What is it with classical music?

[cometear]

I know most of us can agree that the majority of the current generation do not like classical music. I am part of that small percentage that do enjoy it but I am wondering what do you think has to change? I am so puzzled by it. Tell me your thoughts and maybe I'll be able to elaborate a bit more.

[theholygideons]

I think society is doomed. end of story.     

[alpacinator1]

It's probably due to the dysgenic trend of dumb people drastically outbreeding smart people.

[theholygideons]

the OP is asking what has to be done to rekindle people's interest in classical music.

[outin]

One thing is to avoid telling young people how they should listen to it and what they should like...let them discover things themselves. There's still a lot of elitism in Classical music, which tends to put many people off. It would be healthy to have less emphasis on "good taste" and more on simply just enjoying music without feeling inadequate for not liking the right things. People's listening habits will evolve anyway.

But the first issue is how to get them enough exposure. I'd say quite difficult, because youth culture today is much based on uniformity and peer pressure. And marketing of other music genres is taking good advantage of that.

I guess we need a few youth celebrities hooked on classical and tweeting about their listening habits plus classical performers making music videos using  scarcely dressed backup dancers

[pianoplunker]

I know most of us can agree that the majority of the current generation do not like classical music. I am part of that small percentage that do enjoy it but I am wondering what do you think has to change? I am so puzzled by it. Tell me your thoughts and maybe I'll be able to elaborate a bit more.

You have answered your own question . "I am part of that small percentage" .   For centuries it has been a small percentage. Back in the day, average folk never got to listen to Mozart or Brahms freely. Only a small percentage. The 99%ers are left with singing songs in pubs. Nowadays music is more accessible than ever before .  Music has always evolved , why change that?

[dima_76557]

I know most of us can agree that the majority of the current generation do not like classical music. I am part of that small percentage that do enjoy it but I am wondering what do you think has to change? I am so puzzled by it. Tell me your thoughts and maybe I'll be able to elaborate a bit more.

There's nothing wrong with classical music in itself if it is presented by people who really have something to say. Unfortunately, such are too few in contemporary performance, and a lot seems to burried in unhealthy elitism, business elements, etc. Bad presentation can NEVER win people for any good cause. And the introduction to classical music to inexperienced listeners should be "just right", otherwise they will reject it by default. Mozart's "Turkish March", for example, could be OK, but one of Liszt's transcendental etudes as a first encounter will frighten most people away.

Classical music that is used in movies can also help a lot for the popularity of this or that piece. The situation in the movie where it is used can give a dimension to the music that may be the trigger for some people to find out more about this or that composer. If they can find that same piece on one of those "Music for the millions" discs or there is a disc for sale with the soundtracks to that movie, then there you have the seed for future interest. Cooperation between performers of classical and popular music can also do a lot if the choice of pieces they will do together fits that particular audience.

[Bob]

There's...

The elite angle.

Music takes some amount of attention.  And you can't always hear everything if you have learned to hear it.  Innovation might be something with form or harmony, and someone might only be listening for melody and rhythm.

You can't rush music.  If it's a painting, you can glance at it or study it for hours.  With music, if you want to take in the whole piece, you have to listen through it.

You probably have to go sit in a concert hall if you want live music.  There you can't talk, etc. 

If the music came out and was popular... How long does that last?  It won't be popular forever.  Great piece... fine, but I was more into it last year. I've heard it x-times.  And the piece will always be there.  Multiply that times everyone.

Classical music doesn't have the glitzy glam factor that pop music tries to create.

Add in some music snobs.  On the listening side.  On the performing side.  Don't agree with them or hear what they hear?  Then you're wrong.  And maybe that music isn't for you.  It's for them.  The elitist/exclusion angle again.

[senanserat]

Boys wil be boys...

[vultron]

Classical music doesn't have a bass guitar. If classical music had digital bass, it would rock.

[pianoplunker]

Classical music doesn't have a bass guitar. If classical music had digital bass, it would rock.

 But alas, it will never rock without good old stinky electric guitar. Fastest guitarist wins!

[iansinclair]

Everyone above has good points -- it's a very complicated problem.  But I would like to add my own bit: mediocrity.  And that problem is not simply in classical music; you can see it in folk music, rock music, musicals... and it applies both to performers and to the audience.  Performers seem a little more willing to put on a good show, without truly playing at the top of their ability, as the glitter gets the applause (there is another thread on this topic!).  The audience, on the other hand, never having heard a top quality performer, happily accepts whatever they get.  Worse yet, if they are listening -- as the majority will be -- to an inferior recording (compressed to fit on their iPad or iWhatnot) even the very best performance will be only mediocre.

Truly superior work will attract listeners; it's just plain exciting, whatever genre it happens to be (for example: I'm a classical musician -- but I can still get pretty worked up by Eric Clapton, or Miles Davis or...)

[indianajo]

Mother bought me a Bozo the Clown record player age 3, and a subscription to the classical record of the month club.  They were CRC brand and had some story before and after the music.  As Tschaikovsky, Sleeping Beauty, I could recognize the story was the same as the book she read me.  Tschaikovsky on demand, right in my grubby little hands.  I loved it.  Much more substance than those dippy little 7" kiddy records with kiddy words.  
I moved on to  Rock and Roll on the car radio age 6 when we moved to big city, so much so that I ran down the car battery playing the radio in the driveway; so the parents moved an AM radio they weren't using in my room.  But age 9 on 1959, the year the music died to quote  a famous pop song, I was just not satisfied with Pat Boone and Fabian and Brenda Lee those years. There were a couple of blah years where I didn't listen to much radio, then Dad bought an FM radio, and there was a classical commercial station on the FM dial. I loved it, and took to doing homework to classical music, so much so that the FM radio ended up in my room most of the time.  Indulgent parents. When they did repossess the FM radio, there was clear channel KRLD AM Dallas which played classical music late at night when I was supposed to be sleeping.  
The parents bought me an $80 used clarinet to take band in school, which is something my Mother wanted to do but her parents didn't have the money.  Talk about deep bass pianoplunker. You've never lived until you've heard Carl King or Shostakovich or Paul Peret with 12 sousaphones in a concrete football stadium.  And our version of Jumping Jack Flash really rocked, with that bass line. I was the cymbal player, I had a bad case of bass envy but wasn't big enough to carry one of those things, or even hold it on my lap.  I played a bassoon in concert season, which has deep bass but weighs only 15 lb.      
So despite my intensely plebian ancestors, (coal miners, woodcutters, boarding house maids, clerks) I love classical music.  And some of rock, some of pop, some of musical theater, some of church music both low and high, a few country songs that aren't very, some bluegrass, some singer songwriter strums . . . . . I have an image of my Mother as a teenager trying to tune the squealy staticy AM radio to the distant  Cincinnati radio station across the mountains that would play bits of Beethoven symphonies for a few minutes on late nights. Both I and she loved the greatest hits of the last 500 years, and if it was rare and hard to get, so much the better.  
So to make classical music popular, make it rare and hard to get.  BBCnews just published a picture of 300 Chinese kids taking piano at the same time on 300 pianos in the same room.  Scary image.  But the Chinese are just regretting the "Cultural Revolution" in 1966 where the group think was to  burn everything that had history or significance,  or demolish any thousand year old monument because Mao didn't build it.  After that, Beethoven is a breath of spring air.  Thousand of pianos are being sold in China now.  They appear to be developing a real appreciation for classical music.  Fine with me. Music has more substance than ping-pong, our previously shared experience.  

[g_s_223]

Many would say your generalisation applies "in the West". In China, also Japan and South Korea, (Western) classical music appears to be deeply appreciated. So, what might this mean?