First off playing the cello is the best feeling in the world. You all want to play cello, admit it. I started playing the summer before 5th grade and have played in school orchestras ever since, but I've never owned my own cello apart from the nasty old one my parents got cheap for me in elementary school. By eighth grade I outgrew it but didn't start playing on a school rental one until 9th grade. So from then on I've borrowed instruments. One of the closest I've come to owning my own cello was when this couple gave me their old cello to have. I had it for about a week before they called my mom and asked for it back so they could get a tax refund on it by donating it somewhere else. Bah-humbug to them. But I digress.
When you play cello you typically get the harmonies and the lower register notes. You make up the "stuff" of the orchestral sound while the violins get the high, floaty melodies and soundtrack chords. You always get left behind for a few minutes in rehearsal because the conductor is working with the violins to check some of their difficult harder notes and rhythms. One really fun thing about playing cello is that you basically control the tempo of any piece you play that involved repetitive notes, which for cellos is often. The conductor may think they have control by waving their arms and trying to slow you down or get you moving but really, it's all in your hands. This becomes very funny when you discover that the upper strings all have runs and high notes or string changes and you have nothing but quarter and half notes for miles. Just slowly speed up throughout the piece and by then end no one else can keep up. This is especially useful in first read-throughs where no one knows what's coming or how to play it yet. They start out seeing some playable, unsuspecting, easy passages and then you notice their ability to hit the right notes begins and you speed up. Simple, easy, sly. ;)
Of course this is all in jest, I have also been the recipiant of this tactic believe it or not. Sometimes, just sometimes, the cellos get a brief strain of melody or some lower register garble in the form of runs or moving eighths or sixteenths and we immediately die. Since we don't encounter these things on a regular basis it might take us a few times to catch the rhythm or the string changes. Not because it's difficult, but more difficult or faster than the typical cello line is. Take Pachabell's Bloody Canon in D. Cellos have the same eight notes for 56 measures. And as the comedian Rob Something -or-Other says, "How did we know it was 56 measures of the same eight notes? Because we had nothing else to do but count them all!" On a side note you should watch "Pachabell's Rant" on YouTube by Penn State student Rob S.O.O. It's amazing.
Back to why I like classical music. I think it has a better ability to capture true emotion. Sometimes there are pop songs and other styles that do this well to but not in the way that classical does. Instead of "pissed off" it styles itself as "broody and aloof", or instead of loud with a lot of bass an orchestra employs the techniques of timbre and intense dynamics. There is a very organic feel to this style of music, something that can only be heard and understood if you are open to it. I understand that classical music isn't for everyone, but then when I think of how long it's lasted and how much weight it carries over time and history worldwide, it has definitely outdone pop and hip hop. In the end, the best way I can describe why I love classical music is through this quote: "The juxtaposition of opposites is what interests me. The music I like has always had that tension-a tension between the terrible and the beautiful." That juxtaposition is called the sublime, the ability to create a sound that is so beautiful it makes you want to cry because it is also weighted with sorrow, that sound that is made by obvious dissonance but in its own way is an amazing chord despite having a second interval in it. That is why this music speaks to me and moves me in ways that no other can.
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
"There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music."
"Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him."
Thanks for reading!
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