Is Einaudi’s music actually good?

The full piece I wrote 'in the style of Einaudi' is on my 2nd channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqptnCF8WwE score available on my patreon www.patreon.com/davidbruce

"It starts off like a Lewis Capaldi song, but then Lewis Capaldi never starts singing" He literally plays a Lewis Capaldi karaoke track to prove his point. I'm vicariously wincing in pain. Brutal.

“I’m not gonna say I hate you, but something about you triggers all sorts of sensations in me that just make me want to avoid you”, I’m now using this masterpiece of a sentence as an insult. Thank you.

He’s just ambient. It’s nice to listen to when anxious, stressed, or doing something else. His music isn’t meant to be focused and analyzed while listening. It makes me happy and feels bright and hopeful. I’m only familiar with his piano music. It reminds me of a soundtrack to a movie. I think that’s how it’s intended, to be a soundtrack to whatever you’re doing.

I'm surprised the word "ambient" was never mentioned in the video. Additionally, the simpler the music, the more accessible it becomes to a broader audience. Which leads me to the conclusion that Einaudi's music is classical-pop-ambient

Some linguistic fun: Einaudi the name is spelt like "ei naudi" in Estonian, which means "don't enjoy".

It is great to stretch yourself like this into a genre/composer/style that is outside of your main interest. Allowing yourself to look for what others appreciate is an act of musical empathy and is something many of us need to do more frequently. I can’t wait to show this to my students

I was pondering whether Einaudi is actually a "Classical" composer or is simply a "Pop" composer who writes for solo piano. I think the complexity level of his music is actually BELOW that of a lot of Popular Music - but that's something that's inherent to a lot of minimalism - which is an important movement in Classical music! So it really challenges how we define Pop and Classical and what the borders between the two are. The fact that Einaudi's music is so commercially successful - beyond minimalist composers - makes me feel that his home is Pop - but that's more a feeling than an intellectually rigorous argument!

One of the last points made in the video can't be stressed enough! His music made a loads of people to pick up the piano or to get back to playing. I can't think of anyone else in recent history who had such an influence on piano playing. And that's brilliant and a massive win for the instrument! A lot of people will start with Einaudi and then maybe move onto Chopin, Rach, Debussy and will start to appreciate all the great composers.

This style of music is like a warm bath. Imagine you're reading a book while soaking—you're not entranced by the water, you're lost in your book. But the warm bath is very much part of that experience.

Why does the simplicity of Eianaudi sound boring whereas the simplicity of Satie is just perfection? Am i a snob?

As a pianist who creates spontaneous piano music for the purpose of healing at a major hospital in Los Angeles I can attest to the fact that the space between the notes is not only not empty but as valid as the notes themselves. In fact the silence at the end of a piece is notably different from the silence at the beginning of the same piece. For me, there is a healing language coded into the music/silence that is understood by those that need to hear it. I am constantly humbled by it.

I never really listened to his pieces on purpose, only through watching movies he composed music for. But then 2 weeks ago I went to his concert and it was marvellous, he created such an atmosphere, the whole concert venue was absolutely silent. I'm not sure I have ever heard such silence in that concert hall before. I do not usually enjoy similar (i.e. monotonous, repetitive) contemporary pieces that much, such as Philip Glass or Havasi (ugh). But Einaudi hits different somehow, especially when he's playing it. It's like he can manipulate the sound however he wishes, during the concert I realized just how good of a pianist he actually is. I never really thought about him as a pianist before, only a composer.

There is definitely something to be said about music that you use as a tool rather than being the goal. There is a 10 minute electronic ambient piece that became my 'go-to' for when I wanted to write poetry. I've had it since 2007 at least and have probably listened to it a thousand times by now. For me, it's the perfect thing to clear my head and allow for whatever may come from a writing session, and I've never tired of it.

I used to listen a bit to his music many years ago, while reading books. It was non-distracting and calming, helping focus on the books I was reading. I never thought of it as classical music. For me it seems to be a different genre of music.

My wife and i attended an Einaudi concert recently and wanted to leave after five minutes. Your description of musical claustrophobia captured our feeling exactly. We stayed for an hour, listening to what sounded like doodling on the piano - amplified with reverb for the big venue - and made our escape at the first inexplicable - to us at least - standing ovation. But much younger friends afterwards described themselves as 'emotionally drained' and a review in the regional newspaper described the experience as 'nourishing for the soul...' Your video is a very fair analysis of Einaudi's appeal - it didn't make me enjoy his music any more but did help explain why so many do. We enjoyed your composition much more than his concert - which I guess confirms that you failed! Many thanks.

After nearly 50years I'm at the point of understanding that I display multiple ADHD, OCD and autistic traits, one of which is reasonably easy access to flow state. Music like this is my drug - strong, repeating beats, repetitive rhythm section, simple overlaid melody, on and on. I can lose hours into this stuff. I suspect that, while it's not my gateway drug, it shares an awful lot of crossover with music that does open that door for me. This isn't music to listen to and glorify in its complexity; it is music to shut the world out with.

I think a large part of this discussion is the inability of the public and platforms like Spotify alike to classify this music as what it is: acoustic, instrumental pop. As such, it does its job very admirably in appealing to a large audience, while the absence of any lyrics or overly specific/descriptive titles means that anyone can either project their own meaning onto it, or leave it unobtrusively in the background. However, because it's just piano without vocals, it gets lumped under the umbrella of "Classical", thereby both drawing comparison to a lot of music that requires/rewards much more active listening as well as attracting the snobbery and gatekeeping tendencies associated with that (already very loosely-defined) genre. Oh and "neoclassical" already means something else as well, let's not bring middle-period Stravinsky into this. It's pop.

I had a boss who listened to a piano piece over and over again. I don't know if it was Einaudi or something else. But there was this motif that kept coming back: "do-re-mi-fa-so-fa-mi-re-do"... and every time I heard it I thought it sounded like someone practicing the piano. I can see how it might have helped him focus, but every time I heard that little "warmup exercise" it grabbed my attention in an unwelcome way.

David Bruce, I applaud your wisdom and maturity towards the subject. You haven't been blinded by your own personal biases while examining music very different from yours and you have stayed true to your quest for transmitting musical knowledge and understanding.