The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: What music do you listen to when you are sick – if any?
2 Comments
By Jacob Stockinger
About a week ago, The Ear asked how the terrible flu that is going around has affected the classical music scene for both players and audiences.
Since then, the flu has only gotten worse and it still shows no sign of peaking. More deaths of children and the elderly have been reported.
And now hospitals and emergency rooms are reaching capacity or exceeding it. They are getting understaffed as doctors, nurses and others also come down with the flu and can’t work.
But it got The Ear to thinking:
When you get sick, do you listen to music?
Does it make you feel any better?
Or distract you?
What kind of music — if any – do you prefer to listen when you are sick: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern or Contemporary?
And why do you like it?
Are there specific composers or pieces you turn to when you are sick?
The Ear often listens to Baroque music for the reason he listens to it in the morning: It is upbeat and generally seems to impart energy without taxing your attention span too much.
In fact, he particularly partial to violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi and the keyboard concertos (below) of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Mahler and Bruckner symphonies or Shostakovich string quartets are just too overwhelming and dark to be salutary. But that is just one person’s opinion.
So given how many people are suffering with the flu or other sickness these days, what advice and illness and listening to music would you give?
Leave a recommendation in the COMMENT section – with a link to a YouTube performance, if possible.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: #AntonBruckner, #AntonioVivaldi, #DmitriShostakovich, #EmergencyRoom, #ER, #GustavMahler, Arts, Bach, Baroque, Beethoven, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, Classical, Classical music, composer, concerto, contemporary, dark, death, doctor, Early music, energy, flu, Franz Schubert, George Frideric Handel, Hospital, illness, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Keyboard, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Mahler, modern, Mozart, Music, nurse, opera, Orchestra, overwhelming, Piano, piece, Romantic, Shostakovich, sick, staff\, String quartet, suffering, symphony, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, upbeat, Viola, Violin, Vivaldi, Vlassical, vocal music, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, work, YouTube
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