Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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Whenever I listen to classical music I always go back to the time of my university years. My tutor Dr Lewis Awad formed a Gramophone Society which aimed at introducing us, his students, to classical music. The first piece he played for us was Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. The old record went on and on on the gramophone which was Dr Awad's, brought in especially for these occasions.

I must admit that it took me some time to really enjoy the music. My ears, like all oriental ears, were attuned to the three quarter- tone of our Arabic music. What made me and my colleagues enjoy Scheherezade was the apparent oriental motifs it contained.

When we finished listening to Korsakov's masterpiece, it was time for commentary by Dr Awad. Music, he said, transcends any limits on ability, nationality, religion or language. It is the most magical act of communication. It didn't matter, he said, that we had no knowledge of the technicalities of music. Awad further asked us to write an essay about our experience listening to Scheherazade. He also asked us to try and draw our impressions since he wanted us to appreciate the relationship between the different arts.

That was how my experience with classical music began, initiated by a leading intellectual of our times. My love for classical music was further entrenched by a series of radio talks by Dr Hussein Fawzi, yet another leading intellectual of our times. He admirably succeeded in explaining the different forms of classical compositions, the sonata, the symphony, the prelude, the cantata. He also introduced us to the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, Elgar and others.

I was reminded of those times when I read an article in the Observer Review by the writer and broadcaster Armando Iannucci who won the award of the Royal Philharmonic society. The article is entitled 'Classical Music, the love of my life'. In it he traces his love of classical music from the moment, aged 11, when he attended his first musical appreciation lesson. So his career in music began as a listener. Soon he was borrowing records from a public library only yards down his road.

He began with Beethoven, then Mahler and Bach. Iannucci describes listening to classical music as a journey, not a state, "an activity, not a meditation". Music, he says "is not a background noise. It's something you bring into the foreground of your experience, by engaging with it, by doing some work". He believes that people do not talk enough about music. They should talk about their experience of classical music, and following a concert, they should discuss "how lucky we are".

There's no way anyone is ever going to fully know music, but, he goes on to say, "I do think there's now an obligation to allow as many people as possible to know as much about it as they can." Music should become more accessible. This, however, does not mean that the classical music industry has to start talking in the language of the street "going on about how Beethoven was a crazy guy, and Wagner made action movies". It's about "developing a language that talks to the audience, aware of their intelligence and appetite, but also recognising that they will have questions that need answering".

When I finished reading the article, memories of my first experience of listening to and seeing a piece of music performed live came rushing back. Watching a performance while listening gives more credence to the music. Watching the movement of the conductor's baton, the communal movement of the strings, the role of the leader -- it's an intricate language that only performers can understand, and which an attentive audience can eventually begin to grasp.