peripathetic

Psst - classical music is dead. Again.
Apparently. Norman Lebrecht, writing in La Scena Musicale, prophesies that 2004 will mark the end of the classical record industry.

I was just discussing something like this with Andy last night. While listening to Tori Amos's Little Earthquakes, it occurred to me that 'pop' (for want of a better word) artists of today have a very much greater fanbase than classical artists for 2 reasons: 1. Pop artists are alive and performing live month on month, year on year; and: 2. They write and perform their own work. Tori's music is great music, and she is alive. And it is because of these things, as well as her overt way of being in 'the emotional present' for so many people, that she is recognised so much, bought so much, and flocked to in live performance so much.

Classical music, so the theory goes anyway, is dying because it's irrelevant. It can't be understood or enjoyed by many people. It just doesn't have much appeal. What crap.

But OK. Devil's advocate. To put it in modern talk, classical artists aren't 'artists' at all. The artists are the men and women who wrote the songs or tracks, and they're dead. Sometimes hundreds and hundreds of years dead. OK, so that's one big nail in the coffin to start with.

It also implies that the thousands and thousands of classical CDs are nothing but 'covers' - versions of original music, recorded by some musicians who didn't actually write the original in the first place.

The lyrics are all shit, and mostly really highbrow - when they're there at all. There's rarely any beat. There are no electronics. The performers look boring as fuck. You can't buy the video. Boring people - releasing nothing but hundreds of covers - of thousands of boring songs - by dead people - whose names we don't know and who don't care about us, who never knew us. These are real issues, real opinions! Anyone who thinks this sort of music can actually survive is crazy!

I don't agree. Classical music is largely lyricless, sure. Storyline is abandoned - but in favour of chords, harmonies, *music* which everyone listens to anyway! You take a chord in a Tori song, or a Black Sabbath song, or a Royksopp song. Maybe it's quiet, and long, and maybe it's got words over it, and maybe it's followed by a whole load of other chords which make you feel wistful and sad and happy all at the same time. And hey presto - classical music contains this too. Maybe even exactly the same series of chords. Maybe producing the same mood! We love Tori - or whoever we love - because something in the music gets into our heartstrings. As long as it gets there, it doesn't matter who it's by, or what they're called, or how long they lived, or whether or not we can write to them and have their autograph.

Andy loves Tori, and Fiona Apple, and Marilyn Monroe. He doesn't draw a line between Tori and Marilyn because Tori's alive and Marilyn's not. He sings along to the living soul in music, not the dead body in the coffin. He sings along to the Tori who soars in her songs, and doesn't need to know that Tori is currently alive to love her work. So if there are just no lines to be drawn in the sands of time, there's no reason to dismiss Bach in favour of Nirvana!

No reason at all. Unless of course you never heard anything by Bach in your life.

Classical music is mismarketed so continuously and solidly that it's criminal. Sure, don't alienate your core market - people who naturally like classical better than they like pop. But don't alienate people who like pop! The reason that classical lovers think they don't like pop is that pop is niche-marketed. The reason pop lovers think they don't like classical is that classical is niche-marketed. But worse - classical insults pop lovers by advertising itself to pop-lovers as, well, pop-y. They know it's not. It's just patronising of the classical market to say "This track by [insert composer's name] is really quite like your Tori Amos, so you'll love it" and expect Toriphiles to agree.

Lebrecht: "High in corporate towers, overpaid executives blame a lack of compelling new repertoire, of charismatic artists and of public tolerance for long-winded classics - in short, they blame everthing except their own failure to invest in talent... Hurt and confused, these artists refuse to admit their own assault on the classical economy in the years when the money flowed. In the CD gold rush of the early 1990s, the Berlin Philharmonic charged ?65,000 for a symphonic disc. Their fee remains the same today, but hardly anyone bothers to make records with the world's best orchestras any more."

OK, OK, economy, marketing, blah. But what gives? Advertising and money and booklet design and press launches posters and all that irrelevant crap has a great power to convince people that being closed-minded about other music is OK. They keep getting fed more of what they effortlessly love. Tori = Tori = Tori = Tori. Feeder = Feeder = Feeder = Feeder. But Feeder doesn't equal Tori. Tori doesn't equal Massive Attack. Massive Attack doesn't equal Beethoven. You have to actively jump from one to the other.

Want to save some music that seems to be dying out? First, refuse to believe that crap, and play it to your friends. But listen to their music, too. Open minds grow. Closed ones die. Keep yours growing.