Reasons

Earlier last week, some friends and I at work had a conversation about the demise of classical music. One coworker admitted that he doesn't see the decline of classical music as a great loss. I argued that while society should try to sustain new composers such as Nico Muhly, it might not be that tragic if live classical performance was reduced. After all, I thought, who needs to sit for two hours in a concert hall when you can hear multiple recordings of any great piece of music. Moreover, classical music is perfect for multi-tasking. I listen to it all the time at work while writing. It would be a waste to merely sit for two hours. As you can probably surmise by the title of this post, I spoke too soon. Two recent live classical music experiences (John Adams Perspectives at the Kennedy Center and an anniversary performance of the Cathedral Choral Society) have demonstrated that the live listening experience is very powerful in several ways that the recording just cannot capture.

First, the sound quality is just incomparable live. Now, this might be due to my wimpy speakers at home, but I'm willing to bet that the average ear will be able to pick up aural cues such as the entrance of a different instrument much easier live. Crescendos and diminuendos
occur much more dramatically when you are in the audience; there's no dial to adjust the volume. Also, just like how seeing someone's mouth moves helps you make out what they are saying, seeing the orchestra play helps you understand which instruments are in dialogue with
another. For example, John Adams conducted the the National Symphony Orchestra to Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid. Though this ballet suite conjures up every single western cliche (think wooden blocks making hoofbeat sounds), it was still powerful to see and hear the strings
respond to the drums in the "Gunfight" scene. This conjured up images of a crowd assembling before the gunfight, the scrambling around, and ultimate victory.

Second, all of your attention is focused on the music. There are no distractions like books, work, or housework. Such focus makes you more tuned in to the work, and forces you to ask what the music is actually about. Though Elgar's Nimrod is often played at funerals, listening to the Enigma Variations as a whole piece made me realize that fragments of Nimrod echo throughout. It's not as much dirgelike as it is a celebration of Elgar's friend Augustus Jaeger, whom Nimrod is about.

Third, there's more variety. Live performances are going to differ from your definitive recording, whether something is played faster or louder. In addition, a live show may expose you to different pieces you hadn't heard before. Though I was drawn to the John Adams
performance by his fame, I hadn't heard The Would Dresser before. The Reilly and Friends performance even included a specially commissioned piece by Dominick Argento called the Choir Invisible, set to a George Eliot poem. Reilly and Friends also put together many short pieces that would never appear together on a recording, from the Aria of Bach's Goldberg Variations to William Walton's "Coronation Te Deum"

These three points bring us to the fourth: live performance leads to rediscovery and an expansion of knowledge. For example, in Adams' introduction to The Wound Dresser, he explains that he means it as an allegory for AIDS and as a recognition of the American ordeal of
nursing, something that is rarely acknowledged. Reilly Lewis paired the Aria from the Goldberg Variations with a contemporary dance, which really brought the piece to the 21st century.

The one downside is the knowledge that classical music does not hold the place it once did in American society. Looking around the NSO concert hall, I saw that many prime seats were painfully empty. But at least in the seat I was occupying, one more person was in the
process of conversion.