What if Classical music just disappeared

[kghayesh]

I had this question in mind. What if we live without classical music?? Without Mozart's concertos, Beethoven's symphonies, Chopin's piano works ...... ?

Will we feel a difference in our lives or we will just live normally?

I was thinking like that because i had the feeling that Classical Music as a profession is not a necessity of life like say Medicine or Engineering or Law. I don't think even it has much demand specially in these days.
Suppose just all music, musicians, musical instruments suddenly vanished, what do you think will happen ?

[pianistimo]

i think it's like the difference between being in  los angeles or new york or some international major city with no parking, one way streets, and terrible views, crowding, crime, etc.  then, you go out in the country and there are actual sidewalks (with no garbage left on them), grass, flowers, nature.  you start feeling refreshed.  relieved.  less stress.  more beauty. 

not to say that architecture can't be beautiful, but personally (being more classically oriented) i find the most joy from nature itself.  there's something about the wind, the trees quietly rustling, the colors, the sounds.  i think architects and engineers mimic in their buildings and designs feelings and impressions, too - so it's probably a matter of perspective.

if we didn't have classical music - we'd have a lot more craziness, i think.  even if it is a part-time or evening job in music.  it relieves you of the day's stresses.

[jas]

Do you mean if it vanished without ever having existed or if it just vanished, say, today?

I think the former, if that's what you meant, just couldn't have been. Today we have a lot of alternatives to "classical" music, but there was no such thing around a century-and-a-half ago. It's the only music they had, and there can't have been no music. All music developed out of the most basic non-verbal singing thousands of years ago, so in order for there to have been no classical music, even that would not have been "invented," which just can't have been. At least, not in my mind it can't!

It makes you wonder, actually. I can't comprehend a world without music, even though I suppose it's perfectly possible that with the infinite number of things that can happen, it was probable but not inevitable that we'd end up with music in the world, since it didn't always exist.

I wonder if people with incredible un-taught musical minds, say Mozart, would have been seen as insane, or just stupid? Maybe he'd have gone insane. Scary.

Jas

[alzado]

I suppose we would just dust ourselves off and start all over.

There are enough brilliant people today so that we could just start composing some more.

Good question.

[bearzinthehood]

Although the question does remind us of the unsettling truth, that the thing that some of us care so much about matters very little to the majority of people.

[nanabush]

my stomache would explode

[Mozartian]

We would all regress further into prehistoric barbarism.

[le_poete_mourant]

"You are the music while the music lasts." - T. S. Eliott
I think there's a point where you don't necessarily have to hear the music physically, it becomes a part of you and you feel it and imagine it and hear it inside your own mind. 

Is classical music "dying"?  I doubt it.  As people get older, they naturally look for more meaning in their music.  How many seniors or even middle-agers do you see at a rock or rap concert?  And go back forty years, how many young people would you see at a classical concert? My guess is that would be about the same. 

So in a way people have to look for it, it won't just come to them, but people will always be looking for it. 

pianistimo - I think you'll find a lot of classical music is just as adaptable to city life as well... one of the beauties of it is that it has no fixed place.  A chopin nocturne could just as easily fit into a country setting by a clear lake as it could an apartment in nyc at night, the lights off inside.  But outside there's the city lights shining, but softly. 

[Tash]

well if it disappeared that would mean that we wouldn't know about it- never to begin with or we'd just forget. thus we wouldn't miss anything- how can you miss something if you don't know it exists? but say it never existed in the first place, then europe would have to invent some other type of music that we'd probably all be obsessed with anyway. but if music never existed to begin with? well you might as well just get rid of sound then.

and another thing, nothing is 'necessary'. medicine is not necessary, don't have it, people just die, as they end up doing anyway; music is not necessary, don't have it then we're just that little bit more bored- humans need entertainment, and something to do, music is thus a necessary feature in that respect