Richard Morrison

What’s so wrong with listening to classical music simply to ‘relax’?

Music’s power to relax shouldn’t be dismissed

Laid low by flu, or a ‘mild cold’ as my family call it, I took to my bed and re-read (the way one does) one of the great mission statements of musical history. It was Benjamin Britten’s 1964 speech ‘On winning the first Aspen Award’, in which he brilliantly articulates his belief that a composer’s first duty is to be useful to his or her community.

That’s controversial enough. Pierre Boulez certainly wouldn’t have agreed. He once told me that composers who try to appeal to audiences were ‘like whores’. But another passage in Britten’s speech is even more provocative. ‘Music,’ he declared, ‘demands more from a listener than simply the possession of a tape-machine or a transistor radio. It demands some preparation, some effort, a journey to a special place, saving up for a ticket, some homework on the programme perhaps… It demands as much effort on the listener’s part as the other two corners of the triangle, this holy triangle of composer, performer and listener.’

You can imagine how guilty that made me feel – lying on my sickbed, with Schubert wafting from the radio. I certainly hadn’t done any ‘preparation’ to hear it, let alone made a ‘journey to a special place’. And although aware of the music, I wasn’t really listening. The radio was on because I found it comforting. Is that so wrong?

That got me thinking, especially about the differences between the three elements of that ‘holy triangle’ – composer, performer and listener. The first too are clearly active participants in the musical process. But Britten seems to be arguing that the third should be, too: that listeners should prepare themselves rigorously for their encounter with music, and give it their complete attention.

Should we? People turn to, and turn on, music for many reasons. One may well be to challenge themselves intellectually, by following the slowly unfolding logic of a Bruckner symphony, for instance, or trying to fathom a young composer’s latest work. But I would guess that this approach is a rare among ordinary music-lovers. I know plenty of people who go to concerts because the music somehow frees their minds to think clearly about their lives. Many others use music to make menial chores more tolerable. And a lot of people use music as I did on my sickbed – to soothe them when they aren’t feeling great.

There’s a tendency to sneer at such ‘uncommitted’ listening, especially among professionals who dedicate their lives to mastering musical expression (Britten was the ultimate exemplar of that). And it’s true that few things in life are more irritating than those radio stations where the presenters are constantly telling their listeners to ‘relax’, as though listening to The Lark Ascending is akin to a visiting a Thai massage parlour.

Yet the more we learn about music’s remarkable effects on the mind – particularly in the case of Alzheimer’s sufferers and those with brain injuries – the clearer it becomes that music can sometimes have a powerful subliminal impact on your well-being. In other words, hearing something half-consciously, even subconsciously, can trigger all sorts of positive feelings, perhaps without us even realising where they come from.

There’s another aspect to listening to music for relaxation that irritates the professionals. It’s that people usually feel most relaxed when the music is something they already know. And it’s true that this can lead to a comparatively small repertoire of much-loved classics being constantly replayed. But I understand that, too. The world is an uncertain and insecure place, especially right now. People are worried about their futures. So hearing familiar music is comforting. You know how it goes, and how it will end. No nasty shocks.

And it’s therapeutic at an unfathomably deep level. The day after I got ‘flu’, my toddler succumbed to something similar and I stumbled to the chemist for junior cough medicine. As I waited at the counter, I found myself humming, out of the blue, the Trout Quintet. ‘Now why on earth…’, I started to think. Then it hit me. It was the Schubert piece playing on the radio the day before, as I lay in bed feeling very ill. Something in the dark, weird recesses of my brain had prompted me to reach subconsciously for the same piece to help cure my daughter. How the mind processes music is indeed a wonderful and mysterious business.

Or so I thought at the time. But then, I did have flu.

The radio was on because I found it comforting… but I wasn’t really listening