“Classical music?” said Ryan Morris, a transfer student from Henry Ford Community College. “Isn’t that what they play at the dentist?”
Sure, maybe a symphony by Bach or Beethoven can be heard in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, but classical music is more than just filler for the ears or “Baby Einstein” videos.
“What dentist do you go to?” professor Joel Schoenhals asked with a laugh. “There is a difference between active listening and passive listening. Unfortunately, a lot of listening has become passive – like sitting in the dentist chair and having something in the background… Classical music demands active listening – really listening to relationships of ideas, emotional qualities, structure, the way things are layered and organized, and so on.”
This Friday evening at Pease Auditorium, professor Schoenhals will be taking the stage to play “Fantasies, Part II” – a composition of music ranging from Chopin to Schubert. As this is the second performance in his “Fantasies” series, Schoenhals has explained, “a fantasy is typically very free of structure relative to other types of music – it can be more like stream of consciousness – with multiple sections evolving into each other.”
It might sound pretty heavy to grasp this concept of music evolving, but as Lukas Burch, a sophomore, said, “[Classical music] makes its appearances in mostly remixes, house and electronic music… Its popularity is long gone but it will always be there as a historical monument in music.”
Though the classic stylings of Beethoven and various composers seem to be a dying breed, Schoenhals counters this idea.
Classical music is absolutely alive. There are better and better and more and more young pianists and musicians applying to universities and conservatories each year. It’s mindboggling. There are also emerging audiences internationally; in China, classical music is huge – millions of children are studying, and the best artists are treated like rock stars.”
“I don’t like the new stuff very much,” said EMU music major Tommie Preston. “Most modern classical is made for movies or the composers try to make it sound unnaturally complicated, although I love old classical music.”
The love for classical music is like a high for Schoenhals.
“The majority of college music programs focus on classical training, so kind of by default, that is the direction I went and I just kept falling in love over and over again,” he said. “I was thrilled by every new discovery of composers I wasn’t familiar with and pieces I had never heard. I still am year after year. There is such a depth, richness, and seemingly infinite range of music to explore.”
“I’m constantly in awe of the great composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and others,” Schoenhals said. “In my performance style, I’ve been influenced mostly by performances of pianists of what was considered the Golden Age of the Piano – the first half of the 20th century. Pianists like Horowitz, Rubinstein and others. This was the time when classical music perhaps had a more visible role in society.”
And society continues to change just as it always has. Looking back at how influential the jazz scene was on rock ‘n’ roll, the same can be said for classical music. Spawning a new generation of musicians, though being taught by their high school band instructors, classical music has opened fresh minds towards other types of musical outlets as well: hip-hop, indie rock, punk, etc. If it weren’t for learning the basics from the classical styles for any instrument, being piano to a guitar, most music might not have that depth and richness to embrace because as the old saying goes “it’s all been done before.”
Though Schoenhals’ passion for classical music might be different from the kid blasting out the subwoofers in his Dodge Neon, classical is still alive in those who believe in it.
“Fantasies, Part II” will begin at 8 p.m. this Friday in Pease Auditorium.
