also included a guide to who was composing what when, so that you can see how composers’ lives overlapped.

We wanted to make this book as easy on the eye as possible, so we have adopted the following rules throughout:

• Titles of all musical works are set in italics.

• Songs and arias appear in italics within quotation marks.

• Nicknames for a particular work also appear in italics within quotation marks, usually after the work’s formal title.

• By and large, we have avoided using opus numbers; however there are some occasions where a composer wrote more than one piece with the same title – and here we have included the opus number, to make it clear which work we are talking about.

• One or two composers have catalogue numbering systems – so if, for instance, you come across the occasional ‘K’ number (which stands for Ludwig von Köchel, who compiled the catalogue of Mozart’s music) or ‘D’ number (for Otto Deutsch, who did the same for Schubert), you should just treat these the same as you would an opus number. We’ve put them in only where needed, in order to identify a particular piece.

GETTING INTO CLASSICAL MUSIC

It was the turn of the 21st century, somewhere in a relatively soulless office building in Manchester. A group of Classic FM listeners was sitting drinking coffee, while a few of us observed their discussions through one of those glass panes that lets you see only one way. We wanted to gain an insight into listeners’ lives, to find out why they enjoyed classical music, and to see what we could do to give people like them an even better radio station. People just like the man in his early thirties who spoke with passion about how classical music calmed him down when he was driving.

‘The thing is, though,’ he commented, ‘before I turn the engine off when I get home, I always flick over to a pop music station.’

‘Why is that?’ the person facilitating the discussion asked.

‘Because if my girlfriend ever got in the car and I turned on the engine, I couldn’t bear her to know that I sometimes listen to classical music.’

This book is for people like that man and, we hope, for people like you. We’re passionate about classical music, and over the last 20 years Classic FM’s very existence has been predicated on the idea that this wonderfully rich, exciting, emotional music can and should be available to absolutely everyone. But that’s not to say it comes without its baggage. Many people wrongly assume that classical music could never be for them, whereas we believe that no one should live without experiencing it. And let’s be absolutely clear: loving classical music is something to shout from the rooftops, rather than to be shy about. In fact, you would probably be surprised just how many people from all walks of life we have met over the years who have discovered classical music and now share our passion for listening to it.

During the first section of this book, we’ll be uncovering exactly what classical music is all about and how to make sense of the seemingly insurmountable jargon. Why on earth should we care if something is ‘in F sharp minor’ – and what does it mean, anyway? What’s the difference between a concerto and a cadenza, or a symphony and a sonata? And if you’re looking to start a classical music collection, should you play it safe with a compilation, venture into some complex and challenging contemporary music, or purchase nothing but Mozart symphonies for the next 40 years? (The answer, by the way, is none of the above – but we’ll come to that a little later.)

One of the biggest obstacles for people approaching classical music is the presumption that they probably need to have spent years studying Musical Analysis, along with fluency in multiple European languages, before embarking on any enjoyment of the tunes themselves. When you come to Classic FM for the first time, only to discover that you’re hearing the ‘Españoleta y Fanfare de la Caballería de Nápoles’ from Rodrigo’s Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre performed by José María Gallardo del Rey and the Spanish National Orchestra conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, your first concern may well be the need to draw breath rather than anything related to the music. But once you start to grasp the classical lingo, everything begins to make a lot more sense. What’s more, it’s by no means necessary to be able to converse in Italian before you can happily sit through a Puccini opera and be unexpectedly moved to tears.

Over the next few pages, we’ll take a whistle-stop tour through some of the most common musical terms, flagging up what they mean and pointing you in the direction of some composers who show them off in a brilliant way. By the end of this first section, you’ll undoubtedly know your ‘presto’ from your ‘pizzicato’ and your ‘forte’ from your ‘fugue’. Along the way, we’ll pick out some of the moments in history that link in with classical music, showing how Impressionism didn’t reach only as far as the visual arts, for example. There’ll be a quick nod towards different genres, answering those niggling little questions such as: what’s the ‘chamber’ in ‘chamber music’ all about? And we’ll uncover who the composers were, why they’re important, and how you should go about beginning to encounter some of their finest music.

Getting into classical music partly involves understanding what it all means – but that’s fairly pointless unless you actually take the chance to experience it, which is where the next section comes in. With a few notable exceptions, you can be pretty sure that, wherever you are in the UK, you’re within a ten-mile radius of a decent concert taking place this month. Admittedly, not every one of them will be a full symphony orchestra (it’s been a while since the Philharmonia toured to Land’s End) but we’re a country that’s blessed with a huge amount of excellent professional and amateur music-making. Every week, concert halls, churches and community spaces host an impressive variety of events – and, in recent years, all sorts of more unconventional venues have become places to encounter classical music. Puccini in the pub is a reality in north London, for example, and you can now experience the Bach Passions performed in a city warehouse.

As you’ll discover over the coming pages, there are all sorts of handy ways to work out exactly which concerts are worth your time and money, and what route you should take if you want to experience a particular style of music. Also crucially important, though, is the whole etiquette of concert-going. Many people are put off from turning up to a classical concert for fear that they’ll have to dress like an extra in Downton Abbey before they’re even allowed into the building. And once you get past the box office, what exactly should you do? Is it OK to clap? Can you chat in between movements? And what on earth should you wear?

All these questions, and more, will be tackled as part of our guide to getting into classical music.

Local music shops are fairly predictable places. Inside pretty much every one you’ll find a selection of beautiful instruments, a man who’s been there for about 30 years who knows an unbelievable amount about clarinet reeds, and a selection of tea towels containing all sorts of brilliantly dreadful musical puns. ‘Rubato’ is ‘ointment for a musician’s back’; ‘Quaver’ is ‘the feeling before a lesson when you haven’t practised’; ‘Syncopation’ is ‘a bowel condition brought on by an overdose of jazz’.

Classical music is awash with jargon, which probably explains the success of these rather naff tea towels, but is any of it actually useful? After all, Johann Sebastian Bach, no less, once described music as being ‘nothing remarkable’, saying, ‘All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.’

However, in the same way that understanding the offside rule assists you in following what’s going on in a football match, so knowing a few technical terms can help you navigate your way through your favourite classical music. Over the next few pages, we’ve picked out some of the most common ones, giving you a potted guide to exactly what they mean and why they’re important. Understanding these terms will mean that you begin to hear your favourite music in a new way, as the jargon transforms into your very own musical vocabulary.

A cappella

Allegri’s Miserere is one of the most famous and most haunting pieces in all of classical music. Tallis’s Spem in Alium similarly sends shivers down your spine, as does the choral arrangement of Barber’s Adagio for Strings. And they’re all united by one thing: the choir isn’t accompanied by any instruments. When you hear the sound of voices alone, you can be sure that what you’re listening to is being performed a cappella.

Accelerando

A fairly easy one, this: the musical equivalent of shouting, ‘Get a move on!’ Decellerando, by contrast, tells the musician to slow down and take everything at a much more leisurely pace.

Adagio

The term ‘adagio’ literally means ‘at ease’. Musically, it’s an indication to play the piece slowly – as you’ll hear in works such as Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor, Khachaturian’s Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia (the Onedin Line theme tune) or the ‘Rose Adagio’ from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. If you’re wondering exactly how slowly something should be played when it’s marked ‘adagio’, consider that there are 60 seconds in a minute, and if something is at ‘adagio’ pace it should move along at around the 70 beats per minute mark.

Allegro

The exact opposite of adagio, allegro is an instruction to play quickly. You’re looking at cramming about 150 beats per minute into anything with ‘allegro’ written at the top of the manuscript paper. A good musical example of this can be heard a few minutes into Elgar’s beautiful Introduction and Allegro for Strings.

Alto

In the world of singing, the alto rarely gets the glory. In nearly every opera, the soprano or the mezzo-soprano (both of whom we’ll come to a little later) is given the star role, while the lowly alto is all too often relegated to a bit part. The term ‘alto’ can refer to a woman whose vocal range is relatively low, but it can also be applied to instruments. An alto saxophone, for example, is the most famous instrument from that family (the soprano sax looks a little like a golden clarinet and has a high pitch, whereas a baritone saxophone is bigger and deeper than the alto).

Andante

Another speed-related Italian musical term; the literal definition of ‘andante’ is ‘at a walking pace’. Which invites the question, ‘How fast should I walk?’ The slightly vague answer to that one is: ‘Faster than you would if you were listening to an adagio, but not so fast that you’re running at allegro.’ The most fitting musical example of an andante is the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No.1, most often heard nowadays in an arrangement for cello and string quartet and dubbed the ‘Andante cantabile’ (which translates as ‘at a walking pace, and played in a song-like manner’).

Aria

Although nowadays almost exclusively applied to opera, the word ‘aria’ dates all the way back to the 14th century. It’s the Italian word for ‘air’, and was applied originally to a particularly graceful melody; today, though, it almost exclusively describes an operatic song performed by one singer plus orchestra. To confuse matters slightly, an aria can also be an instrumental piece (the aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations for solo keyboard, for example) or a vocal work that wasn’t written originally for the stage – in which case, it’s a concert aria. Mozart wrote a fair few of these, as did Beethoven. Some of the most famous arias in the world of opera include Puccini’s ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ from the opera Gianni Schicchi and Mozart’s ‘Queen of the Night Aria’ from The Magic Flute, both of which are performed by a soprano, as well as the tenor favourites ‘La Donna è Mobile’ from Verdi’s Rigoletto and ‘Che Gelida Manina’ from Puccini’s La Bohème.

Baritone

This is another one of those terms that pertains to the range of notes a singer or instrument is capable of. Baritone sits somewhere in between a bass and a tenor; in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, the title role is sung by a baritone, so that’s a good one to go along to if you want to hear this kind of voice in action. Famous baritones today include Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Thomas Hampson and Simon Keenlyside, while Bryn Terfel describes himself as a bass-baritone.

Bass

The lowest of the low, from the bass clarinet (a fabulous instrument that was put to good use in orchestras from the late 19th century onwards) through to bass singers such as the much loved Sir John Tomlinson.

Cadenza

A cadenza is basically a great chance for a soloist to show off. You’ll often find one occurring in a concerto: the orchestra will have been accompanying the soloist from the word go, until the soloist suddenly appears to break free and play unaccompanied, demonstrating the capabilities of the instrument and sheer personal ability to play an awful lot of notes in a short space of time. Some cadenzas are put in by the composer; others are written by the soloist.

Chamber Music

Duets, trios, quartets, quintets: all could be described as chamber music. The term we use today originates from the days of Haydn and Mozart, when music was written to be performed by a small group of players in a relatively small room. The difference between chamber music and orchestral music is that there’s only ever one player per part – whereas in an orchestra, there could be a whole host of string players performing the first violin part alone. Just over a hundred years ago, chamber music was described by one scholar as ‘music with friends’, which is probably the most apt description of all.

Clef

You know that squiggle you see at the start of a piece of music – the one that looks slightly like an ampersand that has had a bit of cosmetic surgery? Well, that’s a clef – the treble clef, to be precise. ‘Clef’ is the French word for ‘key’. The particular symbol that is used at the start of the music dictates exactly what pitch the notes are on the lines that follow. So, if a composer’s writing a melody for, say, a piano or a flute, they’ll probably use the treble clef. And if they’re writing for lower instruments, they’ll employ the bass clef. There are also one or two less common clefs that cater for instruments whose range falls between the treble and bass clefs.

Coda

Another Italian term, which literally translates as ‘tail’. And that gives you some idea of where it might fit within a piece of music: unsurprisingly, the coda comes at the end. Composers often include a coda to ensure that their music finishes with a real flourish. Mozart was a fan of this approach with his piano sonatas – have a listen to No. 11, with its well-known ‘Rondo alla Turca’ at the end, for ample proof of this.

Concerto

Nowadays, the term ‘concerto’ refers to a piece of music composed for solo instrument plus orchestra. Its origin, though, was back in Baroque times, and the concerto grosso form. This involved grouping together a bunch of musicians as a sort of ensemble of soloists to perform alongside the larger orchestra. From the mid-18th century onwards, the concerto grosso fell out of fashion – but the idea of composing orchestral music that included a solo instrumentalist became ever more popular. There are hundreds of brilliant musical examples of this: try Elgar’s Cello Concerto for starters, followed by Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and, for something a little more off the beaten track, Glière’s astonishing Harp Concerto.

Consonance and Dissonance

Most musical terms can be traced to Italy in one way or another; these two derive from Latin words – one of which, ‘sonare’, means ‘to sound’. The ‘con’ of consonance means ‘with’, whereas the ‘dis’ of dissonance is most closely translated as ‘without’ or ‘apart’. Consonance, then, refers to music that sounds tuneful and harmonious; dissonance relates to music that is much less easy on the ear. As we shall discover later, in the 20th century, a whole bunch of composers from the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg and Webern, for example) revelled in dissonance, turning their backs on traditional melody and going out of their way to write works that are much more challenging to the average listener. The vast majority of classical music is consonant, though.

Ensemble

There are two distinct meanings to this one. The first relates to a group of musicians. An orchestra is an ensemble; so is a small group of players; so is a choir. Quite simply, it’s a crowd of people who have got together to play music. The other definition is all about how well the musicians are playing. If you hear someone remark that there was ‘great ensemble’ in the performance, it’s praise for how well the musicians were playing together, and how united they were in their precision and sound.

Espressivo

Although you might be tempted to think you could order a double one of these at the local coffee shop, ‘espressivo’ is actually the Italian translation of the English word ‘expressive’. So, if it’s marked at the top of a piece of music, the player knows he or she should perform it in a particularly heart-on-your-sleeve sort of way.

Etude

The French word ‘étude’ means ‘study’ – and, in music, an étude is a composition designed to improve a particular element of the player’s technique. They are most commonly piano pieces; Chopin’s set of Etudes is an excellent example.

Falsetto

For many men, the word ‘falsetto’ takes them back to their early teenage years, and those excruciatingly embarrassing moments when their voice would fluctuate from a Barry White bass to a Bee Gees squeal. Falsetto refers to the vocal range that men are able to employ by relaxing their vocal chords, and singing approximately one octave (so, eight notes) above their usual pitch. Think ‘Staying Alive’, but in classical music. Counter-tenors such as Andreas Scholl sing permanently within the falsetto range.

Flat and Sharp

If you are new to classical music, the use of the terms ‘flat’ and ‘sharp’ can be quite baffling. You’ll often come across phrases such as ‘in D flat major’ or ‘in F sharp minor’ as part of the title of a work. The good news is that the meaning of ‘flat’ and ‘sharp’ are pretty simple: a D flat is slightly lower than a D (on a piano keyboard, it’s the black note to the left), whereas a D sharp is slightly higher (the black note to the right). If you hear someone describe a singer as being ‘a bit sharp’ or ‘a bit flat’, chances are they’re singing out of tune, a little above or below the right note, and could have done with warming up with some vocal exercises first before opening their mouth. If something is described as being ‘in D flat major’, then the central note of the piece of music – the note that feels like ‘home’ – is D flat; ‘D flat major’ is the key signature – more of which later (along with major and minor).

Forte

The Italian for ‘loud’, ‘forte’ (pronounced ‘for-tay’) is a term that relates to the dynamics, or volume, of the piece in question. Its bigger brother, fortissimo, means ‘really loud’; in Ravel’s love-it-or-hate-it Boléro, the volume begins at ppp (an über-quiet version of piano, the opposite of forte), and ends at fff.

Fugue

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor is one of the most famous pieces in all classical music – and it’s probably the best-known organ work in the world. We’ll tackle what a toccata is in a few pages’ time – but what about a fugue? Well, the term is effectively the classical music version of ‘call and response’: a theme (known as the ‘subject’) is set up at the start; that theme is then imitated and elaborated on; and, before long, there’s a great wash of sound being created by all this overlapping repetition. Bach composed hundreds of fugues, and his set of 48 Preludes and Fugues for keyboard is an absolute must. There are a fair few examples of fugues from the time of Mozart onwards, the most substantial of which is Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues.

Glissando

Incredibly satisfying for any pianist, not least because it’s very easy to do, a glissando is the technique of running your fingers down the keyboard very quickly from top to bottom or from bottom to top. A glissando can be performed on other instruments, too – the harp, for example – but it’s heard most often on the piano. In popular music, a glissando is famously used in the Boomtown Rats’ single ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’; in classical music, there are all sorts of notable examples. If you have a few moments to spare, take a look at Alex Ross’s blog on the New Yorker website (www.newyorker.com): his article ‘The Top Ten Glissandos’ includes audio clips of everything from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, via Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and Nina Simone singing ‘Strange Fruit’.

Grandioso

A fairly easy-to-guess one, this: ‘grandioso’ means ‘to play grandly’. It’s often used in music from the Romantic era: the orchestral works of Wagner, for example.

Grave

Pronounced to rhyme with ‘halve’, this means the slowest of the slow. The only musical term that could conceivably suggest playing a piece of music more slowly and solemnly than grave is larghetto.

Grazioso

Another descriptive Italian term, this one instructs the musician to play gracefully. It’s often used in music from the Classical period – so, Mozart, Boccherini, Haydn and the like.

Homophony

The prefix ‘homo’ at the start of a word comes from the Greek, meaning ‘the same’. And in the case of homophony, it’s all about the way in which different lines of music are played together. Effectively, anything that’s performed in a chord-like structure, with all the parts moving together, is an example of homophony, while lines that go off in all sorts of different, intricate directions create polyphony. Most hymn tunes are clear examples of homophony in action.

Impressionism

The visual art of painters such as Monet is often described as being ‘Impressionist’. Similarly, the music of early 20th-century French composers such as Debussy or Ravel displays comparable aural characteristics. If you can picture the hazy, dream-like images evoked by the finest Impressionist paintings, imagine a similar kind of music. Then listen to Debussy’s Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune and you’ll hear it taking place before your very ears.

Impromptu

An impromptu gathering of friends is something delightfully spur of the moment, unplanned and enjoyable. In music, an impromptu is exactly the same: a piece that is meant to sound off the cuff, fun, almost flippant – as if the composer had dashed it off at the piano before skipping out the door. Schubert’s famous Impromptus demonstrate this amply, as does the ever popular Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor by Chopin.

Intermezzo

An intermezzo is a sort of musical version of an intermission: something that happens in between the action, most often within an opera. One act has finished, the next one is about to begin, but in between, there’s a scene change. So what does the composer do to fill the time? Answer: compose an instrumental intermezzo. The most famous intermezzo in classical music is the divine three-minute orchestral miniature from Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana. Some composers have also written stand-alone intermezzos (or, to be grammatically correct if we’re using Italian, ‘intermezzi’) – for example Brahms, whose Intermezzi, Opus 117 for piano are three of the most beautiful, heartbreaking creations in the history of classical music.

Interval

In music, an interval relates to the gap between two particular notes. If you play middle C on the piano, consider that to be note number one. Move up to note number three (so, past D and on to E) and you’re playing an interval of a third. A major chord involves playing the original note (the ‘tonic’) plus the third and the fifth; in this case, C, E and G.

Intonation

This one links in with the idea of musical sharps and flats. Many a cry of ‘Watch your intonation!’ has gone out across a school orchestra. If the player is a little off key, the intonation is out. It’s all about how closely the musician has managed to play the note in relation to its pure, absolute pitch.

Key Signature

Here’s another term that’s associated with sharps and flats. Basically, the whole sound-world of pretty much every piece of Western classical music centres in on one major or minor chord. The central note – the one that most phrases or passages return to in the end – is the same note as the key signature. The key signature could be anything from C major to B flat minor; to hear a good musical example, try listening to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, a set of 48 preludes and fugues on the piano or harpsichord in every single key signature.

Legato

Meaning ‘smoothly’, legato is the opposite of staccato – which we’ll come to later. To hear a great example of legato in action, try the heavenly third movement of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2, with its wonderfully sweeping strings.

Leitmotif

In many pieces of music, but particularly in opera, one particular phrase or set of notes is used to herald the arrival or fate of a particular character – and that set of notes is what is meant by the term ‘leitmotif’. Without wanting to trivialise some of the greatest pieces of music ever written, the concept of leitmotif is not a million miles away from the booing and hissing that occurs every time a pantomime villain appears on stage. Wagner used the idea of leitmotif most extensively, but you can also hear a version of it put to good use by Berlioz in his Symphonie Fantastique, which features a recurring theme depicting the woman the composer was infatuated with.

Libretto

Every great song needs a great lyricist – and, in classical music, the writer of the words is known as the librettist. The libretto is the text a composer sets to music, whether in the operas of Puccini or the light-hearted comedies of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Major and Minor

As we’ve already mentioned, ‘major’ and ‘minor’ relate to a piece of music’s key signature. At its most basic level, music in a major key sounds happy; music in a minor key sounds sad. Every single note on the piano keyboard has a major and minor key signature – so we get E major and E minor, F major and F minor, and so on.

Mezzo

The Italian for ‘middle’ or ‘medium’, ‘mezzo’ can relate to issues of volume (‘mezzo-forte’, for example, translates as ‘quite loud’) or to singers: a mezzo-soprano is a woman who has a fairly high voice but whose range is pitched lower than that of a soprano.

Minuet

This courtly dance was put to its most famous use by the Italian composer Luigi Boccherini, whose ‘Minuet’ from the String Quintet in E received unexpected fame through its inclusion in the film The Ladykillers. Originally a dance, the minuet was then regularly employed in the form of a minuet and trio by all sorts of Classical-era composers – most often in the third movement of their symphonies.

Modulation