Transformative Power of Classical Music

[Harvey]

Fascinating presentation by Benjamin Zander:
You Tube Link

[Peter]

Haven't had time to look at this Harvey, will try this afternoon!

[Peter]

Finally got to see that Harvey. Thanks for sharing it, very enjoyable, he's incredibly charismatic and just the sort of person we need to get into schools - what a difference someone like him could make!

[grace65]

Very enjoyable and entertaining prestentation. Benjamin Zander what an amazing person he is, just love his sense of humor, enthusiasm and passion. I enjoyed it so much I had to watch it twice. I have to agree with Peter that we need to get more people like Benjamin Zander's into our schools, it definitely would make a difference. I have an eight year old daughter who loves Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and couple of Mozarts symphonies. She's always asking me to tell her stories about Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin etc. Children need to be aware that classical music does exist.

I couldn't stop laughing when he was saying that there is no such thing as a tone deaf person. As a child learning to play the piano my dad would say, "why do I waste my time and money sending you to piano lessons when you're tone deaf", lol. Classical music is for EVERYONE. My eyes were shining. Thankyou for sharing Harvey.

[Harvey]

He does make a good point about the tone deaf thing, and I loved it when he said if you really were tone deaf you would not be able to shift a manual transmission car. He really is a motivational speaker.

[grace65]

[QUOTE=Harvey;65635]He does make a good point about the tone deaf thing, and I loved it when he said if you really were tone deaf you would not be able to shift a manual transmission car. He really is a motivational speaker.[/QUOTE

That It an excellent and interesting point, but I also liked the point he made about when we pick up the phone and we would know who it is be by recognizing their voice, and with a sense of humour said, we'd also know if they were in a good mood or not. My mother is funny she would reconize my voice and then ask, "you're not well today are you"?, and of course she would be right.

He is a very inspirational speaker.

[Peter]

He is a very inspirational speaker.

Yes and wasn't it moving when he talked about the boy from Northern Ireland who was able to cry for the first time over the death of his brother because Zander had helped him to relate to the pain in Chopin's E minor prelude? Truly inspirational man!

[hal9000]

That was great. I think using Chopin as a gateway into getting people to listen to classical music is probably the most effective way of doing it, since Chopin's music has so much emotional depth that you can apply these extramusical references and scenarios to it that the majority of people can relate to. Obviously not all classical music is as romantic and emotionally moving (you couldn't really relate the loss of a loved one to the fourth movement of Beethoven's 7th), but it's an effective foot in the door for people who wouldn't normally listen to this type of music. On the other hand, I think something as upbeat and energetic as the fourth movement of Beethoven's 7th would be more suited to kids.

[grace65]

Yes and wasn't it moving when he talked about the boy from Northern Ireland who was able to cry for the first time over the death of his brother because Zander had helped him to relate to the pain in Chopin's E minor prelude? Truly inspirational man!

Classial music can heal the soul.

[Harvey]

Yes and wasn't it moving when he talked about the boy from Northern Ireland who was able to cry for the first time over the death of his brother because Zander had helped him to relate to the pain in Chopin's E minor prelude? Truly inspirational man!

Equally amazing is this account from the "Welcome address to freshman parents at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and direct or of music division at Boston Conservatory.":

The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Midwestern town a few years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"

Now you have to read the whole address: HTML or PDF.