Declassified: A Low-Key Guide to the High-Strung World of Classical Music, by Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch
By Jon Hersey
New York: Putnam, 2022
270 pp. $27 (hardcover)
At some point in their lives, even the most uninterested of listeners experience the emotive power of orchestral music. It might be the salute of Pachelbel’s Canon at graduation, sending them off into “the real world” or the booming anthem of Star Wars transporting them to a galaxy far, far away. Virtually everyone glimpses the majesty of life as seen through the eyes of a great composer, but many stop there, feeling ill-equipped to explore the genre.
Books on classical music tend not to help. Their authors are among those most culpable for the cloud of snobbery and confusion surrounding the subject. Paul Lang’s Music in Western Civilization, for instance, is a veritable encyclopedia, but it leaves readers swimming in such sentences as: “The music emanating from Klopstock’s lyricism is still the sonorous music of the baroque and testifies to the deeply ingrained feeling of the Germans for music—the only art in which for the last few generations their creative power had soared into the highest regions.”1 There are, at least, truly great courses, such as Robert Greenberg’s “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music,” by The Great Courses company. But there’s nothing quite like the just-released Declassified by Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch.
In this Low-Key Guide to the High-Strung World of Classical Music, the Juilliard grad and ex-professional violinist takes the mold for music appreciation and breaks it in a fit of irreverent humor and desperate soul-searching. She knocks common misconceptions off dusty pedestals, frees would-be classical music fans from a web of arcane terminology, and hands them a map for exploring and enjoying that music.
Woven into this is the story of how the competitive nature of the classical music industry submerged her love for music in a battle for prestige, even against her fiancée. While steeping in jealousy at one of his concerts, something cracked the shell of her largely self-imposed misery. One of the evening’s speakers reminisced about the time she turned the car radio to a classical music station to see how her five-year-old daughter would react. “‘Do you know what kind of music this is?’ she asked after a few minutes. Her daughter nodded. ‘You do?’ The woman was surprised. ‘What kind of music is it, then?’ ‘It’s beautiful music,’ her daughter said” (xviii–xix). Warsaw-Fan Rauch reflects:
That story chastened me. It forced me to confront the fact that something in my life was terribly wrong. Something apart from the fact that I seemed unable to feel happy for the man I supposedly loved. I’d forgotten what this music had sounded like to me as a kid—back when it wasn’t “classical” music, but simply a part (my favorite part) of the rich tapestry of sounds that had defined my childhood. I’d forgotten that it wasn’t only my job—or a thing I was good at. It was a thing that I loved. (xix)
She wrote Declassified to remove the barriers that had come between her and the music she loved, as well as those that keep the average adult from experiencing exactly what that five-year-old felt.
One of these is the very name of the genre: “classical music.” Imagine plopping all the music of the past decade into a single category. Then consider that the genre label “classical music” is used to refer to some fifteen hundred years of Western music. Though much of it shares a common vocabulary and instrumentation, it also includes vast differences. As is common, Warsaw-Fan Rauch breaks down “classical music” into seven stylistic periods (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th-Century, and Contemporary), but with a novel twist. She tells us how she really feels about each, offering her own “very biased” characterizations. Here’s a taste:
THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD. . . . WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE: Misery. Despair. Oppression. The Medieval period, as you’ve probably learned from history classes and/or computer games involving armored trolls and buxom elves, was a dark time. Its music was dark, too. This may be because it reflects the darkness of the environment from which it stemmed, but I would not be at all surprised to learn that it was, in fact, the cause of this darkness. (8–9)
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD. . . . This period contains—undoubtedly—some of the most accessibly stimulating music the genre has to offer, and the increased emotional fluidity is what tons of people love about it. I just sometimes find it a bit annoying that when I throw a two-hour tantrum it’s “immature,” but when Mahler does it, everyone hails him as an innovative genius simply because he had the foresight to write his out in score form. (18–20)
Granted, readers will want to explore the periods and reach their own conclusions, and Warsaw-Fan Rauch offers a range of suggestions for each. But how refreshing to have a guide who doesn’t hand out trophies to everyone just for “showing up.”
That’s in part because, whereas many of us think of “classical music” as a historical artifact cordoned off by the same red velvet rope as a museum exhibit, Warsaw-Fan Rauch grew up in a home where it was just part of the regular rotation. She was nursed not only on Bach and Mozart but also Louis Armstrong and Bon Jovi, and she judged it all by the same standard of personal impact. That’s the perfectly natural (and rational) thing to do, but many unlearn this habit to the extent they’ve become convinced that they’re unqualified to judge classical music. “This music was composed for people—not aficionados,” Warsaw-Fan Rauch explains. “There was no secret or special education that was required back in Mozart’s time in order to enjoy it. You are every bit as qualified as the people who were sitting front and center at the premiere of Beethoven’s Fifth” (xiii). And, “The fact that there are snobs who listen to classical music does not mean . . . that classical music is for snobs” (55).
One thing that gives the opposite impression is the naming scheme for classical works, which Warsaw-Fan Rauch demystifies. To those who haven’t learned to speak symphon-ese, Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major, D. 929 means roughly the same thing as Sonata No. 21 in E Minor, K. 304—which is basically nothing. “All the most famous pieces in the repertoire have names or nicknames you can actually remember,” she observes (234). That’s because we humans love and latch onto stories, and even the mere suggestion of one is enough to help define the images that music calls to mind. Hence, “Moonlight” sonata is infinitely more meaningful—and useful—than Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor.
Given all this, it would be immensely helpful—a true public service that, perhaps, Warsaw-Fan Rauch may one day undertake—for someone knowledgeable on the subject to make educated suggestions about the stories certain pieces were intended to tell and to propose more meaningful titles on that basis. Consider one of the book’s most moving passages, discussing a piece that Shostakovich composed “in a three-day fit of inspiration” and dedicated
to the victims of fascism and war. He wrote it at a time in his life when he was filled with self-loathing—after he’d capitulated, under duress and against his principles, to join the Communist Party—and there is significant evidence to suggest that he intended it as a suicide note. . . . The whole quartet is filled with spine-tingling imagery and breathtaking quotes. It makes use of the “Jewish theme” from Shostakovich’s second piano trio, and also the nineteenth-century revolutionary song “Tormented by Grievous Bondage.” Early in the piece, a chilling pedal tone emerges: a note that sustains, unfeelingly, for measures on end, without regard to what else is going on in the music. Most people interpret this and the other pedal tones scattered throughout the piece as the droning of wartime planes flying overhead. There’s a blood-curdling moment at the start of the fourth movement, when the residual drone from the final note of the third is interrupted by three deafening knocks: the KGB pounding on the door in the middle of the night. Some people describe the eerie, sarcastic waltz in the third movement as the waltzing of skeletons, while others hear it as the waltzing of Jewish victims who were forced to dance on their own graves before their execution. (230–231)
This bleak work of art, which might profitably accompany high school history classes, is masked under the supremely unhelpful title Quartet No. 8. “Unfortunately, I can’t change the system for you,” writes Warsaw-Fan Rauch in apology (234). But she or others could help listeners circumvent it with a reference book that nicknames all those great works buried under meaningless titles. Lacking that, we each can sketch something like it for ourselves, inviting the imagery elicited by powerful music to suggest stories, and locking those associations in place with our own pet names.
Warsaw-Fan Rauch’s story is both hilarious and heartrending, and it makes her the ideal guide, combining all the knowledge of a world-class musician with none of the trepidation of one whose livelihood depends on it. Free to offend, she delights, delivering more laughs per page than any book in the genre—and perhaps any book in recent memory.
More serious readers might find fault with some of the humor, particularly in chapters such as “Conductors Are Assholes: And Other Popular Archetypes of the Classical Music Industry.” Here, the jokes are employed less to convey useful information and more as ends in themselves. But it’s good, unclean fun—a not-too-distant cousin of Mozart’s potty humor, which she also gives some airtime. Those who aren’t amused can skip to the chapters on navigating compositions, selecting concerts to attend, and choosing the ideal music for your event. Or they can stick with the other books in the genre, and check their pulse.
Declassified is not merely a guide to getting more from music that many now relegate to weddings and funerals. It is a love letter to that music and to the people who helped Warsaw-Fan Rauch become a world-class violinist—as well as a touching obituary to that career. It tells the stories not only of the loves and losses of Beethoven and Brahms but of the heartbreak of a young musician who built a life for herself atop the expectations of others—and who, in the wake of inevitable disappointment, learned to salvage her love for “beautiful music” and spotlight its value for all to see. It’s not for those who would rather skip the deep, personal stories. But then, neither is music.