EspañolThere is no music more social than that of the great composers.
I estimate that there are more people that can recall the first notes of Beethoven’s fifth symphony than almost any other folk melody. That «ta ta ta táaaa» dwells by itself in the collective memory of any era and nationality of our days. Beethoven’s music, like that of Bach, Haydn or Mozart, transcends the context of their creators’ lives. The folkloric phenomenon, on the other hand, is born of the values inherent in tradition, geography and the characteristics of a particular culture, which constitute what we might call the “local flavor”. Despite its immediacy, folk music is limited to its place of origin and invites us to appreciate it according to specific cultural references. Great music is born free, unchained, and above the circumstances of the place and time from which it emerges. Great music flows through the air without the need for translation or plastic, visual qualities.
We call «classic» that which transcends the particularities of its time and space. Probably, the source of this phenomenon is the beauty of the work itself, like the energy that is proper to a star. Art is the order that the artist finds, the «unique order», the «harmony». Of all the arts, the most ethereal is music. Inapprehensible, it is perhaps the art most likely to become «classical». The composer, in his fragile mortality, has the possibility of escaping time through the sacred grace of beauty, and thereby creating, from eternal elements, a work that leads the human soul towards the immortal.
Music, like poetry, is a primordially temporary art, it requires the passing of time to grasp its totality. Beauty in music is captured through the sum of moments that pass from measure to measure, from movement to movement, like the measured verse. Likewise, written music is related to visual arts, in terms of having also spatial attributes, the score is admirable to the eye, like a painting, and comprehensible like a book.
Just as a library preserves writings, a symphony orchestra brings to life sound documents, musical compositions that represent some of the greatest human achievements. As if by magic or by a divine spell, each concert gives life again and again to masterpieces.
Great musical works have the capacity to lodge themselves in the collective consciousness, to reach all kinds of people and to remain there. “Classical” is not the work that is most frequently listened to, but the one that remains for the longest time in the memory of generations. More than diffusion, it is about permanence. From this point of view, the music of great composers is the most “social” music, because it survives in the sensitive understanding of men. For this reason, it is of utmost importance to make it widely known in the most varied geographies, because wherever it arrives, it will stay.
A year that comes to an end is also the door to a new cycle. For the second year we pay tribute “by deprivation” to concert music. Today, on the other hand, we begin to gather in theaters, still with the pertinent sanitary precautions. We did not remember the full resonance of a live orchestral chord, nor the wonder of an audience synchronizing their souls as they gather in an agreement that becomes evident in the last music made up of applause. This phenomenon cannot be transmitted by any technology, and is only known by experience itself. It is desirable that, at the beginning of the third year of the pandemic, face-to-face music will not return on its own, but it will return together with a greater awareness and a greater enthusiasm of the artists and the audience.
