Yes

by Greg Blitzen

Created on: January 18, 2011

Classical music is not dead yet but it is most certainly on life support, as the genre is being forced on to the rough shoulder of the information superhighway.  Who could have imagined that the evolution of the Internet and cell phones, once the exclusive domain of universities, government and business travelers, would in twenty years push aside live performances, radio broadcasts and school music programs through their instant access to pop culture and media?

Technology and the instant access to multiple media forms have accelerated the decline of classical music in ways that have yet to be fully understood or studied.  American orchestras who are struggling with managing rising operational costs against the grim backdrop of sagging subscription sales and a decrease in donations and sustaining funds are engaged in a final battle for survival as they try to defend their territory from a multiple-front assault.

The key ingredient that makes any cultural offering exciting and viable is exposure.  In order to build an audience for classical music there must be exposure at several levels.  The largest threat comes from school districts, many that are broke and forced to fund only those courses and offerings that are considered "essential" or "critical" to a student's academic success.  Ending music and art programs for the sake of math and science may fulfill a state's narrow definition of basic skills but when has the government ever been a bellwether in the arena of educational excellence and success?  The reality of this trend has already begun to reap disastrous effects on classical music.  Young children are no longer exposed to songs and scales and string classes, orchestra and band practices and children's concerts.  It is an unfortunate fact that the bow and rosin have been replaced by a smart phone and a data plan.

Seismic cultural shifts in America have also broken the foundations of classical music and in the U.S. particularly there seems to have developed an ignorance-fueled disdain for anything pertaining to dead, western European white males.  While it is a historical fact that the majority of classical music was dominated (composed, performed and paid for) by white males it should be pointed out here in this article that today's planners and artistic movers and shakers have taken the baton handed off by their western European predecessors, pushing the genre into exciting new directions, integrating music from cultures all over the world.  It still is a high art discipline; after all it takes more than a sequencing keyboard and a drum machine to create truly great classical music for live performances and recordings.  It is still an art that requires the courses in music theory, ear training, composition and orchestration, music history and counterpoint, among others.

Even the boldest attempts to reinvent classical music into something it is not has only had the temporary effect of stemming the tide of disinterest and neglect of the art form.  Being an art form also distinguishes classical music from its destructive little brother 'pop music and video' which is rapidly fomenting the increasingly hedonistic surrender of American culture.  Classical music takes work, it takes thought and imagination.  Aristotle wrote "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance".  How this quote now falls on deaf ears in a culture that despises itself too much to even peek into the inward significance of classical music, let alone their day to day existence.

Classical music is a socializing art form.  It brings people of all types together to write and create it, then to an audience of people to physically get up and drive to the venue to listen to it.  This process swims upstream against the de-socializing effects of modern technology.  There is nothing social about social media.  As human beings there is no more effective method of communication than face to face, social interaction.  So much more can be said with a smile, a lift of an eyebrow or a grimace than the cold, impersonal text riding in off the cell towers.  So, it should also be that so much more can be experienced by attending a live performance of classical music than by downloading a digital recording of the same works, compressed and processed into metallic, bitter tasting bits and bytes.  There is no PC or smart phone on the planet earth that can evoke the emotions more than a live performance of Mahler's 2nd Symphony or the magnificent Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, filling a hall with sounds and vibrations that leave a lifelong, visceral impression.

Classical music will die a slow death for sure.  It will be placed on the endangered species list of dead art forms, kept alive in a few places as living museum pieces where funding still exists alongside the Dodo bird and the Latin language.  Its fate is sealed unless we have the courage to beat back the forces of the simplistic populists and maintain classical music's place in the cultural pie.

Learn more about this author, Greg Blitzen.
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