The intellectual side of music can be intimidating, even overwhelming. There is always so much to discover in music! Yet, in this twenty minute TED talk, Michael Tilson Thomas (who was a student of Ingolf Dahl, featured at our last concert) gives a great sum-up of music history, guiding us through the tension between instinct and intellect, ever present in music in the forms of improvisation and composition.

Watching this Michael Tilson Thomas TED talk below is a great way to spend twenty minutes.

Sum up of the TED talk:

0:00 – Introduction: Improvisation and understanding in music; the What? and How? of music, inexhaustible in classical music; musicianship requires neither reading nor a good ear.

2:56 – Music is an unbroken living tradition, and classical music is a language, telling us what it is to be alive.

4:51 – Music as phenomenon. The way we react to the phenomenon has changed over the centuries. Examples on how listeners’ expectations in the 11th century, 17th century and 21st century changed.

6:23 – Music as inheritance. We get this historical perspective thanks to musical notation. A brief history of musical notation.

8:20 – Classical music became this movement between Instinct and intelligence. between improvisation and composition.

9:20 – Through the history of music notation, we see different priorities of the What and How over centuries. In the middle ages, the priority was Praising God through the Music of the Spheres: polyphony.

10:50 – By the 1600s, something new: opera changed music. Human emotions become the priority (the What) How: harmony.

13:00 – Classical era: Emotions can be expressed beyond words. New forms. Age of the virtuoso.

14:36 – Romantic era: the symphony takes on more complex ideas like nationalism,

15:30 – 1880: new technology, recording music made music more available. Now the music no longer stops when musicians stop. The Why? of music is also less tangible.

16:30 – Technology has heavily shifted the balance towards improvisation, away from notation. More instinct, less intellect.

18:00 – Yet classical music has not lost that ability to meet people where they are…

Thanks for reading, Hervé