Slow Movements

Many people who aren't really into classical music seem to like slow movements of symphonies the most. This was true for me when I first started listening to classical music. I still love slow movements, especially in Beethoven, but I wouldn't say they are my favorite. Anyway, I have a theory about why this is the case. It has to do with post-modern thinking, something I've talked about on this blog before, in connection with Borges. One of the things Borges really explored, in stories like Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, was how the perception of a literary work changes over time, as human society changes. This idea is the key to my theory of the present popularity of slow movements in the non-enthusiast listener.

A perfect symphony has a beautiful balance. It is like a perfectly executed Hollywood film. It has the fight scenes, the drama, the romance, and the comic relief, all in the right proportion, so that when you leave the concert hall you are real satisfied. Not only does it have all these elements, but they rely on each other to be effective. Likewise, in great symphony, it is very hard to pick a favorite part, because each part is great in its own way, and fits in perfectly within the overall structure of the piece. The problem occurs because of how each of the movements achieves their effects. The slow movements rely on and creating a sense of incredible calm, and a meditative peacefullness. I conjecture that this works about as well on modern audiences as it did on audiences a hundred fifty years ago. Our culture, in that time span, hasn't become desensitized to a need for meditative calmness. If anything, that need has grown with the modernization of society (The greek musician/philosopher George Hadjinikos suggests this as the cause for the growth of populatiry in the classical guitar in the 20'th century).

Faster movements, though, particularly finales, rely on creating a feeling of intense excitement. Their methods of doing this, though, worked better on audiences in the past than it does on present audiences. A lot of music has been written in the past hundred and fifty years, and has entered the popular consciousness, that is louder, more dissonant, more raucous, and pursues rhythm as means of building excitement in a much higher degree. This makes sense. Our world has become a much louder, more raucous place. We've become desensitized to this noise to such a degree that those loud classical finales just don't do the job they were meant to anymore. Thus the whole balance of the symphony gets thrown out of whack. People just want the slow pretty stuff. The music is degraded.

Fortunately, I've found that if I only listen to classical music my ear kind off reverses its historical tendencies, and I find I respond to the music in a more natural way. Also, Futurists(the Italian kind) hate slow movements. Yeah, they are silly.