So don’t give another thought to whether you have the right ‘credentials’ to become a classical aficionado or whether you’re listening 'right’: trust me, the only entry criterion is to have ears.Music is a comfort amidst turbulent times, and although concert halls are closed, there are many ways to integrate it into your daily life. They are also robust: they can handle you multitasking all around them, fitting them into your real life. I believe the greatest works of music are engines of empathy: they allow us to travel without moving into other lives, ages, souls. It includes plenty of women - who for centuries have been written out of the canon - composers of colour gay and transgender composers differently-abled composers (Beethoven, after all, wrote some of his most magnificent works while fully deaf) composers who battled - or are battling - mental health issues, addiction, low self-esteem composers who had to make ends meet by doing all manner of unlikely day jobs (taxi drivers, plumbers, chemists, orange pickers, postal workers) but who kept at it, despite the odds, and created these glorious pieces for our listening pleasure. So I decided to write a sort of field guide, not so much a history of classical music as a hand-curated treasury of music that I dearly love.
CLASSICAL BACKGROUND MUSIC FOR FREE
And I was losing track of the number of friends, family and even strangers who were asking, often sheepishly, if I might be able to make them a classical playlist.Īnd yet: the sheer volume of what is now available for free at the click of a button can be daunting, if not paralysing. There’s a reason everyone from film to funeral directors invariably relies on classical music when they want to ramp up the feels. This is painfully ironic, because the work itself is among the most emotionally direct that we have. What if I could build on my lifetime’s love of classical music? What if I could open up this vast treasury of musical riches by demystifying both the music and humanising those who created it by giving each piece some context, telling some stories, and reminding readers/listeners that this music was created by a real person, probably someone who shared many of the same concerns as them, who in many ways might be just like them.Ĭlassical music is an art form that, for myriad complex reasons, is often perceived to be the preserve of a narrow elite an exclusive party to which few are invited. And it occurred to me that, if I could benefit in such a meaningful way from this small but powerful act of soul maintenance, so might others. I began to look disproportionately forward to it. Getting on the Tube and pressing play, instead of automatically being sucked into a social media scroll hole, seemed to be spiritually stabilising. I curated myself monthly classical playlists with a specific piece for each day. It turned out that, when I converted my listening habits into a conscious daily ritual, I began to feel less anxious almost immediately. Each year, I set annual expectations that I fail utterly to stick to - and become increasingly stressed out as a result. Inevitably then, this time of New Year’s resolution-making and breaking is liable to make me feel pretty wretched. I always leave my tax return until the deadline. I never go to the gym, no matter how noble my intentions. Scientific research is increasingly proving that regular acts of so-called ‘self-care’ can have untold benefits on our mental health and well-being, but personally I’ve never been able to get the hang of, say, regular meditation or yoga.
Who, seriously, has the luxury of making time each day to actively listen to a particular piece of music? Perhaps, though, we have never needed more urgently the emotional space that music - and classical music in particular - can provide. Yet our own modern lives are frazzled and fragmented to an unprecedented degree. It is an impulse that is still fundamental to who we are.