What was the composer thinking when he or she wrote a given piece? What was going on in their life at the time? What is the historical context surrounding a piece? What was going on politically when a composer was writing? Where in the world was the composer when they were writing, where did they come from and how did all that inform their writing? It turns out that most (although certainly not all) standard classical music (what we call the “classical canon” – think of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin, etc.) was written in Europe by Europeans. In order for me to best understand the music that I play, it made sense for me to learn a European language and spend some time in Europe absorbing as much contextual information as possible.
For this fall, I’m living and studying in Paris. I live with a host family, smack in the middle of the city – as you can probably imagine, big-city life isn’t the most natural thing for me, but I really like it here anyways. My host parents are very sweet, but they only speak French, so I have no choice but to speak French with them which is a very good exercise for me. I am taking six classes this fall, all in French. Two of them are at the Sorbonne, a Parisian University that has existed in one form or another since the year 1257! Some of my classes here are in musicology, French language and French foreign policy. It’s a lot of work to function almost entirely in a new language, but I’ve learned a lot already and I’m excited for the rest of the semester! What’s more, I’ve tried to travel to various places that are particularly important for classical music.
