Elaine Fine began writing about music in the late 1980s, shortly after she got a job as a classical music director at a college radio station. "I started writing articles and reviews of recordings for music magazines, and then the internet made it possible for me to write anything I wanted to about music (or anything else) on my Musical Assumptions blog, and share it with like-minded and interested people." Fine has been sharing ideas and music freely in the musical blogosphere for almost two decades!
"Like many people who consider music their vocation, I came of musical age when I was a teenager," she goes on. "I grew up in a musical family where I had access to a great many books about music and was able to attend as many concerts as could fit into my days and nights. Talking about music and thinking about music came naturally to me. Practicing and performing also came naturally, but writing about music did not.
"I spent my college years at Juilliard during the 1970s, where academic expectations were very low," she adds. "I learned the mechanics of writing as an adult after I married a college English professor. I am grateful to him for showing me how to improve as a writer."
We asked Elaine Fine what she thinks about people assuming that classical music is a rich person's hobby. "This fallacy might come from the centuries-old practice of rich elite people hiring musicians to write and perform for them," Fine suggests. However, the reality couldn't be more different.
"Most fully employed performing musicians are and have been working-class people who struggle to be able to afford and maintain their instruments," she explains. "What we now call 'classical music' was once music that was enjoyed by everyone. Opera was popular music during the 18th and 19th centuries all over Europe."
"In the twentieth century, new forms of popular music drew audiences through recordings and radio," Fine goes on to explain the "roots" of what we call 'classical music.' "At the same time, atonal music entered into and dominated much of the academic musical world and concert halls. Many people preferred listening to the more melodic popular music that was being written and performed and stopped going to classical concerts."
"21st-century music is, so far, more welcoming to listeners, and musical organizations work extremely hard to make audiences feel welcome and comfortable. The modern classical music world is anything but elitist," Fine concludes. "And classical music concerts are far more affordable than concerts by popular artists."
Since this is, after all, a list of funny music posts, we asked Elaine to share some humor from the classical music world. "Musicians are notorious for making puns," she told us. "One of my favorite punny musical stories is about a composition lesson that the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) had with the equally British composer Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). Stanford spilled his cup of tea on his student's music and said, 'My dear, your music is now in the key of T.'"
We probably know why we like music, but what exactly happens to our nervous system when we listen to (or are making) it? Well, it gets our blood flowing to our limbic system, which processes emotions and controls our memory. When our ears perceive music, the limbic system "lights up."
Dopamine then triggers the sensations of pleasure and well-being. Interestingly, we don't even need to be able to recognize the rhythm and melody of a song. Studies of people who have suffered brain damage show that people can recognize the emotion conveyed by a piece of music without distinguishing its melody.
Have you ever wondered why women listen to music while they're in labor? And why do some family members choose to say goodbye to their loved ones while music plays in the background? It's because music has some pain-relieving qualities. It's not a pain killer, of course, but it's a good distraction.
Interestingly, we don't even need to be able to recognize the rhythm and melody of a song. Studies of people who have suffered brain damage show that people can recognize the emotion conveyed by a piece of music without distinguishing its melody.
However, not all people can enjoy the wonders of music. Musical anhedonia is a condition where people feel apathy to music; they're simply not moved by it at all. Only roughly 3-5% of the population has it, but there's nothing inherently wrong with them. Their auditory and reward regions don't "light up" in response to hearing or making music.
