Is ‘Classical Music’ Dead in the Water
On various blogs and message boards I’ve read lately I’ve encountered a lively argument on top of could you repeat that? We ought to call Classical Music. You know the kind of composition I mean: A conductor by the front, a cluster of musicians scraping, blowing, plucking and striking a variety of instruments ranging from the ‘fit your pocket’ small, to the ‘I need a dump truck to move this mother’ behemoth; all appraisal from printed scores, the largest part likely formally dressed, seldom smiling, earnest in their endeavours.
Polite applause ripples around the audience, generally initiated either by the ‘I know my stuff, so have under surveillance my go in front and praise as I do’ cognoscenti, or, more unsuccessfully, though admittedly more hilariously, by the enthusiastic ingenue who inadvertently claps linking schedule of a line quartet — “tut, tut!” Stifled guffaws and a kind of ‘there but pro the leniency of God perform I’ embarrassment wafts around the concert entry pro a instant. The cognoscenti get pleasure from their instant of schadenfreude, the Minuet begins.
This kind of composition bears the generic label ‘Classical’, but this is inaccurate, both in the significance of Classical Literature, which refers to Ancient Greece and Rome, and in the significance of Classical Music as a episode of musical history (see below).