When was the last time you listened to pop music? I would be surprised if it was more than 48 hours ago. Pop music is fantastic. I listen to it all the time, and I feel my life would be a little sadder if I didn’t have it. I love being able to turn on the radio and hear peppy beats and simple lyrics on my way home from school after a long day.
But there’s nothing challenging about pop music. It doesn’t ever reach into my soul and make me want to weep. It doesn’t make me feel triumphant. It never terrifies me. And it certainly doesn’t fill my soul with utter joy. Classical music does all of those things and much more.
Classical music challenges the listener. It will make you feel things you have never felt before, and you won’t know why. Typically only books and movies like "The Fault in Our Stars" or "Marley & Me" do. Classical music has the ability to reach into your heart and play your emotions like a fiddle.
For example, Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber is one of the most heart-wrenching pieces that I have heard. It is incredibly beautiful, but there is more sorrow in those nine minutes than there are in many movies that are 10 or 15 times longer.
Classical music is also scary, angry, weird and uncomfortable. It reaches into the depths of the human soul and touches places that don’t typically see the light of the day. It can make you feel like you are in your own personal horror movie when listening--and after listening, make you feel uneasy for the rest of the day.
Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky lives up to its name. It sounds like something that would be heard during the most terrifying camping trip of all time. Further, the second movement of Schnittke’s Piano Quintet sounds like something that “other family” from "Coraline" would listen to. It is unsettling, and I would even say it is hard to listen to. But the emotions these pieces evoke are raw and emotions that should, at times, be felt.
Most of all, though, classical music is joyous and triumphant and listening to it can and will bring so much goodness into your life, much more than the shallow lyrics and funky beats of pop music.
Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, by Gustav Holst is one of the most joyous and happiest pieces I have ever heard. The fourth movement of the New World Symphony by Dvorak will bring you the same feeling of triumph I’d imagine you’d feel if you won the Boston Marathon. It will make you want to dance and celebrate all that is good and beautiful in life because it is good and beautiful.
Popular music can be entertaining and is certainly culturally relevant, but all of us should broaden our horizons. It is easy to listen to pop music, and "easy" is often what we default to. But what classical music does is so important. Classical music can touch your soul. It can inspire an incredibly broad range of feelings and emotions that you may not regularly feel, and it will change you.
If you don’t regularly listen to classical music, I encourage you to open yourself to the experience. I strongly believe that when you expose yourself to the beautiful (whether the beauty is in the tragic or triumphant), it makes you more beautiful.
