We should all listen to classical music
- Steven Loh (25-A4)
- 8 hours ago
- 14 min read
Written by: Steven (25-A4)
Designed by: Kaitlyn (25-U1)
The world today is saturated with sound. From Starbucks cafés to Uniqlo stores and from TikTok snippets to Spotify playlists, the latest hits from pop, rap, and electronic artists are absolutely everywhere. It is impossible not to hear it, and impossible not to notice how it has come to dominate our daily lives. Classical music, by contrast, runs more beneath the surface, appearing to survive mainly in concert halls and recordings for the patient and the curious.
Very few would include Mozart or Bach in their playlists. Some would roll their eyes and baulk at the very idea of listening to classical music. “It’s old-fashioned,” they will say. “It’s boring. I don’t like it. Why bother listening to some long-dead composer when you can stream the latest hits and instantly feel cool?”
Yet there is something in classical music’s quiet endurance that deserves attention. Music that survives hundreds of years surely does not do so by accident. It has to speak to the deepest depths of human experience. Modern pop hits may come and go, shaped by fleeting trends and computer algorithms, but classical music endures because it is profound, complex, and universally human.
Mind and body
Classical music is not only a feast for the ears in much the same way that a finely cut diamond is for the eyes — it also nurtures the mind and the body. Slow, flowing melodies have a unique way of easing tension, deeply affecting us within and without. Listening to Satie’s Gymnopédies or Ravel’s Miroirs can calm racing thoughts, slow the heartbeat, and even lower blood pressure, offering a quiet refuge from the stresses of daily life. Breathing becomes deeper and more regular, muscles relax, and the mind is allowed to rest.
The benefits extend beyond relaxation alone. Studies suggest that calm classical music can improve sleep quality, helping listeners fall asleep faster and enjoy a more restorative rest. In clinical settings, it has been shown to reduce the perception of discomfort and soothe anxiety.
Researchers have even identified specific works with measurable neurological effects. Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448, has been studied particularly intensely for its impact on brain activity. In some studies, it has been shown that listening to the sonata can significantly alter EEG power spectra, with associated improvements in spatial-temporal reasoning (though this remains contested), and to reduce epileptiform discharges and seizure frequency in some people with epilepsy. While such effects are usually short-term, they nevertheless illustrate the great power that classical music can have on the mind.
Furthermore, the intricate structures, rich harmonies, and dynamic emotional range of classical works can engage the mind, encouraging focus, reflection, and emotional processing. Unlike fast-paced, heavily processed tracks designed to grab attention, classical music invites the listener to pause, to observe, and to feel.
History lessons
A lot of classical music was composed during significant periods in Western history. In the Classical (1750–1820) and early Romantic (1800–1850) periods, the Western world had to contend with revolutions, political upheaval, and rising nationalism. You don’t need a degree in music theory to feel the anger, passion, and patriotic fervour in Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude, or the revolutionary ideals — heroism, struggle, and triumph — in Beethoven’s Eroica (“Heroic”) Symphony.
Indeed, sometimes the background of the music can be as fascinating as the notes on the page. Throughout the early years of the 19th century, Beethoven admired Napoleon Bonaparte as a liberator who embodied the French Revolution’s republican ideals of liberty and equality. The composer was even going to dedicate his third symphony to the great revolutionary.
But then Napoleon declared himself Emperor in 1804, and so betrayed was Beethoven by his ambition for absolute power that he scratched out the dedication (Geschrieben auf Bonaparte) with such force that it tore the title page.
Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven’s secretary at the time, later recalled: “I was the first to tell him the news that Bonaparte had declared himself Emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed, ‘So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!’ Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor. The page had to be recopied, and it was only now that the symphony received the title Sinfonia eroica.”
Classical music was also able to capture the cultural shifts of its time. Between 1800 and 1820, the order and restraint of Classical-era music gradually gave way to the expressiveness, emotion, and extravagance of the Romantic era. It signified a shift away from Enlightenment ideals like reason, balance, and universal forms, while reflecting broader societal changes. This era, often referred to as the transitional period, coincided with a very significant expansion of the middle class.
As the Industrial Revolution progressed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, advances in manufacturing made musical instruments, such as the piano, more affordable and widely available. This allowed many middle-class households to possess their own instruments and so music-making became a popular pastime and, in many homes, a symbol of cultural refinement. The growing middle class valued personal experience and individual expression, aligning with the core themes of intense emotion and individualism found in Romantic music, and helping to broaden the influence of music beyond aristocratic circles. Demand for music surged, leading to the proliferation of public concert halls, opera houses, and music societies across Europe. Music became a public spectacle, no longer just a private performance for those in the uppermost echelons of society.
The growth in size of audiences and concert venues even meant that some instruments had to become louder to be heard at the back of large halls. Instruments that had been easy to hear in the antechambers and private ballrooms of the aristocracy now needed to be audible throughout much larger spaces. So, metal flutes gradually superseded wooden ones, and steel largely replaced gut for strings.
This growing public appetite for music also encouraged the rise of virtuoso performers. Music came to be about more than just melody. Audiences delighted in witnessing feats of extraordinary technique, and figures like Paganini and Liszt captured hearts and souls across Europe. Paganini’s technique was so seemingly impossible that rumours circulated he had sold his soul to the Devil to achieve it, earning him the nickname “The Devil’s Violinist”.
Liszt, in turn, inspired such fervent admiration that the phenomenon was given its own name: “Lisztomania”. Fans would swarm him, fighting over his gloves, handkerchiefs, and even his cigar stumps. Before this fame, in April 1832, Liszt attended a concert by Paganini, and so inspired was he by Paganini’s devilish skill that he resolved to revolutionise piano technique and become the “Paganini of the piano”. As part of this effort, he composed various daring works after Paganini, including two sets of études. The third étude of the second set, “La Campanella”, is generally considered one of the most technically challenging piano pieces of all time.
The very idea of the performer as a public star is a product of these societal changes: music was no longer a private indulgence of the elite, but a spectacle of virtuosity and passion that audiences clamoured to witness for themselves — and this continues to be seen to this day.
Like its earlier counterparts, classical music in later periods also captured transformative times in history. Sibelius’ Finlandia was a subtle protest against the Russian Empire, sidestepping increasing censorship by using indirect, symbolic means to inspire Finnish national sentiment.
Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, composed during the Nazi siege of Leningrad in 1941, quickly emerged as an international symbol of Soviet resistance. Its first movement, initially titled simply “War”, features the famous “invasion theme”. It is often interpreted as a representation of the advancing fascist armies, while subsequent movements contrast lyrical, folk-like melodies with moments of intense struggle.
The symphony was premiered in Leningrad in August 1942 under extreme wartime conditions, quickly becoming a morale booster and a symbol of cultural defiance. Abroad, it was widely performed as a show of solidarity with the Soviet people.
But during the war, music was not used solely for the expression of defiance and nationalism. It was also able to connect wartime adversaries, offering moments of transcendence amid bitterness and suffering. For music, in its purest form, does not distinguish between nationalities or allegiances. It can be felt and understood by all, regardless of where their loyalties lie.
The French composer Olivier Messiaen was drafted into the French army as a medical auxiliary at the outbreak of war and captured by the Germans in June 1940. While imprisoned in the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIII-A, just south of the Saxon town of Görlitz, he encountered three fellow musicians: the clarinettist Henri Akoka, the violinist Jean le Boulaire, and the cellist Étienne Pasquier. A sympathetic guard provided him with manuscript paper, pencils, and a place to work, and using these, Messiaen began writing a trio for the three musicians he had come to know. He then went on to develop this into one of his most famous works, the Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (“Quartet for the End of Time”), with a piano part written for himself.
The quartet was premiered in the camp barracks on 15 January 1941, before an audience of prisoners and guards alike. Unlike the monumental Leningrad Symphony, which is scored for an enormous orchestra, the chamber work is far more intimate, and for a moment this strange assemblage of listeners would have sat in silence, united by the music, allowing themselves — however fleetingly — to forget their divisions and the war and death.
In other circumstances, composers also used music as a vehicle for expressing collective identity, reflecting the cultural pride and various nationalist movements of the time. Romantic-era composers in particular frequently incorporated folk elements and national styles into their music as celebrations of heritage and belonging. Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies captured the fiery spirit of Hungarian Romani music, while Smetana’s Má vlast painted the Bohemian life and landscape in sweeping, unforgettable tones.
What is more, there is something rather unique about Western classical music and its traditions. While some cultures around the world have at times sought to cordon themselves off and protect themselves from outside influences, much of the West has consistently gone in the opposite direction, engaging with the outside world and seeking to learn from it. This has manifested itself in the visual arts, architecture, and literature.
But nowhere is this more pronounced than in the classical music world. Some of the greatest composers of the Classical period, including Mozart and Haydn, made use of Turkish influences that came to them through the Habsburg Empire. Established masterpieces such as Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute and Beethoven’s Turkish March from The Ruins of Athens made use of these influences.
Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 5, nicknamed “The Egyptian”, drew influences from Spanish and Middle Eastern music. The second movement is particularly exotic, and it introduces the listener to a Nubian love-song which the composer heard being sung by boatmen on the River Nile. The concerto also evokes Javanese culture — Hyperion notes that “two solo passages with unusual chord-spacings are reminiscent of the sound of gamelan music”.
Another composer who took inspiration from Javanese gamelan music is Claude Debussy. His Pagodes, from Estampes, “makes extensive use of pentatonic scales and mimics traditional Indonesian melodies.” He was also deeply inspired by Japanese art, particularly ukiyo-e prints such as Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. He chose that very print for the cover of his orchestral work La mer (“The Sea”), aligning its powerful, evocative imagery with his musical depictions of the ocean.
Taken together, these examples show that classical music has never existed in isolation from the world around it. It has consistently reflected and responded to political upheaval, social transformation, and cultural exchange. Whether expressing revolutionary ideals, national identity, or fascination with and admiration of various cultures, classical music offers a uniquely vivid record of human history as it was lived and felt. In this way, it does more than document the past — it allows us to experience it anew.
Emotional power
It is remarkable how well classical music captures moments in history and represents them even today, hundreds of years on. Part of how it has done so is that it is able to communicate deep human emotions in ways that transcend language, culture, and time. From the extraordinary beauty of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 to the dissonance in Mozart’s Requiem Mass, works use melody, harmony, and dynamics to express joy, love, longing, and sorrow. These are feelings that every soul on Earth can relate to.
Rachmaninoff’s aforementioned piano concerto begins with introspection and melancholy, followed by a serene second movement that evokes peaceful, almost spiritual, emotions. The concerto concludes with an energetic, exuberant finale, making the work as a whole reflect the volatility and instability of the human condition. Indeed, it is almost like a map of Rachmaninoff’s own compositional journey.
After the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, the composer fell into a deep depression, and during this time he found himself completely unable to compose. He drank heavily and eked out a living by giving piano lessons and performing occasionally. By 1900, Rachmaninoff grew so despondent and desperate that he agreed, upon the suggestion of his relatives the Satins, to visit the neurologist Nikolai Dahl. His treatment was successful, and the concerto — now dedicated to Dahl — was completed by April the following year. It was an unmitigated success.
One of the more common perceptions of classical music that we have today is that very rarely does it ever feature the human voice. This idea is both unfortunate and mistaken, as Schubert’s Lieder, Mozart’s concert arias, and countless operas will prove. Yet, the instrumental nature of many classical pieces is precisely what makes them so powerful. Because there are no lyrics, they leave ample room for imagination. They allow us to project our own memories and stories onto the music. Each listener interprets it slightly differently, influenced by their own experiences and ideas.
Sometimes, composers will choose to guide listeners to a particular image that they wish to convey through their music. It is difficult, for example, not to imagine a lonely figure smothered in heavy winter clothing trudging through the blinding winds of a great blizzard when listening to Liszt’s twelfth Transcendental Étude. Small wonder it is — the composer titled the work “Chasse-neige”. The title in English is “snow-whirls”.
Even then, however, the listening experience is not set in stone. The figure could be an elderly man, on the verge of freezing to death. He could be holding his scarf to his neck to stop it being snatched away by the fierce winds, knowing that it would be impossible to remove it and tie it on again more securely, for the ferocious gale would steal it from him the moment he took it off. Or, perhaps in a more modern context, it might not even be a man at all but a motor car struggling against the storm, its progress frustrated by the snow piling up against its front bumper, making any forward movement increasingly impossible. Unlike music that has a very direct, in-your-face message, most works of classical music have no fixed interpretation. So, even with programmatic pieces like Chasse-neige and others, the listening experience remains unique to the individual.
So far, we have focused on the figure, a speck of dark colour against the white snow around him, labouring through the blizzard. But in doing so we have slightly overlooked another key individual in our brief analysis of Chasse-neige. We have overlooked the listener. What if the piece was not depicting some unknown figure, someone distant and imagined, but the listener themselves? The fast, turbulent chromatic scales could just as easily be a representation of a storm of emotions, swirling within. Just as some listeners might visualise the gloomy image of the assailed man, so for others the piece might be a prompt for introspection and emotional reflection. Because whether the storm is in the snow or in the heart, music has such a unique way of reaching into individual lives.
The English conductor Benjamin Zander gave a TED Talk in February 2008, during which he played Chopin’s Prélude Op. 28 No. 4 in E minor. This prelude is not one of Chopin’s fast or virtuosic preludes. Rather, it is quiet, lyrical, and expressive. Zander told the audience of an Irish boy whose brother had been killed during the Troubles, a period of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. He played Chopin’s prelude for the boy and other children affected by the conflict, and the boy told him afterwards: “You know, I’ve never listened to classical music in my life, but when you played that Chopin piece…
“My brother was shot last year and I didn’t cry for him. But last night, when you played that piece, he was the one I was thinking about. And I felt the tears streaming down my face. And it felt really good to cry for my brother.”
That Chopin, the Polish composer writing in the 1830s, could touch the heart of an Irish boy 170 years later is truly extraordinary.
In a world saturated with fleeting sounds, such lasting power shows that classical music remains a refuge where profoundly human feelings endure. It transcends boundaries to evoke emotional resonance. All this makes classical music more meaningful and intimate than music that is very literal. It makes classical music a great unifying force. And it makes classical music absolutely timeless.
How to get started
It takes a little effort to get started with classical music. There are definitely barriers to doing so — not least our shrinking attention spans, which can make it difficult to sit through a piece without repeated hooks to keep us listening throughout. But once you begin, its charm slowly reveals itself, and what may feel distant at first soon becomes genuinely compelling.
A good place to start is with short, more approachable works. Chopin’s Nocturnes and Préludes, Debussy’s Arabesques, or the famous Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana offer accessible entry points without sacrificing musical depth.
It is also helpful to search for curated playlists or recordings on platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. Well-known works — such as Beethoven or Mozart’s violin concertos — tend to be the most accessible and immediately engaging.
From there, follow your own preferences. If a particular composer or style resonates with you, explore it more deeply. Enjoy Mozart’s piano concertos? Try his symphonies too. If you like them, Haydn’s later works may offer a natural extension. You might even venture further, into transitional composers like Dussek, before moving to the Romantic styles of Mendelssohn, Grieg, and Schumann.
At the same time, it is worth exploring beyond the most well-known works of our time. Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony had the misfortune of being conceived between two giants — the Eroica Symphony and the famous Fifth. And so it gets somewhat overlooked today. But its brilliance, energy, and beautiful construction make it just as worth listening to as the more well-known symphonies. Similarly, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 is often overshadowed by Nos. 21 and 23. There are many hidden gems like these, waiting to be discovered by the attentive listener.
Finally, do not be discouraged by technical labels — keys, tempo markings, catalogue numbers. These can seem daunting at first, but they are secondary. What matters more is the experience itself: timeless, profound, and uniquely yours.
The reader who is interested in further exploring some of the pieces described in this article may consult the following list of links.
In order of appearance:
Ravel: Miroirs, M. 43: III. Une barque sur l’océan (Laplante)
Mozart: Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448 (Lucas Jussen, Arthur Jussen)
Chopin: 12 Études, Op. 10: No. 12 in C minor, ‘Revolutionary’ (Pollini)
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E♭ major, Op. 55, ‘Eroica’ (Karajan)
Liszt: Grandes études de Paganini, S. 141: No. 3 in G# minor, ‘La Campanella’ (Kissin)
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies, S. 244: No. 2 in C# minor (Hamelin)
Beethoven: The Ruins of Athens, Op. 113: IV. Turkish March (Klee)
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op. 103, ‘Egyptian’ (Chamayou, Sokhiev)
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 (Weissenberg, Karajan)
Mozart: Requiem in D minor, K. 626: IIIf. Lacrimosa (Karajan)
Liszt: Études d’exécution transcendante, S. 139: No. 12 in B♭ minor, ‘Chasse-neige’ (Kissin)
Comments