Tradition is Laziness! is a history book concerned with the future of classical music. In its traditional guise, classical music can appear to be something fixed and staid – and of ageing, dwindling audiences. But what its history shows us is a process both fluid and vibrant, which might inspire and encourage those invested in classical music’s ongoing health. Simon Ravens offers countless historical examples of the radically varied ways in which classical music has been made and received. From inspiration, through preparation, to performance and reception, the author traces each stage in the musical process. Drawing on material from every period and of every kind, he shows how our received traditions of music-making are rigid in a way which would mystify composers, performers and listeners of the past.
‘Challenging and entertaining… The historical knowledge Simon presents is as wide-ranging as it is fascinating. Doubtless some of this will be new to you, as it is to me. But even when the subject under discussion is music I know well, I’m being encouraged to think of it in a different way.’ Andrew Parrott
‘If I teach you something as fact, it’s your duty as students to try and prove that I am wrong’. I hung on to one sentence of David Wulstan’s inaugural lecture to students when he came to Aberystwyth as new chair of the music department, and it has become more meaningful to me over time. Back then, emanating from his mind to ours, it was a wrestling invitation from a lion to cubs. Sure, in my last year at Aberystwyth when I was proof-reading and indexing his forthcoming book Tudor Music, I did query a some of his theories about pitch and the counter-tenor voice, but my tentative pawings were swatted away. My doubts remained, though. Although parts of his argument made sense, as a whole it didn’t quite add up. The counter-argument, led by Andrew Parrott, seemed more plausible but, like Wulstan’s, could only be made to work with extraordinary voices. My eureka moment was hearing a random radio article about Welsh male voice choirs dying out for lack of tenors: the reason was that men were getting taller, and on average shorter men had higher voices. I contacted the laryngologist whose research lay behind this item, and began to piece together his work with the evidence that Tudor men had been considerably shorter than modern men. The result of this was ‘A sweet shrill voice’, which I wrote for the journal Early Music in 1998. That piece was specifically about voices in Tudor England, but I was aware that the ramifications of the relationship between human height and vocal pitch were much wider. Following these threads led me to writing The Supernatural Voice – a history of high male singing, which was published in 2014.