Introduction

Below is Claude Debussy's “Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum,” the namesake for this guide. Here, Debussy takes the popular exercise-book title Gradus ad Parnassum and performs a bit of reverse-satire, poking fun at technical exercises by turning one into real music. You may select the performer using the drop-down below.

Debussy wrote, “I love music passionately. And because I love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth — an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.”

Like Debussy, I love classical music and want to see it soar free. I am an amateur pianist, cellist, and conductor, and I've been playing music since I could walk. I say amateur in the best way, in its original meaning: one who does something for the love of it.

This love was cultivated in me by my childhood teacher, Natalie Ryshna Maynard, whom you met in the previous chapter. A formidable pianist and lifelong educator, Natalie believed that classical music should belong to everyone. It is an abstract art that more than any other hinges on the interpretations of its performers and listeners. This book is designed to help listeners develop, deepen, and trust their own musical intuitions by finding a way into the music that speaks to them. It is dedicated, of course, to Natalie.

The “How to Feel” Book

In the early twentieth century, a pianist named Lucy Hickenlooper, from San Antonio, Texas, changed her name to Olga Samaroff so that people would take her seriously. Decades later, when Samaroff was teaching at the newly formed Juilliard School, her student Natalie Hook changed her last name to Ryshna, and modeled herself in her teacher's image.

There is much one could say about “Madam” Samaroff, from her invention of blind auditions—a process now standard among symphony orchestras to combat bias in hiring—to her discovery of (and later marriage to) Philadelphia Orchestra and Disney Fantasia conductor Leopold Stokowski.^💬 But I introduce her for the course and book she developed, The Layman's Music Book. It is from this book that I want to share one of my favorite examples of musical interpretation, two writings from different scholars, both about the coda from the Brahms Piano Quintet (italics are Samaroff's).

Niemann writes: "The coda goes laughing by till it is finally concentrated still more drastically by means of syncopations. Yet all this does not succeed in checking its joyful mood; and, in the concluding lines, it takes its leave by breaking off abruptly as though with bright ringing laughter."

Meanwhile, Specht writes: "The extensive coda… dashes towards the dark unknown. The composer's heart must have been desolate indeed when he wrote this study in black."

Samaroff concludes: “Nobody seems to give much consideration to the obvious fact that if a piece of music is really gay or sad, that mood is the one thing that ought to reach the listener without explanation.” She relates the tale of one concertgoer who religiously read the program notes during concerts, or as he called it, the “how-to-feel book.” Once, he turned over two pages instead of one and was later dismayed to find that he was “sad at the wrong time.”

Instead of explaining how to feel, this Dr. Gradus Guide presents multiple different ways to approach classical music. Among others, we will explore the behind-the-scenes work of students and performers, the elegance of musical architecture, and the pursuit of the spiritual.

The largest section revolves around musical storytelling. It starts with music that tells concrete stories before venturing into more abstract territory. By the time we reach pieces titled “Symphony” with no explicit story, readers will have developed an intuition for what the music is saying and how it speaks to them. And yes, there is also a Top 40 listening guide to the classical canon.

My teacher and my teacher's teacher were particularly proud that their students had diverse approaches to the same music.^💬 They searched for the style and repertoire that spoke to their students as individuals, unlocking their personal lenses of interpretation.

I think the same can be done for listeners. My hope is that by the end of this book, both novice and experienced listeners will have found new ways to connect with classical music—and be empowered to lead their own musical journeys without needing anyone to tell them how to feel.

Listening Philosophy

This book primarily discusses the first listen: how to approach a piece of music that the listener has never heard before with little or no context. This is, to state the obvious, how we all originally got in to classical music—by hearing it once for the first time. Still, it's easy to forget that many listeners today have heard Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” more times than Beethoven himself. ^💬

Classical music certainly rewards repeated listening, and occasionally we'll see multiple interpretations of the same piece, but those listens tend to get easier every time. So as we go through various pieces of music, most discussion will be about the one or two things that jump out the most. I try to be objective, but my interpretations will always be filtered through the lens of my own experience, and do not claim to be the correct ones.

The Platform

As I started trying to write a book that puts this philosophy into practice, I quickly realized that there would have to be a way for the reader to actually experience the music I was talking about. In 1938, composer Aaron Copland wrote in his book, What to Listen for in Music, “No solution has been found for the perennial problem of supplying satisfactory musical examples…Some day the perfect method for illustrating a book's statement about music may be discovered. Until then, the unfortunate layman will have to accept a number of my observations on simple faith.”

85 years later, I think we have a solution. The videos in this book are embedded in-line, often with synchronized commentary. If you have any trouble, please send feedback using the “…” button at the top and bottom right corner of the page.

The Recordings Dilemma

Ironically, the recording technology that enables this platform to exist is also one of the largest barriers to fully connecting with the music.

My grandteacher Samaroff hailed recordings as doing “what the art of printing did for literature” for the way they increased access to music. But in this century, audio recordings have become the primary method through which music is consumed. I'm afraid classical music—of which so much was written before the idea of “recording” even existed—barely survived that transition.

Classical music lives and dies by its shifts in volume, yet most modern recordings flatten those peaks and valleys to fit earbuds and car speakers, dulling the drama. Today we listen in the background as we work, or drive, or eat, or cook. When we do so, we no longer visualize the concert halls, the fingers flying across the keyboard, the energy emanating from the stage. We forget entirely that there is a real person on the other side of the speakers trying to connect with us. As German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter put it,

Isn’t it most beautiful the first time the man of your life tells you ‘I love you’? How would it be if you had it on your iPhone? Would you listen to it every day? It's just not the same thing. The concert hall is the last place, maybe other than church, where we can just, for once… just let it penetrate, let it get through our skin, absorb it with all you are.

This disconnect from the act of physical performance has consequences. Take virtuosity, for instance. Tchaikovsky's climax of impossibly fast octaves would not be nearly as exciting to listen to if we couldn't see or imagine the blur of the pianist's hands as they dive into their narrow black and white targets at breakneck speed and with enough power to match a full orchestra. ^💬

Here's one minute of a fearless Yuja Wang, back when she was beginning to explode into classical music superstardom, playing an octave passage from “Flight of the Bumblebee.” While Rimsky-Korsakov's original orchestral version was written to imitate a whirling bumblebee, here it is arranged as a virtuoso showpiece by György Cziffra. Wang uses it as an encore to give the audience a little dessert. ^💬

An encore like this is not just music, but spectacle. Natalie used to tell me that her favorite pianist, Vladimir Horowitz, was so exciting to watch not because his playing was so in control, but because he was always right on the verge of losing control. ^💬 The great pianist Arthur Rubinstein even said,

I must have the unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music can bloom anew. It's like making love. The act is always the same, but each time it's different.

It is the performer's stark vulnerability—the rawness of a real human being—that binds audience and performer together in the present moment.

I have tried to select videos rather than audio throughout this book in order to preserve the performer-audience connection as much as possible. (Headphones are recommended!) But classical music is by nature an ephemeral art form, without a fast forward or pause button, and live music is still the ideal. My hope is that these videos will inspire readers to seek out live performances. And the more time spent with live music, the more effective the recordings will be at evoking the full impact of the performance.

First Listens

Finally, I'd like to share a “first listen” from a full performance that remains a favorite today—a 2010 TED talk from conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra from Venezuela that won me over before I knew anything about their story.

Here's four minutes of music.

The skill level is incredible for high school students, yes. But it's the hot-blooded passion that won me over. It's the fire in the eyes of the violinists—barely able to stay in their seats—that made me want to root for them, to grab an instrument and be on their team. And that makes this playing frankly more exciting than many professional orchestras. This music from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony is not dainty, demure classical music to put you to sleep, but something that riles you up.

Then, in their second selection, something much different: here are the last few minutes, now in their Venezuelan colors.

That was Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Marquéz. ^💬

There's so much I could write about this performance—the amount of pure fun it is to watch and listen to, the fact that I had never heard of Arturo Marquéz, or even much Latin American classical music before this—but I'm hoping that many of you felt for yourselves the same sense of awe that this performance still brings me.

It's also interesting to think that the history of this orchestra, not the music, is the reason that it was playing in this venue to this audience. Known as El Sistema, the Venezuelan program was described as “free classical music education… for impoverished children.” Their top orchestra has far outperformed what most products of the U.S. public music education system would ever have predicted. But this context isn't necessary to enjoy it—the music speaks for itself.

In choosing the music for this book, I've cast a wide net. Not every piece or performer will be for every listener. Even though this curation was in many ways a love letter to my favorite repertoire, some of it was even unfamiliar to me before writing this book. Regardless, I can't wait to share more of it with you.

The Rabbit Hole

If you've found something you enjoy, I'll offer some more suggestions at the end of each chapter. For an encore from Dudamel and the Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, here's Leonard Bernstein's Mambo from the West Side Story Symphonic Dances at BBC Proms.

At the bottom of each chapter you can also find a short playlist with Spotify links for some of the key works discussed. Clicking the Spotify logo on the left will open the Spotify app if installed.