A random essay

on something I love

Hi everyone,

I hope your days are as sunny as London is right now.

To be perfectly honest, I’m having a rough time at the moment and I don’t really want to blog about it here just yet, but I’m realising it's the end of the month (30 days hath September etc…) so I better write something before the day is through!

So, here are some thoughts on a random subject I’ve been thinking about a lot: Why I love classical music.

I really genuinely love classical music. It’s true!

I worry that classical music is becoming some sort of alt-right “western values” freak thing, but I have a lot of feelings about why I think it’s so brilliant, and why I love to go listen to it live.

It’s easy to say I love the music. That’s true, of course, but then I could be saying I love Beyoncé in this essay, which is true too.

When I say I love classical music, what I really mean is I love that it is something so beautiful that we as people have worked tirelessly to preserve it.

Now with the internet we don’t think so much about the work it goes into keeping something whole, but I love that when I go to a concert to listen to Mozart or Beethoven or Vivaldi, that means that throughout two world wars, countless epidemics, political economic and social fallouts, some people cared enough to keep practicing this music simply because it is beautiful.

I love knowing there is a community out there of people who see that by preserving art we are preserving humanity.

It seems to me like one of life’s purely selfless acts. Performing can be selfish, buying great tickets can be selfish, but keeping something whole is entirely for others. It means a lot.

Finding beauty in classical music also makes me feel more connected to other generations than anything else. It sounds beyond cheesy, I know, but isn’t it amazing how a piece that moved some random person in a concert hall to tears 100 years ago can do the same for me, another total rando, 100 years later?

Every other aspect of our experience going to and coming from our concerts is different 100 years apart.

In 2025, I have to be reminded to turn my phone off. In 2025 I, a woman, can buy my own tickets with my own money. In 2025, I’m stressed about the rise of fascism and markets crashing…ok well maybe we have that in common too. But despite a century of (relative) difference and experience, the music itself has the capacity to make us feel, for a blink in time, the exact same sensation.

I think that’s kind of magical.

Anyway, that’s all for this month.

Will write again soon.

much love

xoxoxo

Sophie