SO, what exactly is classical music? Well, music without drums, basically. Like a lot of things, it may be hard to define, but you'll know it when you come across it. For example, classical music is what they play in the cabin of aeroplanes when you are coming in to land, to take your mind off the possibility that you will end up as a heap of mangled wreckage at the end of the runway. Thus: Mozart's Divertimento in D K.136 is classical music, while, At My Funeral by the Crash Test Dummies is not.
Hmmm, not sure. OK, let's do this another way: who were the first classical composers?
I suppose the first classical music worthy of the name probably began in the 11th century, with the monks who invented the system of five horizontal lines for writing it down. They were also the first people in history to use the phrase "every good boy deserves football", or, as it was then, "every good Benedictine deserves flagellation."
You fascinate me. Tell me more.
The monks could write down pitches, but not the note lengths, which meant that before the fourteenth century, everything sounded like Morrissey. Until along came a French knowall called Philippe de Vitry, who wrote Ars Nova or The New Arse, a book in which he finally sorted out how everything should be written down.
With you so far, now what about opera?
Opera was just a joke which got out of hand - probably started in a church.
So, two jokes getting out of hand at the same time, then?
Handel wrote a famous type of opera for churches called "oratorios", which comes from the Latin word "ora" meaning "to sing" and "torios" which means "members of the Conservative Party".
Very funny. I thought an opera for a church was called a Passion.
Well, yes and no - a Passion is specifically a setting of the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, and shown on telly over Easter. Not to be confused with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or The Great Escape.
Right, after the church operas, then what?
Well, Mozart, I suppose. OK, I've missed out a few there, but they're all rubbish. One of the big Mozart operas is Don Giovanni, which is basically the story of Casanova and all the women he slept with - apparently, 90 in Turkey; 100 in France; and over 1,600 in the county of Essex in the south east of England.
. . . and full marks to you for managing to crow-bar an Essex Girl joke into a piece on classical music. Wasn't Wagner another big operatic cheese?
Ahhh Wagner! Someone once said "Wagner has some wonderful moments, and some incredibly boring half hours", and that about sums him up. Well, I suppose, apart from being a fully paid-up Nazi before anyone else had even thought of it, Wagner did rather turn the world of opera upside down. His big vision was to fuse all the arts - music, theatre and dance - in a way that Holiday On Ice never could.
The Ring Cycle - that's Wagner too, isn't it?
Yup - well, Wagner's and my washing machine's (boom boom). The Ring is actually a collection of four operas which took him 12 years to write, and takes almost exactly the same time to sing. The story centres on a gold ring and renouncing sex, so it will be familiar to anyone who has ever been married.
So what reasons can you give me to listen to this stuff instead of my Val Doonican albums?
Well, none, basically. One thing I have found, if you like classical music you never have to lend your records to anyone.
You obviously haven't got any Val Doonican albums. Could you just leave me with some sort of thought to take to the Wexford Festival?
Yeah - clap in the wrong places. Let's face it, if they charge you £30 for a ticket you can clap where the bloody hell you like.
As regards the music, think only this of me: operas divide into two groups - comedies and tragedies. As a rule of thumb, when the curtain falls, if most of the cast is left standing, it was probably a comedy; if nobody is left standing, it was probably a tragedy and if the entire cast is left standing singing a reprise of the only good tune in the whole show, you have been watching Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
