Q. Why do concerts feel like church?
A. All of the classical arts are a search for deeper meaning, be it spiritual, philosophical, or just to blow our minds. Hence, reverence of a sort is the best mode for that search, although not the only one, as CutTime® has made clear.
There’s a time for everything. There’s a time to sing with music, a time to dance with music, even a time to ignore music altogether. A classical concert is a time to sit still, and join the musicians to venture inside music. We can then choose to ride the magic carpet over musical peaks and valleys, chew on the variety of musical textures, lick the harmonies resolving like melting ice cream, read into the drama of the music, or react internally to the instrumentalists utterly owning their roles. Even a surface level understanding will lead you someplace. But enjoying all of these at the same time is when we master the game of listening that leads to a life-changing epiphany.
Classical music is essentially a dramatic art. Historically they started off light and grew into extended morality plays by the late Romantic period. Like novels, plays or movies. they have scenes, acts, characters, violence, sex, greed, fear, complicated relationships, lessons learned, and other plot devices. With just instruments, we call them sonatas of one variety or another. But while voices are great natural instruments, fingered instruments can sound longer, faster, louder, and with twice range up and down. The European instruments developed for dance as well as singing from the 14th-Century on. Technical advancements led to bolder musicians and composers in the 17th-18th Centuries, leading to the timeless treasures we enjoy today, often with a philosophical lesson for all of us.
Sonatas come in just a few generic titles. A original sonata features one player, accompanied by keyboard, a quartet is a sonata for four instruments (usually strings). A quintet means five players, sextet is six, and so on. A symphony is a sonata for orchestra. And a concerto is a sonata featuring one solo instrument, accompanied by an orchestra. Because these are all acoustic (non-amplified) instruments, there is a huge authentic vibe to traditional concerts. The silence before the first note is so pregnant with possibility, it can be deafening in a way. Into that silence bursts a singular sound, be it loud or soft, full ensemble or a single player, that you’d believe was playing just for you.
Classical today is a rare opportunity to experience music as exquisitely detailed art or deeply powerful. It’s not just a different style. It’s a whole different medium, or set of dialects for describing feeling and drama, setting up a moment or the introduction of lofty ideas. It invites different ways of listening, including as background or so focused that the intensity at first can be overwhelming. For this reason players and audience can suddenly become tearful, joyful, and hooked. This is the epiphany or catharsis we are looking for. We borrow the temporary being of the music to escape ourselves and become part of something larger. This music helps us discover ourselves, self-expression (when we learn to sing a melody back), and hopefully each other as the experience is communal and joyous.
We become true believers in the healing powers of music. Like sports fans, we believe our music will win for us a occasional piece of victory, consolation, or determination. Concerts feel like church because we worship human achievement with this music and desire to have a communal, uninterrupted, extended experience with it. All attention is best directed to our inner feelings and thoughts in reaction to the sounds, and neither to the mechanics of playing/conducting, nor the convictions of the musicians. There are no wrong answers within: outside is only distraction. And so it is best to close our eyes and listen in a spirit of meditation (spiritual).