Classical Music

   One evening, as Doralyn and I were making our way east through the mountains on our way back from the west coast, we found ourselves spending the night at a hot springs resort.
   After checking in and having a meal we headed for one of he mineral pools there. The water was about 107 degrees, saturated with minerals and magnificent. With the aid of flotation devices, soon we were drifting on our backs in the warm jet stream.
   Above us, speakers played soft, meditation music. As I was listening to one tune, slowly it began to sound familiar and I absent-mindedly began going through my memory banks. After awhile I realized the tune was "Streets of Laredo", a song I remember from my childhood. I was, however, unable to confirm this with Doralyn as her childhood doesn't quite coincide with mine.
   Now, "Streets of Laredo" is not classical music but it is very old and certainly has ingrained itself on my psyche. As I continued to float there in the hot springs I began to think of the many ways that more traditionally classical music has infused itself into our pop culture.
    I think the most striking example of this is the "William Tell Overture"by Rossini. If the title of this piece doesn't sound familiar, just think "The Lone Ranger". There is probably no more iconic piece of classical music than this. It seems any time you have a hero set off on some kind of mission, all hell-bent-for leather, this particular theme music seems appropriate.
   Probably my personally favourite piece of classical music is Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King". Since I was a kid, it has either given me a bit of the creeps or just seemed a little maniacal. I remember putting on a play in Grade 4 and I was one of a group of huntsmen with axes who were doing this crazy dance around a fire or something to this particular piece of music. I also remember being amazed to hear it sampled in Rick Wakemen's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and thinking that it fit in perfectly with the netherworldly feeling of that particular opus.
   Until I saw the movie "Ordinary People" I was unfamiliar with Pachelbel's "Canon in D Major". After seeing the movie and being particularly affected by the music in it, I took it upon myself to find out what that particular piece of music was. After this, it seemed as though Pachelbel's piece was every where you went, used in a variety of ways and venues. Whenever I hear it now I get ticked off with Mary Tyler Moore all over again (you really need to see the movie...)
   In much the same way, Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" crept into the public consciousness as the perfect counterpoint to the death and destruction pictured in Oliver Stone's "Platoon". Put simply, it is a beautiful and haunting piece. Recently, on YouTube, it was used as the background music for videos of people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Centre towers on 9/11. The music, coupled with the fact that these were actual people in their final moments, brought one to tears.
   Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" opens with "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Thus Spake Zarathustra), a work by Richard Strauss. It is a visually and emotionally arresting moment in film and the music from it now is used to signify monumental new beginnings.
   Kubrick continued to re-acquaint us with classical music in "A Clockwork Orange". Alex, the hero (villain?) of the movie finds it engaging to commit all sorts of mayhem to the backdrop of some of Beethoven's most well-known pieces. The aforementioned "William Tell Overture" gets a memorable re-working as well.

    Ravel's "Bolero", mesmerizing in its sinewy length and driving repetition, is perfect "make-out" music but possibly none of us realized this until it was so prominently featured in the movie "10". It then became both the inspiration and namesake for Torvill and Dean's ice dancing tour de force, becoming one of the  most memorable skating routines of all time. I remember hearing "Bolero" as a child but it took on a whole new meaning hearing it again as an adult.
   Once again, as a child, I have a vague recollection of one of those afternoon T.V. serials (back in the fifties) that had a couple of World War 1 pilots flying around having adventures to the tune of Wagner's "The Ride of the Valkyries". It is a stratospheric piece of music, full of power and a little bit of dread, and Francis Ford Coppola used it perfectly in "Apocalypse Now" as hordes of gunship helicopters swooped down on the hapless Vietcong.
   Hard to talk about classical music and not talk about Saturday morning cartoons. Without even realizing it, we, as children, were indoctrinated to the world of classical music as we sat there and watched Bugs and Elmer and Mickey and Daffy and listened to much of the above music plus the like of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville", Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody, plus more. I remember discovering one by one that music I'd heard as a kid was classical, that it was maybe 150-200 years old and had been written by someone!
   There will always be classical music inspiring new generations of creators, whether they might be authors, filmmakers, composers, choreographers and so on. What's a little more difficult to say is what will be the classical music of the future. Something by the Beatles, Michael Jackson or Simon and Garfunkel? Or will it be more like Vangelis' "Chariots of Fire" or Randy Newman's title theme from "The Natural", both pieces of music which have taken on more significance than that for which they were intended, much the same as many of the older pieces above.
   My playlists have classical music in them, alongside many well-known contemporary songs and many of the lesser-known ones as well. I'm not shy about demostrating my love for the classics but have no interest in converting anyone. I'm also not shy about letting people know I enjoy opera and choir music. Classical music has lasted because it has touched peoples' nerves. In many ways it has been part of the fabric of our daily lives, perhaps without us even being aware of it. At times, it might have been our first introduction to the world of music and, whether we knew it or not, all else sprung from it.