Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Benjamin Zander is a zealot, and that’s a good thing. He’s zealous about music, specifically classical music.

If you’ve read this blog or my bio, you know I spent many years (decades, really) playing classical music. It was, I thought at the time, the only thing I’d ever do. I played several instruments over the course of my career (but what I always wanted to do was direct!) and though I eventually traded in my viola bow for a St Dupont fountain pen, classical music is still a primary element in my life.

Benjamin Zander knows the power of classical music, first-hand, and has been installing that power in young musicians for nearly 50 years, and in this TED Talk from 2008, he shows us how he does it.

Ages ago, when we still taught music in our grammar schools, I was riveted by Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts.” Bernstein had a way of bringing the mystery of music down to earth; I still remember his description of chord progressions as a baseball player running the bases from tonic to third, to fourth, to fifth and back to tonic. At the time, it was like a door opening on a secret realm. His analogy described the internal feeling of the music, the natural progression as the player left home plate and ran to first (C to F), the building of tension as the player rounded second and stretched for third (F to G), and turning final the corner to reach for the resolution (G back to C).

In this TED Talk, Benjamin Zander provides us with a similar example, using Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor (Op. 28 No. 4) to illustrate how classical music can touch us all, reaching into our very core, regardless of our innate musical talent (or lack of it). With exuberance and humor, he invites us to open ourselves to the story hidden within the music, and in a short 10 minutes, shows us how it’s done. For the non-classically inclined, it can be a revelation, and for our young people, it can be transformative.

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