I can give you a GOOD reason to hate classical music.
For the record, I'm actually a piano teacher and devoted my life really for the last 20 years to studying, writing, and performing music. I taught in the classroom for 5 years and spent the last 2 years teaching piano privately. Yes, I do start with "classical" piano methods. I got thrown into teaching piano quite suddenly, so I used the Bastien method my first year and my more recent students started on Faber. My philosophy is simply to get the students oriented to the keyboard, learn how to read notes so they can teach THEMSELVES how to play written music, and eventually get a good elementary foundation or introduction to piano literature (the Bach and Mozart and Haydn and Mendelssohn and Liszt, maybe even some Chopin or Rachmaninov if the student is particularly gifted!). My goal is when the student gets to that point in his or her playing, the student can choose what direction he or she wants to go: Stick with classical music, enter competitions, audition for college degree programs, and so on--which will require an intense study in musical artistry. The other route has more to do with practical application of theory: Reading lead sheets, improvisation, playing by ear, composing, songwriting, playing in bands, accompanying church choirs (there is a large demand for gospel piano/keyboard players where I live), jazz/blues, and so on.
The main reason I feel that way about teaching music is that I want students to understand that music is more than just some notes on a page. I also don't want to make the mistake that many traditionalist piano teachers I know make: They focus on all the technique, cursory music theory, and teach them a few pieces, but they don't emphasize at all the listening aspect. I prefer to focus later on (when the student is ready) on the listening and creative aspects of performance.
That said, I think that people that oh-so-LOVE classical music really have no clue what it is they're listening to. First of all, music from the Baroque through the Romantic periods was not written for the everyday Joe. It was written for people with MONEY, and lots of it. The composers themselves weren't out to get rich, but they usually lived fairly comfortable lifestyles because they were good at what they did and managed to stay in demand on the local level (think about how many children Bach had, and he wasn't even "discovered" until the 1800's, LONG after his death). It bugs the CRAP out of me because these people go to their symphony concerts, listen to the music with their eyes half-closed, and comment on "how nice" it all was, like they were sipping some kind of 300-year-old wine or something. Most of these people have no concept of real upper-class life as it was back in those days, or they'd sit up in their seats a little and allow themselves to be entertained. It wasn't written for your personal relaxation!
If you actually PAY ATTENTION, you'll notice how much folk influence crept into the music of these guys. This kind of music tells a story, even if it's not necessarily something you can put into words. The wealthy, upper-class nobility could appreciate an art form that was evocative of the pastoral scenes they ruled over. This music had the power to elevate the pipe of a peasant to an idealized level that they could appreciate without having to condescend to understand the realities of life for poor people.
What's more, composers like Mozart were extremely good at writing music that appealed to such people.
But if you restrict yourself to listening to classical music (or even Baroque and Romantic), you're limiting your listening tastes to the same 300 works by the same dead Europeans.
If you want to REALLY stay true to the spirit of classical composition, you need to be aware of the folk traditions of our present day. You have the truly intellectual work of people like Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Babbitt, Boulez, Varese, and even Stravinsky. You also have the other extreme, the minimalist school of Glass, Reich, Riley, and others that incorporated even trends in popular music into their work--emphasis on tonality, motor rhythms, harmony, repetition, repetition, repetition, and the inclusion of folk elements, history, mythology, and even religion into their work. I'm thinking about Adams's opera "Nixon in China" and Glass's "portrait trilogy" opera cycle.
What I'm still waiting for is for popular music trends back in the 1980's to make a major influence on symphonic music. There is a wealth of electro-acoustic music that has also been written throughout the 1900's, a tradition that continues today, but you'll NEVER hear that on a symphony orchestra concert and RARELY in chamber recitals.
Classical music isn't crap just because it's crap; classical music is crap because no one advocates for new music in the broader "classical" and art music world. I think someone should get out there and lead boycotts of performing ensembles, ESPECIALLY publicly funded ones, until they agree to start programming concerts of music by composers who are actually still alive!
That's just my rant, so my apologies. But that's why I hate classical music.
Roughly half my musical career was actually spent as a clarinet player. If I ever have to hear the Mozart clarinet concerto again, it will only be too soon.
20 May 2010, 12:51 pm
