This week I learned something from a paper one of my students wrote. About how to present a case for classical music. Two words in that paper showed me something i hadn’t so strongly realized.
What we were working on
This was a paper about why classical music is valuable, what it can do that no other kind of music can. I ask my students to think very carefully about this, because it’s crucial for classical music’s future. We need new listeners. So how do we find them? What can we say to make them think classical music can do something for them?
As we work on this, I caution my students not to say that– as if it were demonstrable fact — that classical music is better than other music. Especially pop. That it goes deeper emotionally, expresses more.
Often this is what some of the students want to say, and of course they’re not alone. Many people in our field say this.
But there are two problems with it.
First, it isn’t verifiable. How can you prove that classical music goes deeper, expresses more?
Really, you can’t. You can set up a straw man, say that pop music is created only to make money, that it doesn’t have classical music’s complexity, that it’s empty and shallow.
But then you run into people like me who’ll say those things aren’t true. Or you can read rock critics who say profound things about pop music (in its many forms). And who have as fine an intellectual pedigree as anyone who writes about classical music. (Greil Marcus is the obvious example, but there are many more.)
That’s the first problem. No one really can prove that classical music is superior. Suppose you say classical music has more complex harmony and form. But examine your assumption. Why should complexity give music its value? And what’s going on in pop music? What are its internal processes? Maybe they’re different from what we find in classical music, but just as complex.
And, finally — do the people who make these comparisons really know much about pop?)
And now the second problem
Let’s say you preach to people, tell them that classical music is better than the music they listen to. How do you do that without patronizing them? Without implying that they themselves are inferior? Or at least uncultured, uneducated, deprived of musical opportunity.
And what do you do if they disagree? If they resent you saying that your music is better than theirs, if they discover that you don’t know their music, and so have no grounds for making comparison?
If these things happen, you’ve shot yourself. And shot classical music down, too. Because you’ve turned people off, instead of getting them to give classical music a chance.
Two magic words
“For me.” Those were the words that opened new doors for me. Fir me, my student wrote (and now I’m paraphrasing), classical music expresses deep things that no other music can bring us. Though others, he said, may find that other music expresses these deep things for them.
And with this honest and courteous way of stating his case, he taught me something:
If you say — claiming it’s factually true — that classical music is better, you’re giving a lecture. Starting a fight.
But if you just say that for you this is true, then you’re telling a story. Not arguing with anyone, not telling anyone what they should think. You’re telling a story about yourself. About your life, your experience.
Which can get people interested. Why, they can ask, with genuine interest, does classical music have so much power for you? What about it gives it that strength? Which pieces — which moments in pieces — show its great force?
Now you’re having a conversation. You’ve got someone listening to you. Someone you haven’t asked to devalue any music that’s dear to her. Someone who can say to herself, “Wow, if classical music has so much power for him, maybe I’ll find it powerful, too.”
And that’s a win.
I love this, Greg. It resonates persuasively – for me.
Thanks, Wende! Trying to remember when we saw each other last…it’s been years, hasn’t it?
Too long, Greg! I’ve been keeping up on you and Rafa through Anne and FB.
I agree with the first caution, and I also agree that we don’t want people to feel belittled for their taste. And the “better than” issue is complicated. Better for what? For dancing? Fixing a fancy meal is a greater accomplishment than grilling a hot dog, but isn’t the hot dog just right for some occasions? Some days I want Wagner, some days I want Dylan. Good taste is, among other things, wide taste (and mine could be a lot wider), able to recognize and love the good across genres. That said, there is a lot of lousy pop music.
But while we can’t shame people into listening to classical music, we needn’t be afraid of asserting its value for anyone willing to listen. People have been taught that it’s arrogant for the educated to presume to have something to teach the uneducated, but I’ve learned to love a lot of good music and art from reading smart people who loved it already, and believing I had something to learn from them. The way to counter the perceived snobbery around high art is to invite people to join the “elite.” The message we want to get across is not “classical music is valuable for me,” but “classical music is valuable, period, and anyone who gives it a chance can learn to value it.“ The message we want to convey is “you are smart enough to like it too.”
I agree with all this, though i don’t know about inviting people to join the elite! Seems like that’s an unnecessary step, and also can be scary. If we put things that way, or even hint at it, many of the people we might otherwise convince will believe that they’re excluded, that there has to be some entrance requirement. Better I think simply to communicate our enthusiasm for what we like and what we do, in a tone that suggests that anyone can join us. Whether that’s actually true or not isn’t our business at this point. That would be a question for cultural analysis — what kind of people can like classical music. When we’re out trying to make new friends, we should assume that we can’t tell in any individual case who might be likely to join us, and put up no implied barriers that might make anyone think they won’t be qualified.
I more or less agree with you here, and I should have been clear. It’s only because classical music is so often labeled elitist that I would, as a rejoinder, invite pop fans to join the “elites” who love it. That’s why I mentioned how often I’ve learned to love music and art that was initially beyond my understanding. What I would want to say, in other words, is: “If I can learn to love it, anyone can.”
That’s a terrific approach! Easy for others to identify with. I think many people want challenges, want something new, and only need a little encouragement to look toward classical music for it.
Yes, except it has great value only for a very few people in this society, and it’s doubtful that that proportion of the population can increase very much, given that pop music is deeply entrenched in the culture and is much easier to work into most peoples’ minds and lives: short pieces of vocal music (sung in English, if you can understand what they’re singing, which I generally can’t), catchy tunes, pounding rhythms, etc.
And it is hooked up with a vastly greater number of fans, so that its web of social relationships is much more inviting, especially to young people, who love to immerse themselves into huge crowds. And it’s in one’s youth that one’s musical tastes generally form–for life. That’s why my tastes are mostly limited to classical music and jazz–that’s what I listened to as a kid.
Classical music simply has very few characteristics that appeal to kids these days, and I doubt that that will change for the foreseeable future. We need to accept that fact and deal with it.
Jon, this is where it helps to know, truly know, pop music. It isn’t one thing. Start with that. There’s pop music that appeals to huge numbers of people, and pop music that appeals to very few. Niche markets (so to speak) are everywhere in pop music.
Also there’s no reason that people can’t like more than one kind of music. In the days of record stores I used to see that very often. People at the checkout with a pile of very varied CDs.
Main thing, though, about pop music is that two of its genres, indie rock and EDM (electronic dance music) can be quite complex niches. Musically complex, I mean. So that the people who listen to these genres (quite a lot of people) are entirely ready for classical music, especially contemporary classical music. No surprise, for instance, that Nonesuch was able to release a CD some years ago of Steve Reich pieces remixed by dance music producers. They either were listening to Reich already, or upon hearing his work instantly saw it as related to theirs. The parallels between indie rock and contemporary classical music have been widely remarked. And in fact some of Radiohead’s biggest fans have been classical composers.
On my wish list is something I hope you won’t take personally, Jon. I wish that people in the classical world who want to say things about pop music would learn about that field before doing so. And not accept easy generalizations that, when you get to know pop music in detail, you find simply aren’t true.
Perhaps what I want to say is that we should really forget about these “classical,” “pop,” etc., labels, which might be useful for recording industry marketing people but not for the rest of us who are interested in music.
However, we can give some examples of what we mean with the words we do use. If I were to give examples of what I mean by “classical” music, I would probably give as an extreme example a Pettersson or Mahler symphony. For what I mean by “pop” music, take the sort of thing I hear blasting out of a car speaker as it roars past me in the street. I don’t think the driver of that car will ever start blasting Mahler’s 2nd out of his car window, but miracles could always happen, I guess.
In other words, “classical music” in the Pettersson/Mahler sense will always have a very limited audience in this country, and the important thing is to give it enough economic support so that it doesn’t go extinct.
Jon, don’t you see that you’re loading the dice? Your normative classical music experience — Mahler 2 — is complex and profound. Your normative pop experience — something “blasting” from a car radio — is something you seem to be saying is mindless.
But in fact both classical music and pop are widely varied. Suppose you chose your examples differently. Your normative classical music experience could be someone who keeps classical radio on in the background because they think (as so many do) that classical music is relaxing. While your normative pop music experience could be Public Enemy’s famous song “Fight the Power, which is constructed wtih great sophistication, in the most complex way (see the Wickipedia entry on the song), and which addresses important social issues.
Or your normative pop music experience could be Paul Krugman — the Nobel Prize-winning economist who writes a column for the NY Times — listening with great care to new singer-songwriter, and writing about her in his blog. Or, an imaginary example, but I know there’s reality behind it, a graduate student in literature who can explain in profound detail any passage from Finnegans Wake, and also can tell you the sometimes minute differences between various genres of electronic dance music, with attention paid to their history and social meaning.
I remember something I came across in college, browsing through issues of Life magazine published during World War II. A feature whose point was to show that the Chinese (our allies) were wonderful people, while the Japanese (our enemies) were horrible. They did this with two allegedly representative photos. One was a mild and thoughtful-seeming Chinese philosopher, the other a hard-faced Japanese military leader, one of the architects of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Laughable, to our eyes now. But it shows the danger of cherry-picking examples. I think, Jon, that you believe the music blasting from the car radio is both musically the norm for pop, and also that the way the person in the car is listening is the norm. These are nothing but unexamined assumptions, and I wonder why someone so sensitive to great classical music would offer reasoning that hasn’t yet been vetted to make sure that its premises are correct. Isn’t classical music supposed to elevate us to greater heights?
As a driver who has often blasted both Mahler’s “Resurrection” and Wu Tang, I can tell you that both turn heads at stoplights, but Wu Tang (with its modern compression) is more likely to sound good over car noise. One must ride the volume knob all the time with Mahler lest you blow your speakers when he brings in all 40 of the brass players FFFF! But I digress… The real reason I can’t resist responding is that you’ve invoked the apparent virtue of giving classical music “enough economic support so that it doesn’t go extinct”. But why shouldn’t at least some parts of our bloated tradition be allowed to die? Few listen to sackbutt ensembles anymore… Is THAT a tragedy too? Nobody listened to Bach (JSB) during the reign of his sons… Yet his musical DNA lay dormant on the shelf ready for Mozart to discover and the craft baton was passed. For those who can read a score, our canon will never die. But is it not our duty to prioritize what is and is not actively performed? Clearly, the Titanic is sinking and there are not enough life boats. Works that are too expensive to produce (e.g. Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand”) shouldn’t hog all the resources when the same expenditure could fund a year’s worth of chamber music (and you might even be able to fill a smaller hall too). Don’t even get me started on the prioritization case for funding “silence” (alla Cage’s 4’33”), but can’t we at least acknowledge that, no matter how much cash we are prepared to burn, we can’t take it all with us? We need to prioritize.
I deliberately chose Mahler and Pettersson as extreme examples of “classical music.” Like you, Greg, I am concerned about the economic future of this music, and maybe even more concerned, because I want *all* of it to survive—from pre-Renaissance to Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, … up to the likes of Pettersson. (He of course is much less popular in this country than Mahler—I doubt that even my heroes, the Philly Orchestra, have ever performed him, though they have done Gustav many, many times.)
This is an enormous amount of music, and very expensive. Especially stuff like the Ring, which I am currently enjoying greatly through the BBC stream of the Opera North production. But that points out the economic problem. In the U.S., government support for the arts seems to be pretty much doomed at this point, and the way politics is shifting rightward in Europe, it won’t last much longer there either, I suppose. Perhaps the broad range of “classical music” will survive in Asia, in countries like China, Japan, and Korea, where people actually understand and appreciate it. And corporations sometimes sponsor stuff. The hall the Philly folks play in is named Verizon Hall; perhaps eventually we will have to trade in the “Ring of the Nibelungen” for the “Ring of Verizon” or “Sprint.”
Yes, there are Radiohead, complex kinds of rock, cross-over Reich, etc. But do they sell as well as what I call the “blasting out the car window” music? And will they in the future? In this capitalist society, what sells well and can be produced cheaply eventually buries its competition, and Mahler and Wagner sell badly and cost enormously. I very much appreciate everything you are doing to encourage smarter entrepreneurship and innovative ways of presenting the music to new audiences, but I’m very pessimistic about poor Allan Pettersson. (I suppose he’s not doing so badly in Sweden, though.)
Jon, I think the future holds things we can’t imagine. Culture doesn’t move in straight lines. If you look at pop music, its capitalist structures have had — since the dawn of the rock era, when everything changed — numerous chances to flood the market with cheap stuff that crowds out what’s complex and good.
But that hasn’t happened. Over and over, new things have arisen from outside the mass market, and come into that market on their own power. I watched that happen at the end of the ’80s, with the rise of alternative rock (now called indie rock), music that jumped from college radio (where it had a relatively small audience) over to the general market. Which led the big record companies to restaff, because they didn’t have people who knew the new music. That had already happened in the ’50s with the rise of rock & roll, and then again in the ’60s, and again after the 80s. Nobody can control this market, and dire predictions about the effects of capitalism never seem to pan out.
Same thing, by the way, in supermarkets. The amount of organic, natural, artisanal food keeps growing, even in the small Safeway near my home in Wasington, DC. Hard to predict what the future will be in paying for Mahler, but I wouldn’t make any quick assumptions.
Main thing, though, about pop music is that two of its genres, indie rock and EDM (electronic dance music) can be quite complex niches. Musically complex, I mean. So that the people who listen to these genres (quite a lot of people) are entirely ready for classical music, especially contemporary classical music.
I think perhaps so-called jam band music can have the same preparatory effect. The improvisations of the Grateful Dead helped prepare me for jazz, and the complexity of jazz helped prepare me for classical.
Great example! Certainly prepared you for sustained listening.
Maybe the first thing we need to do, if we want to convince newbies to give a listen to any of this diverse body of art, is to give up thinking/talking about it as a monolithic entity. “How to present a case for classical music,” you ask — well, do you mean an Ockeghem Mass, “Wellington’s Victory,” the Schoenberg string trio, or “Satyagraha”? Because I don’t see how it’s possible to sell all that as ONE thing, any more than one could convince someone to love “popular music” by assuming Coltrane, Patsy Cline, KISS, Kanye, and “Hairspray” were somehow all one thing.
I so much agree!
You can’t sell people on quality if they are determined to consume trash. It never works. The problem is not classical music. The problem is growing up with no father, or no church, or no sense of responsibility to anything except one’s face in the mirror.. A culture with no standards of excellence, except popularity.
We are afraid to teach–and with NO apology– the values of western European democracy that formed and informed this country for the last 230 years. It needs to be done in the schools, the government, and the radio and television media.
I’m sorry, Richard, but I don’t recognize the picture you paint of our culture. I worked professionally in the pop music business for some years, and there’s intense discussion of quality. I could — and please forgive me for this — look at your dismissal of so many things you don’t understand as a cultural problem, one of almost tragic significance. If the people who pride themselves on their knowledge, their depth, their understanding, in fact have no idea of what’s really going on…
“Classytroll” is antagonistic by design, but willing to back it up with logic and evidence. I wonder, Richard, what evidence can you cite indicating lack of fathers or religion as an influence upon “trash” consumption? Surely you have evidence… I mean you wouldn’t just lump a bunch of people you don’t like into one big straw man so you could blame them for the death of something you do like, right? And, if we have “no standards of excellence, except popularity”, are you saying that popularity and excellence cannot coexist? In the case of “classical” music, they coexisted just fine for centuries… But then the music changed DRASTICALLY after WWI and maybe THAT is part of the problem? And as any good Ayn Rand capitalist will tell you, self-reliance is fundamental… So “having no sense of responsibility to anything except one’s face in the mirror” ought to be a good thing, right? Maybe that is unfair… One thing’s for sure though, the idea that nobody is teaching the values of western democracy is absurd.
I think Richard raises an important point. Multiculturalism and other cultural memes have taught us to value all sorts of previously neglected art, and that’s wonderful, but they have also made it uncool to say that one type of culture is in any way superior to another. So if classical music is no better than lowest common denominator pop, why aspire to appreciate it?
Math trumps the cultural catch 22…. So if classical is “superior”, let us prove it with science (not racist rants).
Is it culturally insensitive that scientists prefer Arabic numerals over their cumbersome Roman competitors? Of course not! They really ARE better and everybody sees that now. Similarly, we shouldn’t let identity politics blind us to the fact that classical music’s baby, western tonality, has been embraced by ALL cultures too.
If we all knew the current science, it would be easy to make a case for the mathematical superiority of classical while sidestepping the minefield of identity politics. Music is math in motion after all. And genius level classical (Bach, Mozart, and a few others) demonstrably balances more competing variables over longer periods of time.
Unfortunately, we don’t all have the math chops for fourier transform (a.k.a “overtones”, the scientific basis for consonance and dissonance) or linear approximation of curvature (Bach’s curvy handwritten note stems, aka calculus). And we don’t all eagerly devour psychoacoustic research (how the ears and brain process and even CREATE sound). However, all recognize that the filter of time concentrates quality as fads are forgotten, right?
Since we can’t resist proclamations of superiority, let’s at least raise the bar and be mathematically precise about it.
Because it’s different, because it offers something of its own. No need to rank musical genres to make any of them desirable. All people need is to feel that there’s something worthwhile there. I don’t go through life looking for things “better” than what I already know. I was moved almost beyond words, for instance, by Manchester by the Sea, which to me was a profound work of art. I didn’t need to ask whether it was better or not better than the art films of the ’60s that got me interested in film when they came out, and helped form my taste. I’m happy to let Manchester sit next to L’avventura in my mind, with no need for comparative ranking.
Titanic sinking. Not enough lifeboats. We can’t save them all… Triage requires courage.
Greg, you’ve been sounding the alarm on the downward trendlines for a long time. You of all people know we can’t save all of the orchestras, that much of the repertoire will fall out of common performance, and that pop doesn’t really NEED advocacy.
If those of us who LOVE classical won’t even consider the idea of ranking and prioritizing, then we’ll have no say in how the few remaining lifeboats are filled.
Well, if classical music is no better than pop, if Mozart and Led Zeppelin are on equal foot, then what’s the point of promoting classical music? Your viewpoint is as detrimental as “picking up a fight” with people. Of course there is pop music with depth, the same way there’s shallow classical, and often I realize that even pop music is way over people’s heads, but it’s in no way the majority of it. Most of what plays in the radio or gets awarded is pure garbage. Really, there’s no other way of putting it.
People are happy with it, however. They don’t care about art, depth or expression, they want noise. They’re afraid of silence. We live in the era of narcissism, everyone is a mirror of everyone, they don’t want to feel alone nor do they want to look for other things in music (or books, or whatever) because that would immediately make them stand out as a “weirdo” or a psychopath (one day I found out that some people believe that only mental cases listen to classical). You wouldn’t be one of them anymore, you would be something else.
Actually, the worst things to happen to classical music were this label (technically, each composer is a genre), the false opposition between popular and classical and the idea, born in the 19th century, that art music is only for the rich and educated. Then the mass industry came and filled the gap. I don’t think there’s a way out of this.
Lastly, there’s this fear of making people feel inferior, as if there was something wrong with being superior. It’s the death of effort. Whenever I find someone I think is better than I am, I take interest in them. The higher classes were once taken as a model by the inferior classes. They didn’t feel that those above of them were a menace, which seems to be the norm whenever someone shows hints of being smarter, prettier or richer than someone else. Nobody is forcing anyone to follow anyone, and I, at least, am not in a quest to suppress any form of popular expression, be it music, painting or amateur porn. You can’t teach anything to people who are hysterically over-reactive and don’t recognize you know something that they might want to learn.
Anyone who’s worked in the pop music business in recent decades or has worked in the trenches, tying to get a new audience for classical music, knows how receptive many people are to new ideas, new thoughts. Despite your giant, quick generalizations about how just horrible everything is now. Not my reality. I don’t see that.
And classical music doesn’t have to be “Better” to be enticing. Or needed. It does something all its own, something different from other genres. No need to make extensive comparisons, to wring our handfs over rankings or differences. Just listen. As the people do who come to classical music for the first time. In my experience, and the experience of many people I know, or know about, people have a chance to hear classical music and like it. Simple as that. No need to ponder very deeply. What we need to ponder is how to set those opportunities up, so people can find them and respond to them. But luckily there are many examples now of how to do that.
Yes, just listening is enough, but it takes time to get acquainted to the music, specially when it’s a new listener. The usual answer was “I have better things to do”, followed by a hand gesture to take a smartphone out of one’s pocket and log in to Facebook.
It seems like we live in different worlds. I’ve seen so much of what I described that I’ve given up long ago.
“Whenever I find someone better than I am, I take interest in them.” But you’re clueless on pop!
Bottom line, Greg (and many others on this forum) know WAY more about pop culture than you. This is obvious from your posts. And you can’t go toe to toe on “pop is trash” and “people who like it are lazy” and expect to win anybody over if you can’t speak eloquently and accurately about pop culture. Yet I’m torn because you show Ayn Rand-ian leanings toward selfless celebration of quality, whatever the source. This is a NOBLE cause I’ve often championed, despite its bastardization by the far right.
If you want to advocate for classical’s superiority EFFECTIVELY, follow the lead of Rand’s greatest hero, John Galt. It was his mastery of SCIENCE, after all, that gave him the trump card over the “trash” obsessed “I want everything for free” plebians. SIDE NOTE: what I wouldn’t give for an elite compound in the mountains protected by an invisible force shield that can only be penetrated by extreme wealth… Oh wait, we have that, it is called Vail. But I digress… At the core of all science you will find the purest most beautiful (and literally universal) abstraction that a genius human can ever hope to comprehend: MATH.
No “all is equal” identity politics BS can make 2+2=5, right?
So prove that classical has universally verifiable superiority (more variables, more complexity, deeper universal language of tonality derived from the physics of sound, etc.). Use SCIENCE, not your cultural gut. Sidestep the entire identity politics minefield and create a truly “superior” argument. Come up with your own “Rearden Metal” or “Galt Motor” or whatever. Basically, up your game, man!
This is not easy… It requires deep knowledge of many fields of math (all basic math at least up to multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and fourier transform for overtones, with at least conceptual understanding of both forms of relativity and most recently, string theory). It will also require that you are up on the latest psychoacoustic research (the science of how the brain and ears process sound and create “missing tones” when master composers space out their chords just so). It would also help if your inner ear were developed enough to hear a full score in your head Beethoven style, from the page. If you’ve mastered all that (takes about 20 years usually), maybe people will recognize your superior intellect and gravitate toward your views.
Now, if you’d rather take the “inferior” easy and “trashy” intellectual approach of simply confirming your own cultural gut feelings with a predictable rant, go ahead. I hope Greg keeps allowing your posts… At least you have an honest ATTITUDE that hasn’t been corrupted by the modern cultural thinking.
But classytroll is trying to win the war… You’re cultural superiority claims don’t help. You just polarize the other side that much more, confirming all THEIR implicit biases (yes, liberals have them too) and round and round we go.
There are probably LOTS of people out there who WANT to agree with you… But you’ve got to give them better reasons. Prove your superiority hypothesis scientifically, if you’re up to the challenge.