Many thanks to readers who accepted my invitation to attend Sunday’s recital at the Fricke Collection in New York.

Classical pianist Rustem Hayroudinoff, a good friend and Chandos recording artist, dazzled us with a program of preludes and fugues by Chopin, Shostakovich, Franck and Rachmaninoff. 

The audience was clearly moved by the power of his performance, jumping to their feet at the end, many shaking their heads in disbelief. Over dinner afterwards, I told Rustem I’d never heard him sound better.

The next day, however, I received an e-mail from a friend who insisted the music left him befuddled. Classical music is only mildly interesting, he wrote. It has “no theme, just rambling in an unpredictable way.”

He couldn’t be more mistaken. Yet there are countless others who share his view - and have little or no taste for great music.

Just look at industry figures. Classical music makes up less than 3% of CD sales. Radio and television programming are off sharply in recent years. Ticket sales are down. At least 17 orchestras have closed in the last 20 years.

But it’s too early to sing a requiem…

Today we have a breadth and ease of access to classical music far greater than what our parents had, let alone earlier generations. (Bear in mind, music wasn’t recorded until about one hundred years ago, or even accurately notated until a few hundred years before that.)

Yet many remain uninterested. Why?

Some will lay the blame on the disappearance of music education from public schools. Others will point to the increasing vulgarization of popular taste.

But millions are still drawn to this music. The immortal works of history’s greatest composers are among humanity’s crowning achievements, transcending geographical boundaries, language barriers, and differences of politics and religion.

Music is both intelligible and untranslatable, the most abstract and sublime of all the arts. Schopenhauer felt music expresses “the quintessence of life,” passion, love and longing. English essayist and scholar Walter Pater declared that all art aspires to the condition of music. Without music, Nietzsche concluded, life would be a mistake.

Music is the universal language of emotion, bypassing the intellect and tugging directly at the heart. Making music is one of the fundamental activities of mankind, as characteristically human as language or drawing. It has existed everywhere in all cultures. (Even Paleolithic cave paintings depict people singing and playing music.)

Music goes further than pictures, deeper than words. It can move us, lift our spirits, change our mood, and get us dancing.

Our auditory systems, our nervous systems, are exquisitely tuned for music. Even listeners who can’t read musical notation and who have never attempted to learn an instrument are deeply affected by it.

Yet classical music confounds many. Raised on the verse-chorus-verse simplicity of pop music, they aren’t sure what to think… or feel.

Fortunately, appreciating classical music is a skill that can be cultivated. By learning something about composition, we can more thoroughly understand and enjoy great music. All it requires is your attention, some imagination and a bit of abstract thinking.

Two good starting points are Aaron Copland’s What to Listen For in Music and The Teaching Company’s excellent course - available on CD or DVD - “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music.”

Some, of course, will insist they have no time for this music. They are so busy getting and spending - so caught up in the pursuit of conventional success - that fine art and great music are completely absent in their lives.

That’s unfortunate, because a higher standard of living doesn’t necessarily make life more worth living. And classical music can provide a temporary escape from the stress and frustrations of everyday life.

Competition and today’s recording technologies allow us to own and enjoy - at minimal cost - the finest works of history’s best composers.

And we should. Scientists tell us this music affects our brain chemistry. There is a power and magic here that shames self-absorption and makes personal pre-occupations look petty. Much of the music of Haydn, Mozart and Vivaldi, for example, can dispel irritation, banish a mood of depression and deepen your appreciation of life.

Recognizing this doesn’t make you a music snob, incidentally. I grew up listening to rock and pop music. I still enjoy it.

But I disagree with the notion that popular music is on par with classical, that it’s all just a matter of personal preference. Embedded in that mindset is hostility to the idea that discriminating judgments can be made in art, that hierarchies of value exist, or, indeed, that there is such a thing as objective truth.

I remember the time I told my college music professor that I didn’t think the music of Schumann was all that great. He peered over his glasses a few seconds and then replied, “That says more about you, Mr. Green, than it does about Schumann.”

By the time I pulled the arrow out of my forehead, I’d reached an epiphany of sorts. Popular music is a like a hamburger and fries (and sometimes that’s just what you want). The great masterworks, on the other hand, are linguine and white clam sauce with parsley, black pepper, crushed oregano, and finely minced garlic with a smattering of Parmesan cheese.

You may not have developed a taste for it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not objectively better.

In sum, encounters with the great musical minds allow us to experience transcendent beauty. They also allow us to live lives that are less circumscribed, less trivial, more imbued with meaning.

As the poet Joseph Addison put it, music is “the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heav’n we have below.”

Carpe Diem,

Alex