Beethoven’s 9th explained in Ben Levy’s YouTube series Classics Explained

MOST people I know in the business would probably accept that classical music has an image problem. And to make that admission is not to say it’s elitist, because it isn’t – beyond the fact that those who perform it at a high level are (like top-end footballers, tennis players, or the stars of rock and pop) elite.

Classical audiences are as wide-ranging as people on a tube train. And you can experience a concert at the Barbican or an opera at Covent Garden for a lot less than a match at Arsenal or an evening with Taylor Swift. So that’s not the problem.

The problem is that it’s perceived as “difficult”, demanding, needing prior knowledge – which to some extent is true. But you could say the same of cooking and computers. And if people these days know less about Grieg than Google, it’s because they’re not taught it at school – unless they’re lucky enough to be educated in the private system where different standards apply. For the rest of us, it’s largely off the curriculum. And though Keir Starmer is promising to change that, it remains to be seen if he does.

Casting around for other solutions, an obvious one is adult education; and there are organisations out there working their socks off to find new markets for Mozart – with almost every orchestra, opera company and concert venue in existence running outreach projects that open doors and ears to the miracle of music.

But perhaps the biggest opportunity is online. And among the newer YouTube channels is something called Classics Explained, the brain-child of a Hampstead barrister, Ben Levy, and now pulling one of the biggest viewing audiences of any classical site, with over 4.5 million views to date.

Ben Levy

Levy does the Explaining himself, but not in anything like the manner of a straight-laced, face-to-camera lecture. It’s all done with animated cartoons that tell a story about a particular piece of music – like Ravel’s Bolero, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, or Beethoven’s 9th – in what he calls “wryly irreverent” terms. Which is to say, there’s no academic jargon, just fun facts hung on what’s essentially a human-interest narrative.

Each one plays for 10 to 15 minutes. And the level of address is somewhere between Horrible Histories and the jokey cartoon paperbacks about elevated subjects that Icon Books used to publish as Post-Modernism/Marx/Freud (or whatever) for Beginners – in which I should declare personal interest because I wrote the one on Wagner.

Although Levy writes his own scripts and supplies the voices, production companies in New Zealand and Malaysia do the visuals. And with 21 episodes now in the can, the project has been running since 2017 when he first came up with the idea.

“It started not too seriously”, he says. “I’d studied law at university but changed direction and was working as a curator of theatre and performance at the V&A. One of the other curators told me he didn’t know much about opera and wanted to know more, but reading books didn’t answer the questions he wanted to ask, like Why does this music matter?, How did it come about?, and What made it revolutionary at the time?

“That got me thinking, playing around with story-telling possibilities – which I was in a good position to do because my job at the V&A had taught me how to talk to the public about art”.

During the next five years he only made four videos – each one takes three to four months to put together – but the output then surged as online interest grew. And meanwhile, his day job changed direction, back to the law where he now practices at the Bar.

He calls Classics Explained an “antidote” to his legal career – which nonetheless comes in useful when the videos run into a spot of bother, as they’ve just done with the amount of recorded music permissible to use as examples under the “Fair Use” exemption to copyright rules. “There was initially no problem”, Levy says, “but now the videos have taken off and there’s money coming in, it’s a changed situation – which we’re dealing with”.

Bizet’s Carmen explained

As for the money, its arrival is as well, because each video costs around £20K to produce. The funding comes from YouTube advertisers – there’s no charge for viewing – as well as donations, sponsors, and spin-off merchandise. Levy will sell you Elgar and Debussy coffee mugs, and Carl Orff T-shirts. Taste be damned.

On that note, Levy does get complaints that his sometimes risqué irreverence is either doing a disservice to the great composers or unfit for children. To which he replies “these videos aren’t meant for children. I target them at young adults, in the 18-early 30s age range, so when people tell me I shouldn’t be showing Rachmaninov taking to drink and depression, I say that’s the story, it’s how it was.

“Of course, I also get complaints about the way I simplify the stories, but there’s actually a parallel between what I’m doing here and what I do as a barrister. Lawyers are always trying to translate complex ideas into something where someone says OK, I understand, I’m on board. And so it is with the videos, which are no more than a point of entry to the subject. The jokes, the cartoons are there to draw people in. Then they can go off and find out more”.

For anybody open to the possibility of being drawn in, access to the site is easy: just google Classics Explained. There’s no sign-up. And once you’ve discovered why Rachmaninov was depressed – or what really happened at the infamous premiere of the Rite of Spring, what makes Bolero an outrageous musical experiment, or how Vivaldi’s Four Seasons made the weather something you can listen to – who knows? It could be habit-forming. And it might just change your life.

• https://classicsexplained.com/