Classical Music Doesn’t Exist
Watching Jeopardy usually means watching three people spew esoteric knowledge as quickly as their encyclopedic retrievals allow. Yet a couple nights ago I saw an episode that truly showed me what these fearless people fear most. Of the categories on the board, one was left utterly untouched until the very last moment when it became by default the topic they had to choose. None of the questions, save for one, was answered correctly, leading host Alex Trebek to remark that they weren’t having much luck with this category (which is undoubtedly why they avoided choosing it to begin with). At least one question left a gaping hole with no response. And when one of them got the Daily Double on a $2000 question, he appropriately lessened it to $800.
Now what was the topic that made these televised intellectuals cower? Classical music.
Of course, this then begs the question. If classical music is supposedly the music of the elite intellectuals who presumably could compete on a show like Jeopardy and yet they absolutely fail and surrender in the face of it, what hope do we the normal, the regular folks who are not as talented, have of knowing anything about let alone enjoy classical music?
Well, the answer is quite simply that classical music is not the music of the educated elite. It is not the music of snobby people. It is not the music of the very rich. It is just music.
I got a response to my previous essay, “Classical Music is the Best Music,” from the Cheap Reveal who wrote: Of course [classical music] has stood the test of time, but this is just due to the fact that the people in charge at the times (kings, queens, dukes, duchesses etc.) were keen to the sound. I for one would much rather listen to a rock opera than an actual opera.
The idea is a very simple one and a common one: classical music is the music of the elites, it is the music for people who you have nothing in common with, and it is elevated music not for the enjoyment of the regular Joe. All three of those ideas are completely wrong, and they are wrong for the same reason.
Classical music is not classical. By that I mean that classical music was not written to be classical music (at least not until about 50 or so years ago). Rather classical music was written to be just music….without any genre attached. Sure, you could say that Beethoven and Brahms were working in a tradition that asked for the highest quality in their work and were looking to write pieces of music that would have a lasting impression upon their society. But you know what, so is Steven Spielberg, so is Radiohead, so is any other artist of great quality. So why does high quality repel people so badly?
Unfortunately, it’s not all. As mentioned, there’s a phobia that classical music represents all the authority figures that have been destroyed in the past. Enjoying classical music would be akin to identifying with past tyrants and oppressors. To this day, listening to Wagner signifies to some an identification with Hitler, who favored Wagner’s music. And this is not even to mention our idea of the composers themselves who were not men, but Gods put on earth to tower over people with their perfect music and impenetrable complexities. Yeah, under these circumstances, enjoying hip hop or rock music seems to be a far better choice.
Let me tell you a story that starts around the 1940s, a time when science started to be the guiding light for mainstream America. Just as science could solve transportation and household chores, it could also solve our tastes in music. Record players and radios made music accessible to everyone in an egalitarian way. And the country’s universities were hopefully churning out musicians who were highly trained, competed in music competitions, and went on to recording careers. And what music should they play but the best…that is classical music.
Classical music could be determined by the traditions set down in academia and fed through the new mass media. As such it became associated with bourgeois capitalistic living, and the middle class people who enjoyed it could imagine themselves as the kings and queens of the past listening to the elite music. And they could make their children listen to the music and tell them that it was elite music and therefore if they wanted to be proper elite chidlren they also had to enjoy it the way little princes and princesses were expected to. In fact they were told this by the elite people who now had to train the baby boomers and thus chose the music that was dependable and full of good qualities…and since they didn’t want children to get the wrong impression, they hid the bad qualities of this music from them. And hence we have the birth of the modern gentrified idea of classical music. Okay, this is an oversimplification of the story, but you get the idea.
So along comes rock and roll, the devil’s music, which utterly demolishes any interest the younger generation has in classical music. Why? Well, if classical music was the music they were supposed to strive for, then rock and roll was the music they inhabited, they breathed, they were. If classical music represented all that was good about civil bourgeois life, then rock and roll was all that was good about rebelling against those constraints. And out of that generation now grown up you have a great many people who are quite capable of paying semi-convincing lip service to classical music, but ultimately not identifying themselves with it personally.
And because those baby boomers took over the country, they didn’t feel any need to introduce classical music to their children. Or if they did, it was supplemented with lots of rock, jazz, and everything else. Their ideas about classical music didn’t change because they didn’t grow with it…and so the idea of classical music is even more regressively backwards today than before.
So what is classical music then?
1. It was the music of the revolutionaries, of the bohemians, of the passionately slightly crazy people, of the hippies and druggies, of the partiers, of the politically disenfranchised, of the people. Mozart was a revolutionary whose operas seeked to overthrow the social order and whose musical canons were about fart jokes. Beethoven’s music echoed the democratic revolts at the time, epitomized in his Ode to Joy which is pretty much the heighted form of a drunken beer song. Lizst was a rock star (watch the movie Lisztomania to get an idea). Schumann had to be admitted to a mental asylum. Tchaikovsky attempted suicide due to his homosexuality. Wagner joined in revolutionary rioters at Dresden. The list goes on and on. These people were not god or perfect…rather they were flawed people and their music reflects upon that just the same way a painting or a poem reflects upon its creator.
2. Classical music was created in a world without radio and record players or microphones. It was created in a world where sound had to be generated by playing music instruments well. Therefore this required practice and training. And thus people in the world were generally musically educated. Many had pianos and could play versions of famous opera tunes or symphonies, because sometimes that’s all they had. If they had opportunities to go to see an orchestra, what they heard was not puffy light music appropriate for reading books at Barnes and Noble. No, they heard heavy metal, they heard birds singing, they heard explosions and ghosts and lustful fantasies because that was what the music was supposed to do: entertain. And since these were 50-100 people playing loudly together, it was probably the loudest sounds the audiences ever really got to hear.
I’ll give you an example. Beethoven’s Seventh was described by Wagner as the apotheosis of dance. Today, probably no one considers it dance music. But still its loud pounding rhythms are undeniably catchy and danceable and even primitive. All one needs is the modernize it with the shortened song-form we’re more accustomed to…say like the Plunderphonics did with the last movement of the 7th.
Beethoven - Sym. 7 last movement
3. Classical music is not about taste. As Cheap Reveal writes, “To me it’s a matter of opinion.” While I agree that everyone is entitled to their opinion, I don’t see why people are empowered to reject it outright. Imagine if someone were to say that liking Shakespeare is merely a matter of opinion or Rembrandt or any other “classical” artist who has pretty much weathered hundreds of years of scrutiny. I could easily sit down with some Shakespeare, dismiss it as too difficult to understand and have my opinion. In fact, that’s okay if anyone does…I really don’t care.
The point is Shakespeare is still liked because we see his work as being allied with our rebellious natures, our romantic natures, our human attributes both good and bad. And we dislike classical music (which has all of those rebellious, romantic, human elements too), because we ally it with the unfavorable historical conditions that the music itself has very little to do with. Shakespeare is as intertwined with the English language as Mozart or Beethoven is with our musical language. Doesn’t that make it sexy enough to not suck all the air out of the room?
I mean it can’t be all bad if at the very least you can earn some extra money on Jeopardy, right?
June 27th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Excellent post. Personally, I draw a distinction between Classical music and opera and would much rather listen to a symphony than operatic singing. While it may well be a matter of opinion, even the most colorful, uptempo symphonies make for a relaxing drive home in traffic. I use it as a way to reduce stress.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Dude, I totally agree. In fact, for much of history, opera was considered like going to the movies or a baseball game.
I sometimes hear the complaint about operatic singing being so “affected.” It’s because they had no microphones and that’s the style of singing that could rise above an orchestra and hit the last seat in the house. Doesn’t mean you have to like it though.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of opera…
June 29th, 2007 at 3:02 am
I love this post, and I would also point out that when people say they don’t like classical music, I often wish they would be specific if it’s all classical they hate or just certain composers. Because there’s more than one form of classical, just as in rock, jazz, or any music genre, and if you haven’t sampled at least a few forms, you might be missing something you’d like. It frustrates me when people’s reasons for disliking are the reasons you’ve given above.
I think a lot of it boils down to how you first heard classical music. A lot of people probably remember being forced to listen to it in school and told it was important or being made to practice it on an instrument when they’re younger. Then they get the impression that classical music is one of those things they’re made to know and it doesn’t speak to them, like having to read Shakespeare in school. I know some of my friends were successfully introduced to loving classical music through two odd things: Looney Tunes episodes and fireworks shows. So often, love of something can boil down to your initial experience and whether you were taught it was something momentous, weighty, and inaccessible, or if you were given something modern to connect it to (like the scandals, the drinking, or the cannons). I mean, the first time I heard Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, I was watching an episode of Pasadena, a trashy short-lived soap. I begged my uncle (a huge classical music fan) for a CD the next day.
And I have to admit I wasn’t particularly fond of opera until I was able to see one performed (Don Giovanni through the Generation O program at Washington National Opera) rather than recorded. I think opera is one of those genres that many people would benefit from watching on stage to get the full impact of the murders, affairs, ghosts, duels, and giant walking statues.
June 29th, 2007 at 4:52 am
Yeah, almost everyone I know had to learn some instrument when they were young and gave it up…making classical music a symbol of their underachievement. It’s too bad that they associated the music negatively.
I think classical music must be heard live. There’s nothing like being in a room with 100 musicians and the rawness hitting your ears directly. Also, it was designed that way since the music was written to be performed…not like much of music today which is music created to be produced and recorded in a music studio (not bad, just different).
July 1st, 2007 at 12:05 am
Hello again,
I posted a response to your previous essay on Classical music - the best music. I haven’t much more to add to those points except to say that…
You are doing it again. Contradicting yourself, i mean.
You write: ‘classical music was written to be just music….without any genre attached. Sure, you could say that Beethoven and Brahms were working in a tradition that asked for the highest quality in their work and were looking to write pieces of music that would have a lasting impression upon their society. But you know what, so is Steven Spielberg, so is Radiohead, so is any other artist of great quality…’
OK, so the idea of ‘classical music’ does not really exist - Brahms and Beethoven are just the same as Radiohead right? It’s all just music right?
Then you blatantly contradict yourself by writing another few hundred words on ‘Classical music’ - invoking and perpetuating the very notion that you set out to dismiss in the first place.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:34 am
Hello Gabriel, I responded to your previous post too.
I’m sorry that my contradictory use of the term “classical music” is upsetting to you. It’s really just a very convenient way to talk about a lot of music, and it’s done so that people who read and don’t know the nuances of nomenclature can follow along.
Of course, I could just call it “music” or “older music” or “music from the 19th Century” but I would prefer to encourage someone to investigate the lump for themselves rather than me dividing it out and confusing them. Maybe I’m being too lowest-common-denominator?
July 1st, 2007 at 12:46 am
I should add:
Classical music is what all that music is called today. Hence the section in the music store that we all know.
When I said it doesn’t exist, I meant that for the creators of the music and in the past, they didn’t know what was “classical” music, which really is a meaningless term because any type of music can be considered classical if enough people agree that it is so.
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