Rumors Greatly Exaggerated

National Review, June 30, 2003 by Patrick Kavanaugh

Again, we respond by examining music history. The "test of time," which has given us the masterpieces of classical music, is a kind of sieve. In any given decade, thousands of composers are writing music that is little understood by their contemporaries. Yet over the years, the great ones rise to the top, while the lesser composers are mercifully forgotten. Many masters, such as Schubert, were virtually unknown during their lifetimes, yet now their genius is finally recognized. So, at any given time, it is very difficult to identify the true Beethovens among us; but they are living right now, and they always will be.

There is simply no reason whatsoever to believe in the so-called Death of Classical Music -- and yet we continue to see titles in bookstores along the lines of Who Killed Classical Music? and Who Needs Classical Music? and The Death of Classical Music. Someone must be buying these books and, even worse, buying their jumbled arguments. Why is there such illusion on this subject? The principal reason is that most Americans have little sense of history. If one were to graph the growth of classical music in the past three centuries or so, the resulting line would be gradually rising, right up to the present. To many people, however, it looks as though it were falling -- because of another line that can be placed on the same graph: With the advent of recorded music in the early 20th century, we have witnessed an unprecedented growth in popular music, which could be represented by a line soaring upward in logarithmic acceleration.

If you, like the vast majority of Americans today, live on the top of that soaring line of popular culture, you may erroneously think that classical music is a relic from the past. Indeed, since pop culture so inundates our daily existence, millions don't even know that anything else exists! So, if they happen to look down from their giddy heights, they may see the line representing classical music drawing farther and farther away from them. Taking their personal position as "the norm," they will mistakenly judge classical-music interest to be waning while it actually continues to grow -- though not with the rollercoaster velocity of popular music.

And that's fine. That is, we who love the sublime beauty and majesty of classical music are happy to see its popularity gradually plodding along as it has for centuries. We are not concerned with what dizzying heights the pop culture may reach. Michael Jacksons will come and go, but we will still be at the concert hall, reveling in Brahms's symphonies, and even wrestling with the more challenging music of contemporary composers. The test of time will eventually sort them out as well. Perhaps that is why the masterpieces of classical music are called classics.