Not long ago, I read The Search for Meaning by Professor Wang Defeng. One chapter asks why we should listen to classical music. Its answer, in essence, is that classical music offers no information, makes no argument, and needs no words. It speaks directly to the emotions of human life.
So yesterday, as I drove, I put on some classical music and waited for it to cultivate my soul. I wanted to experience its power. Unfortunately, after more than two hours, it had not proved nearly as powerful as I had imagined. A friend riding with me finally asked, “Why have you been playing this kind of music ever since I got in the car?” My inability to understand classical music does not mean there is anything wrong with classical music. It can only mean that I am a common soul, deaf to lofty melodies. Perhaps I understood nothing and was merely indulging in a little self-flattery.
What is music? To me, it is a way for people to express themselves, much like writing a book. Through art, we preserve an emotion inside a work and then use that work to move someone else. The first purpose of creation is to satisfy the artist’s need to create. The second is to affect others.
Classical music has melody but no lyrics. Listening to it feels like trying to perceive the world through the heart alone. But the world asks to be experienced in more than one way. Feeling by itself is not enough for me; I also need words to draw those feelings out and release them more fully. Another reason modern pop music became popular is that its lyrics can be so good. Much of pop may rely on interchangeable melodies, but take the lyrics on their own and they can be deeply poetic. A poetic sentence can open onto countless associations that instrumental music cannot express.
Art belongs to everyone, which means it belongs to no one person. No individual, then, has the authority to impose a definitive score or rank upon it. There is good art and better art, not worthy art and worthless art. Art is subjective, much like philosophy. If we must judge it at all, the only question that matters is whether it can bring something worthwhile into another person’s life.
There should be no hierarchy of listeners. Someone who listens to classical music is not necessarily nobler, more sensitive, or wiser than someone who does not. If a piece of music gives voice to a person’s emotions and resonates with them, then it is the right music for that person. I have a profound dislike for those who take pride in listening to classical music while looking down on modern music, or even on the pop songs that spread across the internet. Music is an expression of emotion. Emotions have no rank, and neither do the ways in which we experience them.
True arrogance is the belief that our own choices are always right and everyone else’s are always wrong. What is an internet troll? Someone with little ability and endless contempt for other people and the things they value. People of genuine learning are humble. However capable they may be, they do not casually look down on others. The more they know, the more clearly they see the limits of their knowledge. They also remember that most people are simply beginning from a place they themselves once occupied. And so they look down on no one; they are only made more aware of their own smallness. The arrogant make poor friends. The humble make good ones.
Listen to the music you want to hear. Read the books you want to read. Live the life you want to live—as long as your choices are good for you and good for the society around you.
Zhengyang Yao
Beijing, August 10, 2026