2/14/23 Can You Respect Classical Music Too Much?

Has this ever happened to you?  

You’re listening to a favorite band or pop artist—tapping your feet, nodding your head, feeling like you want to dance—but as soon as you pick up your string instrument and try to play along, you lose the groove?

Well, I just wanted to let you know that it’s not you. 

It’s your classical training.

We have been taught to focus on other things--intonation, tone, phrasing, vibrato, expressiveness, etc etc.-- all the techniques of classical string playing that are so demanding.

But unfortunately, there's one important musical technique that is almost always overlooked by string teachers, and that’s groove.

What even is groove?

Groove is the rhythmic energy that makes you want to dance. 

It’s right there front and center in so much of the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tschaikovsky and just about every piece of classical music you’ve ever heard.

Groove was important to the great composers. So why isn’t it important to string players?

There are lots of reasons, some racial, some social. But probably the biggest reason groove is not taught to classical string players is that classical music is historical music.

It’s mostly the music from 18th and 19th century white European culture.

It isn’t the music of our own contemporary musical culture and we don’t treat it the same way we treat our pop music.

Classical music is art music. We typically perform it in concert halls, the musical equivalent of an art museum.

We demand that it is respected as art—sit quietly, don’t clap until the very end, don’t eat or drink. And definitely don’t get up and dance.

Compare that to a typical pop, hip hop or rock concert.

The irony is that it’s not like they didn’t dance in 18th and 19th century Europe. They had all kinds of dances, from Bourees and Sarabandes to Waltzes and Mazurkas. Composers wrote them for people who knew how to dance to them.  

It was the popular music of their own contemporary culture. The equivalent of our hip hop, rock, pop, and jazz. It wasn't historical music when it was written.

Yes, It's vitally important to respect and to continue to appreciate this incredible body of classical music, just as it's vital to maintain the art in our art museums. 

But sometimes too much respect can keep people from enjoying the music the way it was intended to be enjoyed.

So, if we really want to respect the music of the great masters, we need to also respect their grooves. They wrote the groove into their music and we as string players need to respect that, too.

Even if our teachers never taught us how.

Groove on,

--Tracy