Calm

By Fred-Olav Vatne (Translated from Norwegian by Sarah Osa) 

What kind of music instils you with a sense of calm? The answer will doubtless vary greatly from person to person; some feel calm when they listen to classical music, others when they listen to jazz, rap or death metal.

Still, we believe that most people share something of the same experience: the most common defining characteristic is that this type of music is played more slowly. At the same time, the intensity might be turned down a few notches, either by the fact that fewer instruments are used, or by that the music is played more softly or gently. So-called ballads within pop and rock music are common examples of this. Many people listen to this kind of music when they want to relax or calm down.

If you type in “relaxing music for…” into Google, and the most common searches pop up, life’s most stressful elements, which give us the need to calm down, are named: studies, work, births, cats and dogs… If we type in “relaxing classical music for…” a few other key words pop up: overcoming stress, sleep, and babies.

Although many search out classical music in order to find a sense of peace, an important point to note is that classical composers didn’t just write music with the aim of calming their audience. They also wanted to surprise us, provoke, or delight us. This is reflected in our concerts: most of them contain great variation in terms of sound volume and tempo. Nevertheless, we can provide some calming guidelines:

If you prefer to calm down to music which is slow, it’s quite easy to find your way: classical works are often divided into three, four or several parts, which are called movements. Movements are often named after their tempos, and the slow movements are often named Adagio (Italian for slow), Adagietto, or Largo. In the most well-known orchestra works, symphonies or solo concertos, it is usually the second movement which is the slow one.

An even level of volume and intensity is another factor which might determine how calming a piece of music is. It can be impressive when music develops from near-silent to full blast in the course of a single second, but this isn’t particularly calming. Generally, there are more shifts in volume in music written during the 19th century and later than in music from the 18th century and earlier.

With this in mind, it might be an idea to check out the work of some of the best known composers from the 1700’s: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Air is from his Orchestra Suite No. 3, and he wrote the Largo as part of his Concert for Two Violins. Antonio Vivaldi produced the Largo in his violin concerto Winter, and the Largo in his lute concerto in D major. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote the Andante as part of his Piano Concerto No. 21 and the Adagio as part of his clarinet concerto.

This is not to say that a lot of calming music wasn’t written during the 19th century. But the differences within one movement or within one work gradually increased during the course of that century. Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 from 1888 starts with restrained tones which last for several minutes, and ends with a massive orchestral outburst in the final movement.

In the course of the 20th century, the contrasts got even bigger. Some composers completely turned away from traditional melodies and chords, and wrote music which is quite remote from our definition of calm. Others cultivated a muted expression, as seen in the French composer’s Eric Satie’s Gymnopédies. A a more recent example of this is music by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who composed works such as Fratres for strings and percussion and Spiegel im Spiegel. We might discern emotional messages which evoke strong feelings even in restrained, calm music. Calm music does not necessarily lead to a tranquil mind…