Classical Music: The Soundtrack of Restraint

ARDA E GENC

The opening scene of Tenet begins in a concert hall. The orchestra is tuning, the room is settling, and a familiar hush gathers itself in layers. Programmes open quietly. Shoulders soften into their seats. Phones disappear almost by instinct. And then the ritual is interrupted. The soundtrack surges, the scene turns, and violence enters a space built for restraint.

What makes that moment land is how recognisable the setting is, even if you’ve never been able to name why. A concert hall is one of the last public rooms where stillness is assumed, and attention is collective. People arrive, settle, and become quieter than they were outside. The orchestra tunes, and when the music begins, the room submits willingly. For those fluent in it, classical music is a language already familiar. The ease shows less in what they know than in what they don’t do: no rushing, no filling the gaps, no need to signal anything beyond attention, right up until the night ends in a resounding, unforced applause.

And whatever you think of Tenet as a film, Göransson’s score is part of why it lingers. It’s disciplined, architectural, built to be replayed. Which raises the question beneath all of this: what, exactly, makes music “classical”?

Not age. Not instruments. Not wigs. Not Europe. “Classical” is a discipline: music built with a certain seriousness of structure, uninterested in being easy. It asks for attention that is sustained, patient, undistracted. A Beethoven symphony unfolds on its own terms. Bach’s counterpoint reveals itself slowly, like architecture.

This is precisely why it resonates so cleanly with minds accustomed to complexity. It rewards restraint: delayed gratification, control, and the refusal to simplify for comfort. In a world engineered for immediacy, choosing to give Ólafur Arnalds an entire evening becomes a quiet act of discernment.

For many of us, that discipline enters early. It comes through private lessons treated as routine, and through school halls and family homes where Debussy, or Chopin, or Handel sat in the air on Sunday mornings, half-heard at first, then recognised. It settles into you the way good manners do: by repetition, by proximity, by watching what is done and what is not.

Over time, the distinctions become instinctive. You start to feel the difference between Baroque restraint and Romantic overflow without needing to name it. You understand why Gould’s Bach still divides opinion. And you learn, quietly, that Rachmaninoff is not for earbuds. He belongs in a room that can hold him. Like architecture or horology, classical music rewards context.

Once that language is in you, it stops belonging only to concert halls. It begins to appear in the everyday architecture of a life: in the background of work that requires clean thinking, in the hours when the mind needs to stay steady, and in the evenings when you want the room to feel held.

Certain composers suit certain hours. Max Richter is morning clarity: clean lines, open windows, a mind put back in order before the day begins. Bach lives there, too, when you want the purest structure. Philip Glass belongs to the hours where you need focus, repetition doing the work without pulling you away from your thoughts. Mozart is ease when you’re hosting, music that keeps a room bright and socially fluent. Nils Frahm is soft focus: rain against glass, the relief of not needing to be sharp. Beethoven is resolve after a win, when you want a triumph to land properly. And Arvo Pärt is intimacy without spectacle: spare, quiet, a lamp left on, and a room that feels like a sanctuary.

SHEKU AND ISATA KANNEH-MASON | DAVID BAZEMORE

And in our world, it rarely exists alone. It sits beside African counterparts in the same rotation. You hear that same discipline in Bongani Ndodana-Breen, who writes orchestral and operaticwork that is performed internationally without sanding down its origins. Abel Selaocoe re-imagines the cello through voice and improvisation, drawing a clear line between African tradition and the classical concert form.

Classical music is built on legacy, but it never feels embalmed. It carries history the way well-made things do. That continuity matters to people who think generationally, about standards, institutions, and what should outlive the moment. Classical music isn’t preoccupied with what is new. It returns, again and again, to what endures.

And it travels easily. In Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, Kigali, Paris, or London, classical music can sit comfortably alongside African literature, contemporary fashion, and modern design. In the right rooms, no one is trying it on.

If you’re building your own fluency, start small and return often. Begin with recordings that feel contemporary, then let familiarity do the work. Max Richter’s Recomposed is a clean entry point: recognisable form, reimagined for modern ears. Abel Selaocoe’s Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae) brings voice and inheritance into the classical frame. Add a Sheku Kanneh-Mason record when you want the cello without the ceremony. Then, for the most modern bridge of all, return to Göransson’s Tenet score—tension organised with such discipline it’s hard not to admire it. If you didn’t love the film, try the soundtrack on its own. It’s persuasive.