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Right, every Smalltown USA is an @$$backerds hicktown. How you came to that wild generalization, I've no idea.

heck, you're right Old Man. Is the software from the Bible Belt (@$$backerds hicktown)? In which case I'm surprised discussions like this are allowed. Hey! It doesn't do heck with a capital! Not only prudish but ungrammatical to boot.

As far I can see, you are the only one making that statement.

Having a different idea in your head is one thing. But it would be more interesting to hear you lay out a rebuttal in the form of a substantive contribution. At the very least have the intellectual honesty and graciousness to quote accurately what your fellow interlocutors have actually stated rather than missattributing them or making up your own hyperbolic strawmen.

Having grown up in that sort of environment, I can say, backed up with experience, that you are somewhat right, but there are still many variables at play in how any individual kid will be treated. For one thing, the character of those communities are not all identically repressive and vicious, although there's no doubt they are usually far more conservative than big cities.

But there are many variables involved with an individual kid, too. Simply having an engaging and warm personality can dramatically affect how things go, for example.

Indeed. Attractive, empathetic extroverts with charm and poise can get away with murder. Also, those strong, independent kids with an irrepressible love of l'art pour l'art who don't give a damn what others think can create for themselves more freedom of choice than those who are more gregarious social animals, despite the details of any specific limitations inherent in their local situation -- assuming there are competent piano teachers on hand and a household budget that can support such extravagance.

I think one reason the piano no longer has that "stigma" is that the piano is no longer even there in most middle-class homes, and it certainly doesn't play the same kind of social role it once did. Its role as a center for socialization has long since been supplanted by the Weber grill and sports on the giant flat-screen TV, which I think are usually "guy" things.

That's a very good point, I think.

But you have to also factor in that a certain number of gays avoiding being identified as gay (known as being "in the closet") will also avoid the pursuit of "gay" careers like classical music, and will instead take up ditch digging or medicine or tech or whatever, instead of their real love.

I also find it extremely odd that interest and careers in classical music are specifically associated with "gay", but the same is not true in pop music, even though there are pop musicians who are gay and out about it. What's that all about?

Interesting. Forgotten is not the same as despised...

After the singing of " Happy Birthday to you", a couple mad rounds of Guitar Hero is about as close as many households will ever have come to actually have made music together at home.

Pop music is heroic, accessible, ubiquitous, forward-looking, free, open and relevant.

Classical music is passe, fussy, formal, confining, prissy, closed and irrelevant.

Liberace is the limp-wristed hood ornament on the classical piano vehicle in the public's unconscious mind's eye.

Elton John, despite the funny eyeglasses and the husband, has us humming the tunes rather than rolling our eyes.

Relevant to what???? Most of it may be relevant for the moment - but it quickly becomes passe, largely forgotten, and replaced by something else with a similarly short lifespan. That's why I personally don't follow it anymore.

Sure, whatever - but it seems to have great "staying" power amongst those who make the effort to understand and appreciate it.

Society has changed dramatically (did I say DRAMATICALLY ?) since the 1950's. As timed marched on, even Liberace became more flamboyant and over the top in his public persona - without losing his appeal to general audiences. And, anyway, the "public" that you are referring to is dying off - and most young folks today don't even have a clue who Liberace was.

Relevant to whom: billions of listeners whose (low) expectations are met and for whom pop music is exactly what the doctor ordered.

When what we call classical music was being written, in Vienna for example at the end of the 18th century, there was also a constant, fickle demand for the latest, greatest new music just as there is with what we call pop music today. Mozart had to deal with going from being the toast of the town to being a has been during the same length of time that the careers of Neil Sedaka or Barry Manilow were still going strong. Scary.


Some has, and some hasn't. There is more art music from the past that has been relegated to the great junk heap of history than there is literature that has survived in the active repertoire.

However, people don't live in the past and they don't live in the future, they live in the here and now. The music that is most relevant today -- to the largest percentage of living people in the history of the world that have been able to enjoy professional music -- is pop. Outside of perhaps China the group of people that you and I belong to, classical music liefhabbers und kenners, to those of us in the West, is getting relatively smaller and smaller.

And, I forgot to mention " elitist ". To the extent that anti-intellectualism, populism and a distrust of elites colors a culture or national debates, classical music's position will continue to be marginalized.



Unfortunately the public that is patronizing classical music also seems increasingly to be dying off.

What I will say is that, judging from the audience composition at the concerts of his that I attended, Lang Lang is today's "classical rock star pianist" generating a lot of excitement and inspiration for a lot of young aspiring classical pianists.

What - Whom - Whatever.

And quite frankly, it reflects the lack of decent music education programs in the schools. But, I agree it is a losing battle.

Except for the fact that Mozart's music has survived - and will probably continue to survive. Sedaka and Maniow on the other hand......





The works that have survived in the active repertoire probably deserved to survive...although there are a few that I could probably do without...


Sad but true.

Seems they've been dying off for the past 50 years - yet there always appears to be a new crop of "blue hairs" filling the seats at symphony concerts to replace the ones that have departed. We're probably good for another 50 years or so !!

Good point - I was going to mention LL myself. Interestingly, classical ballet is another art form that seems to be catching on with the younger generation. At least that's the case in our city.

Why ... just why have people been saying classical music is dying? That same garbage has been said for the past 70 years. It hasn't happened yet, and it won't happen.

It's people who really believe that bullshit who are contributing nothing but gloomy and untrue words. Instead, do something about it. Produce good quality music, play outreach concerts. Something. Stop dumbing down audiences and calling classical music elitist. What good does that do?

And the reason why older people tend to make up most of the audiences is simply because they are retired and have more time to go. Btw, in Europe the ages are quite varied. Why? Because the majority of people aren't workaholics.

Just because more people prefer the vomit that constitutes pop music today doesn't decrease the value of classical music and it certainly doesn't make it irrelevant. Have human emotions become irrelevant? Unless that happens, art will never be irrelevant.

well said pogorelich. And definately true in the UK as well, there has been many examples of the young and alienated getting to grips with classical music and this has elevated some out of very bad situations.

There is a youtube video of bellamy from "supergroup" Muse, allthough muse may not be well known here OR everyones cup of tea, their success is not in question, my point here is that the video is showing him playing a chopin nocturne, and from comments I have read on other sites the consensus from muse lovers, is that this just goes to show how talented he is,

what they do not show, is any mockery of classical music from MUse lovers.

Folk are always ready to see what they call the "bad aspects" of the young, ie pop music,txt speak, etc etc etc, But, it has oft been shown that given half a chance the young can and do appreciate classical music just like the rest of us.

The televising of last night at the proms invariably shows a young and highly appreciative audience at the front of the stage.

No good at all !! And that's why talented, dedicated, young musicians like you will continue to fight and make sure that classical music prospers !!! Go for it !!!!

I don't even understand why anyone would think that classical music is dying anyway. Just because it isn't pop doesn't mean it's going to die. Ironically, it's the other way around. And besides, classical music and its followers is a sub-culture. Just like any other non-pop genre. The other big one I can think of is jazz.

Classical dying? Hahahaha, no.

And a few years ago you could have seen me there!

I was heartened several weeks ago to sit amongst a young and very vibrant audience at a performance of Messiaen's Turangalila. (Okay, perhaps it's a slightly hipper piece of music than, say, a Schumann symphony.)

I'm not going to get into the question of hetero vs. homo pianists, which I've discussed before.

But in relation to the aging of Classical music's audience - there's certainly no evidence of it in Cleveland. Severance Hall is filled with younger people, thanks to an aggressive outreach program to area college students. Indeed, the oldest audience I've seen at Severance lately was for a Roberta Flack concert.

I agree with you totally, Pogo -- there continues to be a significant body of younger people who still ARE interested in classical music, and those people are far more knowing and talented in performance than, say, 40 - 50 years ago. Just to maintain continuity in this thread, I think it WAS unquestionable that, here in the US, classical music WAS seen as the province of homosexuals by a great contingent of the middle-class community; and I think it WAS unquestionable that homosexuality WAS seen as irredeemably evil; at best, a source of shame. But I emphasize the WAS's because it seems to me that these paradigms have changed completely over my lifetime. Without getting into it, I speak from personal experience here.