Why we are shutting children out of classical music

[some guy]

Originally Posted by Tom Service

I am a 33-year-old classical music critic. In my 25 years of going to concerts (and since my 20s, writing about them), I am almost always the youngest person in the audience.

Which concerts has he been going to? I am a 59 year old "classical music critic" who goes to concerts all over the world, and I have never been the youngest or the oldest person in the audience.

Originally Posted by Tom Service

Everywhere I go, from Bournemouth to Inverness, concert halls and opera houses resemble conventions for the blue-rinse brigade.

There's a reason for this. And Tom hints at it in his article, but seems oblivious to even his own hints.

Originally Posted by Tom Service

Another thing: I've noticed that bus and train stations now pipe canned classical music, day-in, day-out, through their speakers as a way of stopping young people hanging around. So toxic have the associations become, that this experiment actually works: there is evidence that playing Beethoven and Mahler has reduced antisocial behaviour on the transport network. An entire generation, aged between 10 and 30, seems radically disenfranchised from classical music.

Either there's a radical contradiction here, or "hanging around" is "antisocial." (And "hanging around" in groups is certainly "social"!!) Also, it's about here in the article that Tom's failure to define "classical music" starts to seriously handicap his thesis.

Originally Posted by Tom Service

You can experience this void at the heart of our musical culture...

This is an example of question begging. For you viewers at home, that's the technique of presenting something that needs to be proven as if it were already so. Logically, before you can refer to "this void," you have to have demonstrated that a void exists.

Originally Posted by Tom Service

More importantly, for the vast majority of children who experienced it (today's 30 to 70-year-olds), classical music was something that was theirs - not a foreign and forbidding culture.

I suppose that the real world is more complex than this particular simplification. The Music Service idea does seem from Tom's description to have been a good thing, it's loss lamentable. But I also grew up, in the 1950s, with only Hollywood music to listen to. Only by inheriting my father's half-brother's collection of 78s was I exposed fairly early to Haydn and Rachmaninoff and others. My trumpet lessons consisted of exercises. My playing time was with band music only. In spite of all that, and the ignorance of everyone around me, I made classical music my own. But it wasn't mine by any default. I made it so. For everyone around me (with one exception) until I was in high school (year ten), "classical music" was indeed a foreign and forbidding culture.

In short, Tom's chronology is not entirely accurate, I suspect even for the small geographical area he's chosen to examine.

Originally Posted by Tom Service

Ironically, it's the supposedly "difficult" new music of Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis that is now pulling in younger people.... Far from blue rinses or an over-privileged elite, this is the kind of trendy, youthful crowd you would also find at an experimental electronica gig or performance-art happening. Meanwhile, audiences for the core classical and romantic repertoires just keep getting older.

It's not ironic at all. It's perfectly normal and predictable. If the venues that are scared of performing things outside what Tom calls the "core" (core?? hahaha) "classical and romantic repertoires" keep shying away from the "core" contemporary repertoires, then aging audiences is just exactly what you'd expect to get. Duh!

In the meantime, I myself just keep getting older, too. And so do you. And I keep going to new music concerts, and experimental electronica gigs (my middle son is a dj), and performance-art happenings. I personally am not trendy, so far as I know, though in spite of my number (59, you'll recall), I suppose I have managed to remain youthful conceptually!

Originally Posted by Tom Service

Classical music will always be perceived as an elitist art form so long as we continue to deny children the chance to make it their own.

Classical music has been perceived as elitist for quite a long time, including the time of Music Service. Including times long before that was instituted. Tom himself betrays his own elitist assumptions throughout this piece, most blatantly in with the word "core" as well as in finding young people enjoying Nono to be ironic. What's ironic is when people continue to describe Stockhausen as "difficult" when he's very clearly not, except to maybe some blue-haired elitists, that is!

[waynemcevilly]

Originally Posted by waynemcevilly

I agree with Mischa that "the problem starts with narrowing down the issue to classical music exclusively..."
The entire "war against classical music" (believe me, I became aware of its existence in the working class neighborhood of my youth when I began to play Mozart around about 1942 and the neighbors took some "attitude" about it, big deal and all that-)
So let's stop making "classical music" a special case. It is music, for cryin' out loud. Music.
Music. Music. Music.
( don't ya just love this little guy? )

[myaskovsky2002]

Originally Posted by Despina41

Uh, it's also parents' responsibility to get their kids to listen to some classical. Young kids will like it if it's presented to them as more good music.

And for that I blame the older generations as well. This is not a sudden problem; we are only seeing the effects of some alienation that has been going on for a long time.

On the other hand, the music is very good, and I think as long as people have a basic curiosity and can access it (internet is great for this), it will continue to survive. It seems that a lot of people grow into it.

It also helps when you have pop"" stars like Rufus Wainwright goung around saying things like (I paraphrase) : "Contemporary music is scraping the bottom of the barrel... I hope kids demand more intensity from their music and start listening to some classical. I'll do what I can to facilitate that..."


Musicians who understand it are going to be the most passionate advocates of classical. What we need now is another Leonard Bernstein (or five) going around giving young people's concerts and lectures. In this way again, no one should complain about opera being accessible on the movie screen.

=================================
I was proud my 3 years old son could recognize more than 75 excerpts of opera...He loved music! Now he likes...rock! Yes rock and he's a very talented musician...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsKX3ipL6Ag"]YouTube - John Nathaniel - Stay[/ame]

You can find many articles about him on google. john nathaniel.

Well.....not so "classical" but music at least! LOL

Martin

[scchoir]

Originally Posted by Florestan

Great thread. The only future for classical music in the long term is in getting more children involved, listening and playing, from an early age. This is the key to getting rid of snobbishness and elitism, not dumbing down the music and dishonestly tampering with it in recording studios. Kids of all classes need to feel that the music belongs to them.

Came across this old thread, and we couldn't agree more with the above. Especially the bit about listening (and going to concerts) - if it's established at a young age, it just becomes part of who that individual is.

You might be interested in our experiences and ideas about classical concerts for children on our blog:

http://bristolchoral.wordpress.com/2...o-mean-lesser/

would be interested to hear your thoughts!

[waynemcevilly]

Here is what I do and have been doing for years:
http://is.gd/o6CJCD
'Mozart In The Classroom'
Watch these young children respond to the television interviewer about what Mozart brings into their lives!
Thank you!
Wayne

[Tarantella]

I've just stumbled across this thread and have read it going back to the beginning. Very interesting comments all round. I'm not sure about "class war" and all those arguments, however, as I think way too much is read into the experience of (so-called) "classical" music and the kind of people who enjoy it. (I prefer 'serious music' as the most accurate description).

I disagree about what Phillidor said much earlier about disenfranchising people and having them end up working for nothing. That's a purely political stance, and a class warrior's statement, which has no place in a music discussion. "Economics/social Darwinism"??!!

I liked Some Guy's description of "the war against classical music". Yes, I've been a victim in that campaign myself - or was so at age 18 decades ago when my mother gave me an LP of Richter playing Beethoven sonatas. I was terrified my 'friends' and peers would discover this and had to hide it!!

But, back to the issue of children being locked out of serious music. This is a hugely complex issue, IMO. I'm a retired high-school English teacher and have experienced the CRASH-BANG which passes for school Music curricula these days. I think music is an area which involves parents educating their own children, since the state seems to have limited resources these days (particularly in Europe!). I take the point about the previous contributor who said that his son was a talented musician and crowed that it "wasn't classical". Yes, whoever said everyone HAD to have classical music in their lives?! I wouldn't want to force-feed anyone anything. It's an absolute irony, which has never been lost on me, that for the first time in human history more people are literate than has ever been known before BUT less are reading books and making what, for some, are 'intelligent choices'. Perhaps people have learned to read and write but not necessarily become smarter? Food for thought there.

The fact that serious music is used as a deterrent for anti-social behaviour is something which pleases me. Something had to be done, and if serious music is Kryptonite to morons then so be it!! I'd say that has nothing at all to do with deterring young people with intelligence from pursuing, some time in the future, serious music. They aren't the ones hanging around shopping malls and railway stations intimidating people!! Doah!!

I tried educating all my own children about serious music. They watched operas on TV from a comparatively young age but only 2 out of the 4 are interested in serious music. Of the other 2: one son married into a working class family that is only interested in sport and the other (my daughter) is 28 and STILL actively rebellious!! Her loss. But 2 out of 4 isn't a bad record anyway.

We can't all love the same things and if everyone loved serious music, opera, ballet and theatre I'd have to compete with THEM for tickets - something I don't currently have to do!! Serious music, art and literature have never been for the masses anyway - nobody ever pretended that they were. This artform has never had pretensions to the "bread and circuses" mentality which is part of the current Megaplex form of entertainment. No, serious music makes a demand on both heart AND head. As for aging concertgoers - this is most certainly not the case at the Musikverein in Vienna, where I have been going for nearly a year now. I've seen (well dressed and behaved) children of all ages, right through to people in their late 80's, with all of the spectrum in between well represented.

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Tarantella

I liked Some Guy's description of "the war against classical music". Yes, I've been a victim in that campaign myself - or was so at age 18 decades ago when my mother gave me an LP of Richter playing Beethoven sonatas. I was terrified my 'friends' and peers would discover this and had to hide it!!

Heh, no need to be worried with a Richter LP. Dude was the ultimate bada**.

[Dragon]

I'm 21, I am not a classically trained musician, but do enjoy to listen. I have only recently discovered that I like classical music, making the slow movement towards it via down-tempo, jazz fusion and similar such things.

I think the issue lies with that classical music can offer younger people. I grew up in a generation of the internet, television, blockbuster films, big massive scenes on every corner, the truth is - I often get bored without something to look at or think about.

Often classical composition does not include any lyrics - I often feel like the lyrics are the most important part of the song I am listening to. Feeling emotion inspired simply by music is something I have come to achieve recently, but previously would not have been able to do.

As the original poster mentioned, modern classical musicians are trying new things like multi-media concerts. I am going to the barbican in April to see Sufjan Stevens put on a multi-media concert. More of an all round experience.

Bands like cinematic orchestra survive with their classical influences by writing for feature length films, performing for silent films, or collaborating with singers/rappers.

I think classical music has to move on, it needs to becomes more of a full experience to satisfy younger people. All the elements are there you just have to put them in place.

Joe