So, Hear Me Out: Can classical music make you happier?
How are some composers seemingly able to capture pure joy in sound?
In this sixth episode of So, Hear Me Out hosts Gillian Moore and Linton Stephens explore the happiness that classical music can bring, both to listeners and to those who play it.
They begin with Felix Mendelssohn, a teenage prodigy whose music bursts with energy, elegance, and invention. Stephens unpacks Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat with its irresistible forward motion, fairy-light textures, and sunny harmonies, and reflects on how the composer’s gift for melody is still able to put the listener into a good mood almost two centuries later. Our hosts also consider Mendelssohn’s influence on later composers, with a nod to Mozart’s own early masterpieces, and to our former Meltdown curator, Nile Rodgers.
Moore meanwhile introduces Francesca Caccini: singer, composer, and the highest-paid musician of the Italian Baroque court. Caccini’s Chaconne is a celebration in rhythm and repetition that demonstrates how joy can be woven into a piece’s very structure. We hear how her music would have sounded in its original setting, and how its warmth and vitality still speak across the centuries.
Listen now to an episode that proves joy in music is timeless, borderless, and endlessly renewable.
‘Francesca Caccini was very specific about what she wanted; one characteristic that is very present in her music is that there’s a lot of melisma. She wrote melodies that would go very tightly with the words singers were singing, and so when she wrote music it was full of purpose and intent of exactly what she wanted.’
Linton Stephens
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