Classical Music Can Transform Everyday Moments Into Something Magical by Claire Brown

Classical music is a term with three different meanings. This article covers the European tradition of music which is associated with high culture, as distinct from popular or folk forms (including works in this tradition in non-European countries). Classical music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in music notation, as opposed to being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings of particular performances. Classical music concerts often take place in a relatively solemn atmosphere, and the audience is usually expected to stay quiet and still to avoid distracting the concentration of other audience members. Classical composers often aspire to imbue their music with a very complex relationship between its affective (emotional) content, and the intellectual means by which it is achieved. Classical works often display great musical complexity through the composer's use of development, modulation (changing of keys), variation rather than exact repetition, musical phrases that are not of even length, counterpoint, polyphony and sophisticated harmony.

Version

Many of the most esteemed works of classical music make use of musical development, the process by which a musical germ, idea or motif is repeated in different contexts, or in altered form, so that the mind of the listener consciously or unconsciously compares the different versions. The popularized version of the controversial theory was expressed succinctly by a New York Times music columnist: "researchers have determined that listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter. Consequently composers and musicians began to pay more attention to these, highlighting their arrival, and making the signs that pointed to them both more audible and more the subject of "play" and subversion. Finally, there are different versions of the Radif that different artists will use, especially for different instruments. This version, with the full panoply of orchestral resources in play, has glamorous sound and a very high class glossy sheen, while maintaining an appropriate touch of the slick and the tawdry.

Composers

Composers of classical music have often made use of folk music (music created by untutored musicians, often from a purely oral tradition). Composers such as Carl Czerny, while deeply influenced by Beethoven, also searched for new ideas and new forms to contain the larger world of musical expression and performance in which they lived. Their surnames suggest a very different career for these great composers. Impressionist music, 1910-1920, a period in which French composers as well as artists produced art that went against the traditional German ways of art and music. Generally however, it is the composers who are remembered more than the performers. Classical composers often aspire to imbue their music with a very complex relationship between its affective (emotional) content, and the intellectual means by which it is achieved.

Classical and popular music are often distinguished by their choice of instruments. Classical music has often incorporated elements or even taken material from popular music. Classical music, as opposed to pop music, is a written form of music that can be passed down and reproduced faithfully from century to century. Classical music can transform everyday moments into something magical.