Excerpts? Applications? Visuals? Why should classical music stop trying to become pop music? classical music

IIf you’re reading this, you probably also know the essential power of the music we call classical to shape and change your life. This power of connection and empathy is a miracle of human creativity, and something everyone is entitled to. This is despite decades of underfunding of music education and the entire sector in this country; Although generations of the amazing innovations of its practitioners have been ignored by one government after another; Despite the woes of tech companies that will replace human-made music with royalty-free AI, given half a chance. With all these pressures and more, it’s no wonder classical music is in a psychological state of defensiveness and constant struggle for relevance, and ends up trying to do things on the terms set by streaming companies and social media, rather than by the art form or the artists themselves.

The blessing and curse of classicism is that it demands our indirect attention and time, making it unfit for purpose in the second quarter of the twenty-first century. What to do with hour-long symphonies and evening operas in a cultural feedback loop with ever-shorter attention spans and a media landscape in thrall to the playlist, the reel, the image, the moment? Who has time for time?

So the question is: How can classical music’s demands for attention be reconciled in today’s world of algorithmic excess? And no one really knows. Social media engagement is one thing, but how the classics experience must respond to the demands of the moment is a cause of embarrassment and potential opportunity.

The embarrassment comes in what can easily happen when classical music tries to appeal to children in new forms. Visuals! Applications! Short excerpts instead of entire symphonies! All of which can be said condescendingly: We’re just like the popular cultures you love: We’re cool too! With our public support, private care and expensive tools. No, you’re not.

The opportunity is more interesting, and is present in projects such as Barokksolisten’s Alehouse Sessions, Britten Sinfonia’s Surround Sound Playlist Events, London Symphony Orchestra’s Half-Six Fix, and my BBC Radio 3 colleague Georgia Mann’s classic DJ events. Most recently, it has been featured in the newly launched Classical Mondays at Ronnie Scott’s in London, whose programs will include Vivaldi, Bach, Astor Piazzolla and Florence Price, and performances on the Small Stage will include Elena Urioste and pianist Tom Poster, The Chiniki! Orchestra and Laura van der Heyden.

Even if the repertoire on opening night seemed predictable (Gershwin, Bernstein), the Ronnie’s listening culture could make it the perfect setting for classical programs that connect the improvisational roots of music by everyone from Bach to Brahms with the jazz traditions for which the Soho venue is famous.

And listening is what you want, at Ronnie Scott, in concert halls, or via headphones: whatever else it’s about, that’s what classical music demands. To experience the transformation and transcendence of this music—and all music—you have to give it something that no playlist, critic, influencer, or social media platform can offer: your time and attention.

But don’t listen to me: heed the wisdom of John Cage: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If it’s still boring, then eight. Then 16. Then 32. And in the end one discovers that it’s not boring at all.” classical music? #notboringatall.

Disco dancing with opera goat

More proof of never boring came at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics on Friday, when the massive heads of Rossini, Puccini and Verdi danced to the European disco classic, Vamos alla Playa, at the San Siro stadium. Because Rossini invented disco, they should have used his music: listen to the offbeat strings and drums that beat throughout the Cum Sancto Spiritu fugue from his Petite Messe Solonelle – one of “the sins of my old age,” as Rossini put it – and hear what I mean. As for the pieces of Verdi and Puccini, which never needed any apology in Italian culture because they are part of every human being’s natural right, they are popular music in every sense of the word. Imagine the same thing happening in Britain: statues of Britten, Elgar and Purcell dancing at the opening ceremony of our next Games? I can’t quite see it. Unfortunately.

This week Tom was listening to: The final movement of Gustav Holst’s 1912 Beni Mura: In the Streets of the Boys of Nails, in which Holst devises an unsurprising treatment of a melody he heard in Algeria. He repeats it 163 times in about seven minutes. Before Ravel Bolero, before Terry Reilly and Philip Glass, there was Beni Mura. Listen in amazement and amazement.