YOURS, MINE AND OURS

posted by James Reel

    Greg Sandow’s blog is devoted to serious and provocative thinking about the future of classical music. He’s a populist, though, and many of his ideas strike the traditionalists among us as fatal dumbing-down of the music we love. I don’t count myself among Greg’s detractors, but I do think he’s off base in a recent post:

    For a long time, I’ve thought that the classical music world needs to embrace other kinds of music. Why? At first the idea might not make sense to some people. We don’t ask reggae stars to acknowledge country music; we’d be surprised if Wynton Marsalis went on TV with Bjork. So why should classical musicians (and classical music institutions) reach out to any other musical style?
    Well, there are many reasons. … The classical music world is trying to figure out its relationship to the rest of the world. The rest of the world listens to pop (and jazz, and country, and hiphop, and dance music, and world music, and Latin music, and lots more). We live, as far as they’re all concerned, in a closed little box. We need to show them we’re human, too, and that we live in the same world they do. And that many of us listen to their music, which—because we live in the same world—is our music, too.

    Yes, some of us classical types do live in a closed little box. But don’t the people who listen exclusively to Top 40 radio, or the ever-narrowing niches of other terrestrial and satellite services, live in boxes of their own? The only difference is that their boxes are a lot more crowded than ours.
    Different kinds of music serve different purposes, and every kind of music serves an honorable role in society. (Well, I’m not so sure that the gangsta variety of rap is in any way honorable, but that’s the exception.) I’m not being arrogant when I say that Daniel Powter and the Red Hot Chile Peppers do not serve any of my particular purposes, and I’m not ashamed to admit that Mozart and Shostakovich in no way can serve the purposes of certain other people.
    All my friends are intelligent, but our musical tastes do not necessarily intersect. So what? They don’t think I’m a snob because I get more out of classical music than any other variety, and I don’t think they’re uncultured idiots because they prefer something else. We have achieved peaceful coexistence without pretending that we’re alike in our aesthetic needs and choices.
    Yes, over the years I have encouraged one or two of my most musically knowledgable and omnivorous friends to lend me CDs of good music that lies well beyond my usual interest. And yes, I consequently appreciate how much serious, well-crafted music there is in the non-classical sphere. Not much of it engages me, though, aside from the more rhythmically and harmonically intriguing varieties of “world music” and its spinoffs. Even if my friends did convert me into a fan of Radiohead or Björk or Lyle Lovett, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to turn my friends into Bohuslav Martinu groupies. Again, so what?
    If “they” ever come to appreciate some of “our” music, it won’t because we make a show of enjoying theirs. It’s like parents trying to “relate” to their teenagers by using teen slang and dressing in an age-inappropriate manner. The kids don’t relate; they’re just embarrassed.