Music history

One of the things I love most about teaching music is helping my students to find gems of inspiration from the biographies of classical composers (of Western classical music). I tend to insert intriguing snippets of the aforementioned into my lessons. Simple commentaries, weird facts, quotes, etc. The pieces then don't seem so irrelevant when you can put a life story to their composers' names. The composers are after all, human. They were once little boys (and little girls) with quirks and dreams. My students (and I) can so relate to them.

The composers made history. Some set the course for musical development in their era. And then the ones who broke rules changed the future of music - Beethoven, Liszt, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Cage, Glass, etc. Remembering and studying their journeys help us appreciate the things we often take for granted (or despise) in music education, such as theory of music. Music history is much more than a list of dead composers. It ultimately deepens our enjoyment of classical music, jazz, blues, KPop, R&B, Folk, etc. because we understand that they are products of evolving pursuits... that men and women have always broken out of the moulds to reconcile with their creative inspirations... and that HOPE in an unpredictable world lies in our ability to exercise the last of our human freedoms even if everything else was taken away i.e. "to choose one's attitude in any set of given circumstances, to choose one's own way..." (as per Viktor Frankl) ~ If Beethoven, for example, had allowed his hearing impairment to crush him instead of spurring him toward greater heights, history would have been different. Perhaps, music as we know it wouldn't be the same. Say, jazz. Jazz, after all, arose in the blending of African rhythm, European harmony and form, improvisation, and the freelance musician culture of which Beethoven could be seen as one of the forerunners unlike earlier composers who served in the Church or Court.

Understanding, we then make informed decisions on how we want to play our pieces.