I’m going to begin something today which probably won’t work but what the hell.

I love music almost more than life. Nietzsche nailed it: “Without music, life would be a mistake.” The sort of music I most love is what we call “classical,” a misleading descriptor. I suppose Jazz, Country, Folk, Rock, Blues, Gospel, Soul, Funk, Hip-Hop, Ethnic are similarly messy, but in translating any illiterate actuality into language you have to start somewhere. Labels are libels, but without them our vocabulary’s limited to yips, barks, growls and tail-wags, as Henry reminds me.

Classical means the aristocratic music of Europe since the Renaissance. It spread as Europeans spread around the globe, often displacing local musical traditions, for classical music is catchy, not all of it, but enough of it to addict. The relative popularity of musical styles is an impossibly complex subject I won’t mess with. Is classical music superior to jazz, country, folk, rock, blues, gospel, funk? Well, it depends.

Classical was what my family honored, sometimes listened to, that we sang in church. At home we had a Steinway baby grand, which I learned to play. Later I learned to play the church organ. Until age twenty, I intended classical music for my career. Why I switched to words, abandoning musical composition and performance, is another complex subject I won’t mess with. The day I quit may have been the darkest in my life, a sort of suicide. I treat words with the honor due to musical notes, each with its pitch and timbre. Somewhat showily, I claim to be composing these paragraphs, not writing them.

The makers of classical music are among my dearest pals. The ones I listen to are all guys because until the last several decades only guys composed. I revere a few living composers, but the ones I mostly listen to were busy between 1650 and 1950. Each of them has a personality and a particular effect on my consciousness. I have Bach moments, Handel moments, Mahler moments, et cetera. What I’ve long wanted to do, yet despaired of, is to describe these intimacies to someone who doesn’t share my addiction, a grandchild, say. Who are these dudes Capn worships like gods? Why can’t he live without them? Why is he allergic to some and not others? Why if he’s famished for Bach does Offenbach assail him, but not vice versa. (You can’t have too often Bach.)

Words aren’t up to this job, but they’re all I’ve got. Words grope to discover what T.S. Eliot called an “objective correlative” for the emotion they depict. I pity music critics – a shrinking crew, alas – having to describe what a musical experience was like. Inevitably one tumbles into a hot tub of exhausted adjectives – sweet, sad, harsh, triumphant, angry, and so on – which through imprecision and overuse have lost all their umpf. If anyone tells me again the famous first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are “defiant,” they should prepare for a quick getaway to evade my wrath.

So how do I explain my passion for Bach?

When I was writing my (most excellent) book about visiting our Presidents and Vice-Presidents, I developed a descriptive strategy. These forbears were too numerous to characterize in depth in what was intended as a breezy jaunt. Instead, I pretended they were due for dinner in a few minutes and I had to explain to my wife whom to expect. The clock was ticking, I couldn’t dawdle; in no time now, Lincoln (or Herr Bach) would be strolling through that door. Why the goosebumps?