classical music doesn't have much to provide to the larger musical world as a whole at this point https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1198276160385404928

the only things I can see classical music retaining any use for are orchestration/instrumentation studies, the idea of musical notation (though as a field classical music is trying really hard to murder that dead horse), interesting aspects of form,

and abstract concepts of listening (while classical music [as in common-practice period music] doesn't even successfully achieve due to lack of access to music education at young ages for many children as well as fear of contemporary classical music's willingness to use sounds)

there are more specific aspects that are relevant too, such as critical thinking about how music is crafted (music theory), as well as the provenance and historicity of music (musicology), but like...in terms of the genre itself, there's not much that Another Concert of Beethoven

can give to our world

i heard a really compelling concert of classical music at the art museum last weekend, and it was compelling only because the musicians worked to provide historical context and tie it into the museum's current programming (the late classical period leading to romanticism

and those stylistic periods's relationships with the concept of revolution, culminating in presentation of music from around the 1848 revolutions)

the music itself was just classical music, but the musicians animated it by explaining the historical concepts and why it was being paired with the given paintings and the given exhibition.

the music wasn't the point -- it was an opportunity to teach about the political and cultural history of European art and musical styles.

here's a lukewarm (at best) take: the way most classical music groups program music over-emphasizes the music aspect and doesn't do enough to provide historical context, related moments in time, or cultural echoes from other genres/periods/places

obviously i have a very particular relationship with classical music at this point: i think it should be used to teach, rather than fetishized as an object in and of itself

(surprise, the educator wants to educate)

but in particular, the reason I find this approach to be the most effective is that it's really one of the only ways we can begin to unpack the white supremacist and colonialist legacy of what classical music has become

not to mention that the way classical music is taught in the institution so rarely amounts to an honest teaching of history. in many history classes, europe is a walled garden that didn't start to have intercultural influences until the mid- to late-1800s, despite

plenty of forms and musical styles coming from other cultures -- the march a la turk, the chaconne, the lute, a significant amount of music during and after moorish spain, not to mention musical influences from folk music...

i think a lot of this education is getting better, but it certainly wasn't like this when i had to go through the history courses just a few years ago. it was a surprise (and exciting!) to learn the chaconne was from the "new world," and frustrating that it wasn't more discussed

one last thought: one of the reasons why I so heavily go after the historical aspect as opposed to the affective, phenomenological "just listen to it" aspect of the classical music is because we cannot listen to classical music as it was played two hundred years ago

this isn't a new thought, but what i mean to say is that we can't do it, we don't know how they did it, we don't have their context (the royal courts, the patronage, the lack of electricity, the preponderance of plague) so why bother?

that's not to say it isn't worthwhile or noble to try, but it's the same as performance practice -- at the end of the day, it's an excuse for us to develop our own relationships with this music, to find a way to keep playing it when the well is running dry on inspiration.

at least with classical music as a teaching tool, there are various historical narratives to be told with it. it's so hard to get anything out of telling a group of people "just listen to it" regarding, i dunno, beethoven's fourth symphony or something

taking the attitude of "just listen to it" belies at the very least a belief in the inherent superiority of classical music (or perhaps just music) as a whole, because more or less the logic is "it's so good you'll inherently understand"

which is incorrect -- we only "inherently understand" because 1) we're from the 1700s and it's the music we hear regularly at the royal court, so familiar context means we get it, or 2) we've listened to it enough (on CD, at the symphony, etc.) to have an intuition for it, and/or

3) we've studied it, know theory, and have learned how to hear it in a systematic way.

i don't think this chauvinism is only limited to classical music, by the way. other genres can and do have proponents who insist that all you need to do is "just listen to it" and you'll understand what they're saying. for example: "old" country vs. "new" country