Who listens to classical music?

A new 'classical music' radio station, Scala Radio, is being launched in the UK, and it is being much publicised in the press. This is because the media absolutely love anything that is apologetic about our past and our culture. They love a story about 'shaking up' and 'reinventing' a fusty old thing like classical music.

And this is exactly what Scala Radio claims to be doing. From the Guardian article about the station:

Jack Pepper, Britain’s youngest commissioned composer, will also be joining Scala. The 19-year-old said: “Classical music is surrounded by the misconception that it’s irrelevant, sterile and inaccessible. What many people don’t realise is there is an authentic modern-day narrative to accompany classical music which is really connecting with people.”

Try as I might, I cannot fathom what he means by that last sentence. What would be an inauthentic modern-day narrative? In what way is classical music 'accompanied' by a 'narrative'?

By way of distinguishing itself from its competitors, Simon Mayo, one of its presenters, said:

We're different because we're going all out to entertain, laugh with the listeners, and have a good time. Some of it will be familiar, some new and exciting but all timeless, beautiful and all absolutely relevant to today.

Ah, I'm noticing a theme; you may have too. Both quotations use that shallow buzzword, relevance.  You will find it, or at least the sentiment behind it, whenever some silly, hip person comes along claiming to know how to make classical music 'accessible' (ah, there's another one).

In the Guardian article, Scala Radio say they will do this in various ways, inspired by dreary opinion polls and supposed trends. Apparently 'almost half (45%) of young people ... see classical music as an escape from the noise of modern life.' Who actually believes these statistics? Most young people seem to be listening to the most noisy forms of rap and electronic music. Very, very few are listening to Palestrina. And besides, I rather like a lot of noisy classical music -- in fact most classical music is to some extent 'noisy'. This is a variation on the 'classical music for studying' or 'classical music for relaxing' themes. A pox on the next person who says classical music is relaxing! Even Arvo Part's music (and he has written some quite lively work too) is far too moving and far too involving to ever be called 'relaxing'. In fact, it is pop music that leaves me either bored and unaffected or repulsed; my favourite classical music makes me ecstatic.

The other example brought up (as it always is) to show classical music's ... relevance ...  is the popularity of film and video game music. There is something in this. Film composers often have classical training. Historically, there have been some good, even great, composers worked in film (Erich Korngold of course comes to mind -- listen to both his symphony and violin concerto!). And I more than appreciate people enjoying film music. I understand the pull of music as a way to instantly evoke something beloved. But it does not make for good concert music. It is quite different to the way one listens to classical music. You couldn't possibly simply sit and listen to it for an hour: in terms of interesting musical content it is rather lacking. And so I find it hard to believe that masses of young people, listening to semi- or pseudo-classical soundtracks, are somehow turned onto Haydn or Monteverdi.

We are also told that

a new generation of listeners was switching on to classical music through different sources, with 48% of under-35s exposed to it through classical versions of popular songs, such as the Brooklyn Duo version of Taylor Swift’s Blank.'

Here is the version they are referring to:

What boring, insipid music! Just because a popular song is played on a cello does not make it 'classical music'.

The term 'classical music' may be the cause of this confusion. As is always pointed out, 'Classical' refers to an era between about 1770-1820. (Opinions differ regarding the dates, and some of us even question whether we should divide musical history into Renaissance, Baroque, Classical etc.) Many people therefore do not identify 'classical music' by its belonging to a distinct musical tradition, but rather to a particular time and to particular fashions of the time. And so if it played by an orchestra, it is thought to be classical music. If someone plays Lady Gaga on a harpsichord, somehow people think it has been made 'classical'. But what makes Bach or Scarlatti, say, part of the great tradition of Western music is their musical features -- features which come from a distinct musical discipline, and which remain classical whether they are played on a harpsichord or a synthesiser. It is this discipline, this tradition, which most popular music is either ignorant of or has rejected.

It is only natural, then, that classical music has begun to form an identity in reaction to the rise popular music. Some have tried to instead call it 'serious music', but that doesn't work; so much of classical music is jovial and witty. I used the term 'Western music' earlier, but I dont' much like that either: it is simultaneously too broad and too narrow. I would prefer to simply call it 'music', and to distinguish rock, pop etc. by referring to them as 'popular music', as I believe used to be the case. But we live in an inverted world in which popular music is the more regarded, the style for which politicians are keen to demonstrate an appreciation, the style that we choose to flaunt and import abroad, the style that is played at national events (even, or perhaps especially, at Conservative Party conferences).

Not that anyone should object to the existence of a popular music. It is a good and necessary part of communal and national life. But the invention of a global, vulgar, homogenised pop music, rather than a humble, local music, is a disaster for society. It is one of the obvious signs of civilisation decline.

Of course, classical music has been popular in the past. Some classical music still exists in the popular culture, but most of it is old. Some of its modern-day failure is admittedly its own fault. It needs to get over its modern pathology of desiring to always be 'challenging'. There is a socially revolutionary impulse in modern pop, and a musically revolutionary impulse in much modern classical music. Both have cause much damage (though the former more so). But the fundamental reason is a broad cultural shift following the Second World War; the rubble and debris were not merely material. Civilisation has not recovered, and once again music began to cater to what (to borrow from Allan Bloom's brilliant book The Closing of the American Mind) Plato would have considered the barbarous expression of the soul.

Is there any hope? As I have more than implied, I think classical music's future may be inextricably linked to a larger, civilisational, and possibly terminal decline. I don't think it will ever disappear, but its role in society and culture will be greatly diminished. Still, there are some things that might help. For one thing, it would certainly help to better educate the young; classical music is best appreciated by the musically literate, but even mere familiarity with the music can help cultivate an appreciation. We also need a society that expects all serious people to be well acquainted with classical music, just as they would be with great literary works, and that recognises classical music as the culmination of centuries of musical greatness. These sorts of things might help extend to the life of classical music. But what certainly won't help are PR stunts by people in skinny jeans and tattoos championing insipid crossover music.

Let us end with a truly wonderful aria, 'Lasciate Averno' from Luigi Rossi's opera Orfeo: