Classical music in the age of interruption
The ever greater diffusion of social networks and smartphones is profoundly changing our habits and, according to recent research, also our brain.
The everyday life of western man, perpetually connected to the internet on cell phones, tablets and computers, is being transformed into what a recent study of the University of Southern California has defined “the age of interruption”: that is, a way of living and interacting based precisely on the impossibility (and, consequently, the inability) to pursue a single action, since we are accustomed to interrupting it with others.
The ability to concentrate and keep our attention focused on a single source is thus becoming increasingly rarer and, if you like, also unfashionable. However, according to Paolo Legrenzi, it is those few people who are able to maintain their concentration that will know how to change the world.
Today, a classical music concert is one of the very few occasions when we can afford ourselves the luxury (or, depending on our point of view, the obligation) to turn off our cell phones, disconnect ourselves from social networks, and focus our attention on one single message: music. And the message is not only single, that is it comes from a single listening source (the stage), not amplified or reproduced by other loudspeakers; but, above all, the message is complex and extends over a period of time, during which the listener's attention cannot be interrupted. You can read a book a bit at a time, you can take breaks while watching a film, but you can't listen to a live performance of a Beethoven symphony and put the orchestra on pause.
This is why, today more than ever, listening to live music, and complex music in particular, that is to say music that demands an effort of concentration and attention extending over a determined space of time, is a prime opportunity to reappropriate our critical thought, to let our mind and heart breathe. In other words, to live better.
Roberto Prosseda
