Selling classical as a balm for anxiety thus might seem like a way to lower the bar of entry for music widely perceived as inaccessible. So marketers are understandably hunting for concepts that might get more people to pay attention, even if those concepts come at the music’s expense. The graying of the classical music audience is a perennial concern for arts organizations and radio stations: According to a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts report, 45-to-64-year-olds had the highest rate of attendance at classical music performances a decade ago by 2012, it was the 65-to-74-year-old cohort. Why is classical music in particular the poster child for this feeling? One reason might be advertisers’ desperation about classical’s inability to draw large crowds. Monet’s impressionist haystacks and the Home Shopping Network could be described the same way. Art yields its best results when we engage all our critical faculties, rather than confining our responses.Įvery genre (save perhaps thrash metal) features works that many would consider relaxing. Insisting that classical music is a proxy for a day at the spa prescribes a proper reaction to this music before we have even begun to listen. We are at liberty to think that a work is soothing, or that it is boring, or titillating, or a blight upon the senses, and then to change our minds, and then to change our minds again. The way we talk about culture, any culture, shapes how we think about it, so we should not be so narrow in our choice of language.Ī privilege of art is that our experiences will vary. The industry sells classical music as a mellow monolith when it is in fact capable of stirring any and all emotions, serving any and all ends - divine and hellish. ![]() Even music that is superficially calm and slow can contain depth, tension and difficult themes. ![]() This is a deeply unsatisfying way to describe one of our most storied art forms. Let the works on this playlist, spanning centuries and styles, lead you to new conclusions about the classical genre.
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