THE DEAL WITH DEBUSSY

WHY THE MAESTRO'S WORKS ARE SO PERFECT FOR TESTING HI-FI

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It's time to give Claude his plaudits

We listen to a lot of classical music when we are testing hi-fi and headphones. Perhaps not as much as our high-expectations parents or old music teachers would ideally like, but stick a glass to the door of our test room(s) and you'll hear plenty of Delibes, Beethoven and Mahler flowing melodiously from our listening chamber. We have also heard all the Hans Zimmer and John Williams that there is to hear. But let's not get into the thorny issue of whether modern film scores should be considered 'classical' music. Classic FM plays a lot of movie soundtracks, that's all we're saying.

The real marvel of classical music is that it's such a nebulous term. The word classical is generally used for anything that's non-electronic, incorporates traditional instrumentation and was composed before the 20th century by portly German gents with funny wigs and large hands; but if you're going on those criteria, you are missing out on great swathes of music that very much fits the bill. When you consider that the true 'Classical' period only lasted from around 1750-1820 and that the earliest medieval works that one would still file under the classical banner date back to around the 11th century, you start to realise that it's a pretty broad church - and that's before we have expanded the search to include pre-classical works such as the Seikilos Epitaph from Ancient Greece or contemporary composers such as Arvo Pärt or Max Richter.

Not an obvious choice