A millennial's rant on classical music

[Fluffy]

I've been wanting for a long time to unload all my issues with classical music, but didn't really find a judgment-free platform to do it on. From my short time as a reader in this forum, I believe there are enough people here who are classical music enthusiasts that are capable of having a relaxed and intelligent discussion about this topic. I just want to say ahead of time that I have no intention of personally hurting anyone, and what I write here represents my opinions alone (and possibly other people like me, but here I only speak for myself). And most importantly, I write here in the hope of changing my mind and maybe realize things I haven't known or thought of before.

As a starting point, this rant is somewhat a continuation of this old thread:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ou-get-everyone-to-like-classical-music.1729/

I wanted to respond to the question in that thread's title with my view on the subject as a relatively young person (29) that has been exposed many times to classical music, but has never been able to take any interest in it. And I'm not talking about hearing some accidental Mozart on the radio. My father (and also my mother to a lesser degree) is a huge classical music buff with a massive CD collection that I've heard in its entirety probably multiple times through the course of my life, as he played it in the house and in his car. I've been to several classical concerts with my parents, and even at operas (at Verona amphitheatre no less). I took piano lessons through my childhood, and can recognize by name quite a few classical pieces, and some of the easier ones I knew how to play at some point (forgot all my training by now though).

And despite all of this (or possibly because all of this…), I really hate classical music. I never listen to it by my own free will, I avoid concerts like the plague, and every time I tried to listen to something classical that might be "the one" to turn me, I got bored super-fast and didn't make it all the way through. There is no period or composer or instrument that can make me sit all the way through a piece. Music from the modern period and early periods (baroque and earlier) are especially agonizing, while to the romantic and classical periods I can listen as background music if I must. Opera and anything with singers sound completely horrible to me.

Now, it's not an issue with the music itself, so to speak (more on this later). I don't have allergy to violins and I don't mind listening to a solo piano (I do specifically hate opera-style singing, but that's not the majority of classical music anyway). And when a classical piece is adapted to a different genre, such as jazz or rock, I can comfortably sit and listen to it all the way through. I can find myself whistling classical tunes to myself occasionally because they are so engrained in my memory.

No, the first major obstacle of classical music, is the culture of classical music. That concept encapsulates so many practices that are very alienating to anyone not coming from inside that culture.

It starts with how a lot of classical music listeners and players perceive themselves and the music they play. It's no coincidence that it's common to categorize anything that is not classical music as pop-music. There is something about the attitude of the classical music people that is condescending and self-elevating. They commonly consider their music as more sophisticated, complex, deep, human, etc, than the "popular" genres of music. Some consider classical music "universal", as if it captures something more real or basic about humanity, and thus every human can relate to it. From my point of view, classical music is merely older, that's it. The virtue of age does not make it any truer, in the same way that old religions aren't truer because of their antiquity, and old science practices aren’t more accurate because they precede the current ones. It is true that a large part of today's musical understanding and composing practices derives from what was learned by classical composers, but in the same time there are a lot of aspects to modern music that have no root in classical music. And on top of that, classical music is merely a western concept after all, and it's hardly universal to people outside Europe and the US.

Another strange aspect of the culture, is the listening habits. Listening at home is indeed not a very different affair from listening to any other genre, apart from the average lengthiness of the pieces. But listening to a performance is a whole different beast. You need to dress up whether you are a spectator of a performer, go to a huge concert hall and sit totally quietly for hours at a time, clapping at the appropriate moments. The performers themselves are dressed like they are about to get married, and usually play with all these weird unnatural mannerisms. Of course these concerts are usually quite pricey, and to fully enjoy the pieces one should be deeply familiar with them and maintain focus for the duration of the performance. Although from my experiences, apart from the very lively conductor or soloist on stage, the audience usually resembles more of a funeral crowd than one that is engaged with the music they are listening to. It's such a different experience from any other modern music listening experience, that it's very hard to accustom yourself to it if you are used to go to 'normal' pop and rock concerts. And I don't see anything deeper of more profound in that way of experiencing live music. Sitting stiffly and quietly in a chair seems a lot less profound than standing, moving, dancing, and physically engaging with the music you are hearing.

The final cultural weirdness is the separation between composer and performer. It's to be expected from a genre whose composers mostly past away years ago and require many dozens of players to play most of its repertoire. But still, the fact that you not only need to find the right piece, but also the right performance in the right venue with the right orchestra being conducted by the right conductor, in order to listen to the truest or best form of that piece… it makes things very frustrating. The fact that there is not 'definite' version of a piece (akin to the album version of a song), puts more steps in the way of an uninitiated person's ability to appreciate the actual music itself.

That brings me to the minor but still crucial obstacle preventing me from actually appreciating classical music – the music. As I said before, there are pieces that I can enjoy humming and don't mind listening to in the background, and the instruments of the genre are fine by themselves. I love film scores and they are made of the same instruments and arranging techniques of classical music. The major issue I have is, for a lack of a better word, the overall blandness.

There is some percentage of classical music that is instantly catchy and widely recognizable, but the core repertoire is made of numerous symphonies and concertos that are mostly drone out and downright boring. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the type to stick to just short catchy songs. Most of my favorite music is made of long and complex prog-rock, jazz and metal pieces and songs, that take multiple listens to fully appreciate, and sometimes require deep understanding in musical theory to get to the bottom of. I am no stranger to deep diving into an intricate musical piece and exploring it to its fullest. I enjoy loud and energetic music as much as quiet and emotional one, and neither dynamics nor emotional content scares me.

But every time I hear a classical piece, huge chunks of musical potential are simply missing. The rhythmic content of these pieces is plain and groove-less. The harmonic content is often too consonant to a point of predictability, and every 'experimental' aspect of harmony or melody is very primitive compared to even the simplest of jazz or prog-rock. The constraints of the same typical orchestral instruments in all the pieces leads to dynamics that are pretty limited in their expression – they can't convey the exploding emotional effects of an electronic bass drop or searing guitar solos. The very long pieces like symphonies seem to me like they could be shortened by 80% while not losing any of the actual interesting parts. Most of it is transitions leading to build ups leading to wind downs and so forth without a real point to it all. And for some reason, modern classical music went deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of heady academic avant-garde, instead of trying to produce music that actually connect with people that don't have a bachelor degree in music. I see no justification in any art form that is produced to be consumed by only its producer.

Those are the main reasons why I don't like classical music. But this is frustrating, because I want to like it. I know that a lot of the modern music that I consume (whether prog-rock or films scores) was inspired by classical music. I hear all the people that tell about their transcendent experiences from listening to it, and I really believe them that they had those experiences, while I can't imagine having those myself listening to this music. It's not that I'm not getting all the emotional and spiritual fulfillment one needs from the music I listen to, because I do. But if there is something more to explore that I haven't been able to, it makes me feel like I'm missing out on a whole range of new possible musical sensations. From the little classical pieces that I do like, I can tell there is untapped potential for enjoyment, that is so far have laid just out of reach. The obstacles I listed above are not easy to overcome, but I hope there is a way to do so that will start me on a journey of rediscovery of this genre of music.

Thank you for your time, to whoever managed to read up to this point. Your thoughts, suggestions, and objections are welcome

 

[VMAT4]

That was cathartic Fluffy. Now, sit back, have a Manhattan, and listen to something you like!

Or, maybe check out the Indie Classical playlists on Spotify.

 

[beefkabob]

Snort! Nobody should ever have to defend their tastes in films, music, and books.

 

[garbulky]

For the longest time I was disappointed with classical. Instruments were flat lacked dynamics and overall everything sounded blurred and lifeless. I upgraded amps and speakers. And then I realized just how good it was

 

[gene_stl]

It would be a dull world if we all liked exactly the same thing. I feel pretty much the same way you feel about classical music only about so called popular music. For me, Rock and Roll essentially ended in about 1974 or so. I find popular musicians very often undisciplined and not that skilled and their music repetitive and boring. Mostly the secret progression C F G7. I detest it when white boys try to pretend they are black bluesmen. When I am surfing channels and see some current young rock band , wearing sun glasses and pork pie hats I think to myself "Yawn , guys its been done before about feefty years ago!"

If I could only listen to Bach and Mozart I would still be making wonderful discoveries frequently. I don't know why you are "blocked" from enjoying classical music. Maybe for the same reason I don't care for the majority of current rock and roll.

 

[dc655321]

The rhythmic content of these pieces is plain and groove-less.

Lack of rhythm will surely harsh thy buzz.

 

[Cahudson42]

For the longest time I was disappointed with classical. Instruments were flat lacked dynamics and overall everything sounded blurred and lifeless. I upgraded amps and speakers. And then I realized just how good it was

Even better, a good headphone system. To me, a good rendition of Beethoven 7th on my HE400i is a totally different experience from speakers. It's loaded with detail I never hear on speakers, and comes across as a celebration of being alive.

 

[scott wurcer]

You could write a similar piece on any art, film, painting, literature, etc. It ends up being about you not the other way around.

 

[Dogen]

I think your beef is with classical-music culture, not the music itself.
I would agree with some of your criticism. The culture today is largely petrified and resistant to new composers and works. But much classical, in its day, was a mass-market popular art form. Even in the first part of the 20th century, many people outside the upper class were familiar with classical works and could play an instrument. So I’d suggest trying to separate the music from the culture that surrounds it. Can you listen with fresh ears?

 

[Ceburaska]

FIFY. I just mentally replaced “classical music” with “hip-hop” and instantly agreed with you.
Really, don’t worry, tastes are individual. Being unable to appreciate humanity’s greatest art form in no way signals anything about yourself

 

[oivavoi]

OP, you get a like for an excellent and thoughtful comment!

Short answer: I don't think you will ever love classical music. You obviously know it, more than most people actually, and it still isn't for you. Or perhaps you will suddenly start liking it. But I would bet not. People have different taste. UNLESS you are actually hindered by your correct - IMO - aversion to classical music culture.

I (m 39) on the other hand, love classical. And in particular baroque and some modern stuff... I've played the piano since I was eight, first classical then jazz and now back to some classical again - and I've been singing in a semi pro choir for many years. I also love jazz, metal, electronica, pop, and more though. Having said that, I completely agree about the culture that surrounds classical music. I also hate it. That's why I'm very picky about which venues I go to, and only pick those who have an atmosphere I connect with.

But I can't escape that there's an emotional richness and depth in some classical music that I seldom find in much commercial popular music. With important exceptions - I often can find the same richness and depth in jazz, folk music, some of the more artsy rock and pop, etc. But soaking myself in Bach, or Poulenc, or Pärt, or Macmillan... there are very few things which give me similar experiences. My feet don't start moving, like they do from Fela Kuti or James Brown or contemporary EDM. But my heart starts beating. That's how it is

 

[ahofer]

Wow. Quite a rant. I can’t tell you what to like, but there are some clues within your rant that suggest your breadth of experience is not quite as wide as it could be to generalize.
Btw, I have never really enjoyed opera. And the big venue concert audience is definitely old.

However, “too consonant to a point of predictability ”. You really don’t get around. Brahms, Debussy, and Dvorak created the dense chord structures you like in jazz and prog rock. Serialism (which I don’t really care for) left consonance far behind. New Romantics use a lot of dissonance and both use a ton of rhythmic tension.

Concerts are formal in behavior but not in dress. I go in jeans every week or two. We go to recitals at Juilliard, full of young, enthusiastic people. We were in Prague recently. They still dress up there. But in NY that’s long over.

And your characterization of classical musicians is just waaaaay wrong. Many snobby listeners perhaps, but not the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable ones. I know dozens of professional classical musicians, and they are all into all kinds of music and most of them are fairly hard partiers as well. If you listen to Bruce Adolphe’s Inside Chamber Music podcasts you will get more of a sense of the dominant classical musician personality that I know. And he can play Harold Arlen or Thelonious Monk as readily as Schumann. I just attended this one Tuesday night.

https://www.chambermusicsociety.org...mber-music-with-bruce-adolphe-october-9-2019/

(you'll hear a lot of simultaneous F/E#and F# in this piece, hardly a consonant interval, driven through every possible key signature)

I like Jazz and some prog rock. If I had to recommend classical for a jazz/prog rock listener I would go to Chamber Music (Brahms, late Beethoven, Dvorak), and in Symphonic-Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, perhaps Hindemith. For Piano-Schumann, Ravel, Debussy, Chopin. Nobody has to like it, but this is complex, rhythmically and harmonically challenging music, full of romantic emotion, by people who listened to vernacular music in their cultures and built towering castles of inventive harmony and variation around it.

Most importantly, Dvorak single-handed my changed the course of American music, with direct influence lines (via teaching) to Gershwin and Duke Ellington, rejecting the hidebound German tradition (listen to the above podcast for details, it's really pretty cool, although Adolphe is...loquacious)

I kind of agree with you about some of the atmosphere around performance, and some of the snobby attitude. As usual, the snobs are the insecure and less knowledgeable ones, though. This is an AMAZING artistic and craftsmanship tradition, and I hate to see hasty generalizations about it.

Best of luck to you. As you can tell, I’m into this stuff.

 

[Soniclife]

I agree with a lot of that personally. I don't really connect with most classical, it's something about the ornamentation in the music, it too often sounds twee to me.

And for some reason, modern classical music went deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of heady academic avant-garde, instead of trying to produce music that actually connect with people that don't have a bachelor degree in music.

You say you like film scores, this is often 'modern classical' (got to love an oxymoronic genre), the music isn't limited to just the minimal avant-garde stuff, it's just as broad as anything else. It took me ages to work this out, but when I did and listened to the newer stuff it clicked instantly once I found composers I liked. So pick a piece from a film score you really like and see who composed it, explore their other things.
Going to concerts of composers who are still alive is very different from the dead guy stuff, the audience is much younger, there is no hint of a dress code, the composer may be conducting themselves, there is a reference recording (like a studio album) of lots of the works.

On the other hand I think it's good people like different things, so if it does not work for you embrace your own opinions.

P.S. Think I will go and listen to Jacqueline du Pré trying to saw her cello in half, nothing boring about that record.

 

[REK2575]

The real point of this effusion is...?

So, there's a lot you deeply dislike about classical music, both the culture of classical music and the music itself -- to wit, sure, you are 100% entitled to that opinion. No one can tell you you are 'wrong' for disliking classical music. You dislike it, you have your reasons, your reasons are sufficient reasons for you.

What I don't get is the "I *want* to like classical music" part of the post.

Why do you *want* to like it? You've made abundantly clear that you feel that, in itself, classical music is too constrained by conventions both cultural and aesthetic to be rewarding to you.

By saying you really 'want' to like classical music, you are implying there's something classical music provides that must be fulfilling and worthwhile, but you just can't figure out what that is.

The great preponderance of what you've written clearly leads one to conclude that, no, you don't actually believe that. You find the music dull, antiquated, expressively limited, hampered by bizarre and elitist conventions.

Why don't you, as an irritating song not long ago had it, "Let it Go" - ? Classical music's not for you. That's completely fine, no one can tell you you're 'wrong' for thinking this way.

As someone who deeply loves classical music, I'd say that some of your criticisms are valid. Many are straw-man arguments. Others are simply wrong. I agree that classical music is beset by stifling conventions that originated in the 19th-century concert hall -- the attire, the devotional silence, etc. The strictures against when you can and cannot 'clap' during a performance are ludicrous (No clapping after individual movements! Only at the end of the full piece!) -- I personally hate this kind of thing and think it does classical music as a cultural institution no favors.

You're quite incorrect when you claim the following, however:
"But every time I hear a classical piece, huge chunks of musical potential are simply missing. The rhythmic content of these pieces is plain and groove-less. The harmonic content is often too consonant to a point of predictability, and every 'experimental' aspect of harmony or melody is very primitive compared to even the simplest of jazz or prog-rock. The constraints of the same typical orchestral instruments in all the pieces leads to dynamics that are pretty limited in their expression – they can't convey the exploding emotional effects of an electronic bass drop or searing guitar solos. The very long pieces like symphonies seem to me like they could be shortened by 80% while not losing any of the actual interesting parts. Most of it is transitions leading to build ups leading to wind downs and so forth without a real point to it all. "

Fine if you feel this way. But no one who has a real knowledge of classical music could claim that it is rhythmically and harmonically simplistic, structurally static and monotonous, emotionally hollow, and so on. You are entitled to dislike the music, to be sure. But these are impressions masquerading as 'facts' which are objectively wrong.

 

[JJB70]

People like what they like, taste in a particular musical genre or performer is no more right or wrong than a taste for any other (despite what people might think about music they don't like). I'm an enthusiast of classical music and opera but I also like some blues (particularly the piano rhythm and blues of performers such as Dr John, Professor Longhair and Alain Toussaint, I like some country, and am quite the fan of the Who. And the Carpenters, some dismiss the Carpenters as muzak lift music but their arrangements and the voice of Karen Carpenter were wonderful.

I sort of get some of the stuff about the culture of classical music, but I'd argue you will find similar complaints about any branch of art. Some classical music critics are undoubtedly pompous and full of their own importance but that is just as true of any genre or art form. There is a bit of a society culture around some parts of classical music but I find most concert goers are regular people in it because they love the music and I find concert audiences to be quite a diverse bunch.

And what is classical music? We're talking about music spanning hundreds of years, with a diversity which is hard to overstate. Some classical fans are undoubtedly a bit hidebound (but so are fans in any genre) and over the last few months I've been making a conscious effort to listen to more modern and contemporary classical music but even if you look at 19th century music the range and diversity is huge. I'm a huge Bruckner fan, some of my other favourites are Prokofiev, Schubert and Shostakovich, as well as Beethoven. Enjoy what you like and like what you enjoy.

 

[Swtoby]

When new, classical was the popular music of the time. But, I get what you're saying. I ventured into classical after getting into film scores like Star Wars and Star Trek. My favorites would be more modern stuff from Vaughan Williams, Sibelius and Copland, but a lot can be a chore to get thru for me. The Brahms Requiem for example. My opinion as I get older is if I don't like something I'm not missing anything.

 

[Ceburaska]

People like what they like, taste in a particular musical genre or performer is no more right or wrong than a taste for any other (despite what people might think about music they don't like). I'm an enthusiast of classical music and opera but I also like some blues (particularly the piano rhythm and blues of performers such as Dr John, Professor Longhair and Alain Toussaint, I like some country, and am quite the fan of the Who. And the Carpenters, some dismiss the Carpenters as muzak lift music but their arrangements and the voice of Karen Carpenter were wonderful.

Don’t forget Karen’s drumming!

 

[Cosmik]

As I said in the thread you mentioned (I think), there's classical, and there's classical. For someone to say they like 'classical' is like saying they like Abba and King Crimson and Talking Heads and Black Sabbath and Ed Sheeran, equally. If so, they are probably revealing something about themselves. I love some classical - about 0.1% of it.

 

[Cosmik]

I think we need to understand something about music: out of the possible permutations of notes on a keyboard and rhythms thereof, only a very small proportion of them are worth anything. And also, the beauty of these permutations is in the mind of the listener - it doesn't need a great artist to come up with them; they could be picked out of randomness by the listener. The composer may also be the listener, picking out the good permutations and developing them.

Rules and conventions are probably necessary to achieve the greatest effect - by breaking them. Much 'classical music' comes from a time when those rules were rigid and conservative. Those rules are long gone, so I fail to see how anyone can be "passionate" about Mozart - it isn't breaking any rules that anyone (except for a very unusual child) has grown up with.

 

[Soniclife]

And the Carpenters, some dismiss the Carpenters as muzak lift music but their arrangements and the voice of Karen Carpenter were wonderful.

I was one of those people, then somehow the video overran recording something and recorded the whole of a documentary about them. I know get why Sonic Youth like them, and reference them.