Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Perceiving depth and complexity requires patience
THIS is a great piece of music.
Although I wasn’t raised with any exposure to classical music, I was fortunate enough to have stumbled upon it when young. My initial introduction to masterpieces included works like Beethoven’s symphonies and piano concertos, Brahm’s four symphonies, and other great works from the canon. None of these works appealed to me immediately. Appreciating a classical symphony requires patience. Like any rich and profound creative work, a symphony takes time to digest. After two or three listenings, there are usually a few brief catchy themes that can catch one’s attention. A few more listenings and the underlying structure becomes apparent. Symphonies became perfected in Germany in the late 18th and 19th centuries. There is an almost architectural quality about them — cathedrals of sound. Some are more profound than others. I’ve found the most impressive ones typically take the longest to “get.” I spent an entire summer slowly assimilating the Bruckner 8th symphony a uniquely difficult piece. The piece did nothing for me after several initial listenings. Like any great symphony, the entire piece begins as a simple thematic seed which is subjected to complex variations. In that sense, it is not unlike the introduction to a great novel’s main character who later undergoes a variety of circumstances both tragic and triumphant.
The link I began this post with is to the 3rd symphony of Alberic Magnard. There are many lessor (or unknown) composers like Magnard that had mastered symphonic musical compositions but never came to be widely known. It’s amazing how something that initially fails to impress can eventually get stuck in your head. As an aside, listening to to a piece like this and eventually “understanding” it basically produces a copy of it in your brain. You’ve, in effect, downloaded the piece. Anything that enriches neural connections this way is bound to be of benefit.
