"Classical Music" and other names for it

[MrGongGong]

Whether you can stick a new label on music which, mirabile dictu, is 200 years old, or more and fool people (who?) into believing it's not 'boring classical music' is another matter.

Why do you assume it's "fooling" people?

Strictly speaking the Mahler I played isn't "Classical Music" anyway if one is thinking about periods in musical history.
You seem to be suggesting that somehow "Classical" is a more real label than the others?

One of the things that the great Patrick Gowers used to do to us as students was to "fool" us into thinking that the music he was playing was from the 20th century when it was by Bach.... done well, it's a great way to open ears.

[jean]

You have a point here, but then so does Richard and, given that your experiences were different, that's hardly surprising, really.

I think the real point is that neither of us should generalise too much from our particular experience.

It's worrying (to me) how often 'classical music' and 'middle class' occur in the same sentence; the self-fulfilling prophecy.

[french frank]

Strictly speaking the Mahler I played isn't "Classical Music" anyway if one is thinking about periods in musical history.
You seem to be suggesting that somehow "Classical" is a more real label than the others?

No - I was just using 200 years as an example of 'not music of now' where 'now' means the last 10 or 20 years ('what I can remember'). I could have said 100 years, or 500 years or 700 years. Mahler is classical music.

And 'fooling' was ironic. I wasn't assuming that it was fooling them or even trying to fool them.

[Anna]

On the old BBC messageboard certain posters would always refer to it as "High Art Music" which rather baffled me, I didn't know if they meant all classical music or just certain works which were considered above and beyond all other works merited the description

[Quarky]

"During the intervening decades (my lifetime, more or less) The Thing We’ve Called Classical Music has cratered in popularity and public engagement. It’s working its way back, slowly, to a place of respect, relevance and commercial viability. But it needs all the help it can get, including a major re-branding and re-conceptualization."

According to my new car radio, when I'm listening to Radio 3, I'm listening to Culture. I'm happy with this term, and many thanks to the Society of Motor Car Manufacturers for proposing it. it perhaps has the right resonance in this (allegedly) classless society we live in.

[vinteuil]

... when I'm listening to Radio 3, I'm listening to Culture.

... ouch, Kulchur!

A worse quagmire than 'classical music' as a definition if you ask me.

And most of my working life was spent as a cultural bureaucrat of one sort or another....

[Richard Barrett]

It's worrying (to me) how often 'classical music' and 'middle class' occur in the same sentence; the self-fulfilling prophecy.

That is worrying, yes, but it is however a fact that the vast majority of people professionally involved in this music are middle class (and, it goes without saying, Caucasian), which is bound to have an effect on the way it's perceived. I am willing to bet that if I did the research, which I might just do actually, because I really don't like to generalise from anecdotal evidence, I would find that the proportion of living British composers who were privately educated and/or from privileged middle-class backgrounds is way in excess of the proportion of the population as a whole. (And no doubt the same would go for other countries too.)

edit: I had a look at this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ical_composers - I'm not sure what the criteria for inclusion are because plenty of well-known names are missing, and some of the people included wouldn't usually be classed in that category, but it's something anyway.

84 of the composers mentioned are presently living.
Of these, the school education of 28 is mentioned (or happens to be definitely known by me).
Of these 28, 16 were privately educated and 12 not.
This translates to 19% of the total of 84 having been privately educated, even if all 56 whose schools weren't mentioned were not, which seems very unlikely; or 57% of those whose education is mentioned or known to me; compared to 7% in the UK population at large. So I think I can rest my case!

[french frank]

So I think I can rest my case!

But the figures may be skewed in the case of composers, since the fact of being a composer usually implies a certain amount of training/experience not universally available. Do the figures necessarily reflect the percentage among the audience for "classical music"? And if they do (and they're probably not completely dissimilar) isn't this much like Jean's 'self-fulfilling prophecy' in that the opportunities may well be present for the 'middle-classes' to encounter the music, but that's less important than the fact that the opportunities are totally absent across a range of the social universals - from education to mass broadcasting. Isn't that what needs to be changed, not somehow changing the name or the performance settings &c? And where is the incentive to do so in our current society? Do we change the name 'university' to get people to stop feeling 'it's not for people like me'?

[Richard Barrett]

But the figures may be skewed in the case of composers, since the fact of being a composer usually implies a certain amount of training/experience not universally available. Do the figures necessarily reflect the percentage among the audience for "classical music"?

No but that wasn't my point. What I said was "the vast majority of people professionally involved in this music are middle class (and, it goes without saying, Caucasian), which is bound to have an effect on the way it's perceived".

the opportunities may well be present for the 'middle-classes' to encounter the music, but that's less important than the fact that the opportunities are totally absent across a range of the social universals - from education to mass broadcasting. Isn't that what needs to be changed, not somehow changing the name or the performance settings &c?

Yes.

[NatBalance]

Gosh I've missed out on this. Looks interesting Gongers but I've got a lot of catching up to do. Pop music has the same type of 'name' problem. Not sure how you define 'composed' yet but I will read on.

[gradus]

Can't it (classical) just be music?

[Mary Chambers]

Recently I have been looking (online) at schools for the next stage of my grandchildren's primary education - one is about to start school, one about to move from infants to juniors. I have been very struck by how large a part 'classical' music plays in the independent schools - especially instrumental tuition - and how rarely it is mentioned in the state schools. I find this worrying. I am talking about London.

[french frank]

Can't it (classical) just be music?

One reason is that it won't leave a gap when schools, for example, omit all mention, all opportunities for students to hear it. They can still claim that 'music' is a very important part of the curriculum. They can then leave it to the privileged middle classes and independent schools. At which point they're given a further reason to ignore it: it's elitist.

[doversoul1]

Can't it (classical) just be music?

It could if we agreed to call all music in the world just music. But then, wouldn’t it be rather inconvenient when we want to talk about music we mean to talk about? In other words, we can’t say ‘when I say music, it means classical music, and the rest can have their own manes’, which was (almost) how things were a few decades ago.

[NatBalance]

Can't it (classical) just be music?

I've heard this argument before but I've no idea what it means. It's like saying can't I call my car just a car? It's blue, what more information do you need?