high schoolers and I would like to start
off with a question that is probably
often on many of your minds have you
ever liked someone yeah yeah so I may
not be up here to talk about my
telepathic abilities but I do know that
each and every one of you should be
responding yes to that question right
now and speaking of my telepathic
abilities I also know that most of you
have never sat down and actually
listening is different than hearing and
to quote composer Igor Stravinsky to
listen is an effort and just to hear is
no merit and then he goes on talking
about ducks or something like that he
was an incredibly odd man but going off
of this original thought in order to
truly appreciate this wonderful form of
art we have to learn to listen this can
be achieved in two main ways one way
which will take you decades before you
make any progress at all in another way
which you can begin to master today I am
going to focus on teaching you to learn
to listen the several decades long way
involves sitting and hearing classical
music every day of your life until one
day you have an epiphany and come to
realize that you could have understood
what that music was all about had you
actually listened in the first place so
going back to this original thought I
want you to picture this person of
significance in your mind think about
their eyes their smile their laugh their
voice anything about this person that
really stuck with you close your eyes if
you would like and listen to this piece
of music entitled salut d’amour by
Edward Elgar
[Music]
what I have seen is truly amazing I see
a group a large audience of people
mostly high schoolers all sitting
listening and really understanding
classical music and that is pretty
amazing so this piece of music is called
salut d’amour as I said by Edward Elgar
the title means greeting of love in
French and it was written in 1888 by
Elle GARP as an engagement gift for his
fiancee so pretty romantic this piece of
music was written for violin piano with
the melodic line in the violin it is
undeniably gorgeous and is very very
easy for us as listeners to follow Elgar
was a pioneer of a genre of music we
call light classical music which was
produced mostly by English composers of
the late 19th centuries and into the
20th centuries light classical music is
the instrumental equivalent to what we
know is easy listening music with the
melodies being clearly defined and
somewhat repetitive so these pieces are
generally short we heard an excerpt of
this piece but it’s about three minutes
long in total so these pieces are
generally short but despite this they
are tend they tend to be packed full of
emotion and are very very good for
beginner classical music aficionados
knowing this being able to listen is an
incredibly important skill to have light
classical music like this is full of
emotion as we know and it helps us to
know that we are not alone in everything
that we feel because we know that we are
not alone in what we are feeling so
knowing this it might be clear to you
now that you wouldn’t even have to be
thinking of a romantic interest in order
to feel all the Elgar intended that we
feel potential maybe somebody close to
you has passed away and you hear this
piece of music as an homage to them so
however you choose to interpret this
piece as a lament a declaration of love
or even something else what’s really
important is that you were truly
listening to this music and had a way
that you could connect to it so right
that right there is the key of learning
to listen being able to find an idea or
a story in a piece of music and then
connecting it to an event or an emotion
in your own life is what makes classical
music and all music for that matter so
incredibly powerful and I don’t think
that this thought should be restricted
to classical music in today’s society it
is so we often so hold so close to our
beliefs that we fail to listen to others
we are so conditioned to see
our opinions is correct and all of those
is wrong that we forget the diversity of
ideas is what keeps our world
interesting if I am NOT able to force
you to agree with the ideas of everyone
else and even if I could what kind of
world would that lead to everyone would
be agreeing with everyone else and no
important decisions could ever be made
what I can ask you to do however is to
listen thank you [Applause]