“Bach and his Christmas Oratorio are among the most intelligent music we have, but it speaks to the emotions and to the whole person,” he says.

Sødal is a musician and researcher at the University of Agder (UiA) and the Opera Academy at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

In his new book Understanding and Experiencing Classical Music, he presents a personal introduction to the secrets of classical music.

The meaning of music

Across nine chapters, he describes different perspectives on classical music. In one chapter he offers a sweep through music history, and in another he explores music and emotions.

Music and meaning also get their own chapter, as does the performer who interprets the music.

Interpreting the music is something Sødal has done himself as a soloist at the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet. He writes in the book that he is impressed by today’s young musicians: they are skilled and perform at a high technical level. But technique alone is not enough, he believes.

“A performer must have a personal interpretation that makes the music come alive on a level beyond the purely technical,” Sødal says.

He has the same message for those of us who simply listen to music: we must learn something about the eras and traditions of classical music, but then we must surrender to what we hear.

“Listen with your whole self. Allow yourself to be addressed. Let the music speak to you. We like to believe that art connects us with something greater than ourselves. Something that goes beyond reason and the spirit of the age, something beyond trends and the present day, something that reaches us on a deeper level and enriches us,” he says.

Listen actively

Sødal wants us to read the book with a record player or streaming service close at hand. Each chapter ends with extensive listening suggestions featuring Arvo Pärt, Mozart, Beethoven or other classical composers.

He hesitates to instruct us on how to understand music. But now that he has written this book, he really has no choice.

“The book is written both for professionals and for those who have a general interest in classical music. It applies to all art that the experience becomes richer the more you understand of the field,” he says.

“You can read Jon Fosse without a master’s degree in literature, but you get more out of it the more you know about literature. The same applies to Bach. If you know something about Bach and his time and attitude to music, you can experience more layers in the music,” he says.

With this new book, he wants to give us some tools to unlock art music. And since we are now talking about Bach, it is because we ask what we should listen for in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

“Bach is one of the three greats – Bach, Mozart and Beethoven – and perhaps the greatest of them. If anyone surpasses him, it is Mozart,” Sødal says, before highlighting a few fundamental things we should know about Bach:

He was deeply Christian and wrote music for the church. The Christmas Oratorio is about the birth of Jesus and the mystery of the Nativity. The music is filled with the joy that arises when something new breaks forth but also contains familiar, down-to-earth feelings such as doubt, vulnerability and wonder.

“Bach was also known for his interest in numbers and mathematical perfection. The ordered form is for him an image of God’s order,” Sødal says.

But even Bach’s perfection is something to give oneself over to.

“In Bach you can hear how the soloist is in dialogue with the choir and orchestra. The musicians speak to each other through singing, notes, colours. They almost argue with one another, and from this a new theme, new melodic lines grow. You can hear this if you listen for it in the Christmas Oratorio,” he says.

Bach composed during the Baroque era, a period from around 1600–1750, characterised by dramatic and overwhelming music that appeals to the emotions and is meant to persuade the listener.

I have now encouraged Sødal to speak at length about Bach and his Christmas Oratorio, which some of us may be planning to listen to during the Christmas season.

But for Sødal it was another of the three greats who gave him his own musical awakening.

He writes about this awakening in a brief autobiographical sketch early in the book, and I won’t repeat it here, except to mention that he was 11 years old and struck by Beethoven – the Fifth Symphony, the fate motif – ba-ba-ba-baaah, ba-ba-ba-baaah.

The musician hopes to strike readers with similar moments – when the music, the meaning and the emotion suddenly take hold of us.

Reference:
Nils Harald Sødal: Understanding and Experiencing Classical Music, 2025