The Snobbery of Classical Music

     I am well aware that most others do not share my zeal and enthusiasm for Johann Sebastian Bach or Jan Dismas Zelenka. Not many people are connoisseurs of my instrument, the classical guitar. And most people's phones probably aren't filled with the lute music of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, like mine is. And then there are classical composers such as John Hebden, that not even most classically trained musicians have heard about, but I have, and now you have too. 

     My point is this. In a world full of pop music, R&B, and rap, my own musical preferences stick out like a sore thumb. And I can't even pretend to be some kind of hippie enjoying the music of Jimi Hendrix and coming across as the cool but non-judgmental authority on where the real music is at. No, I'm in the world of classical music, which means I have the right to call myself a snob. 

     Now, classicists like myself (whether in the field of music, or painting, or literature, or whatever have you) do often come across as snobs. This is a stereotype to be sure, but one not entirely without basis. For instance, Allan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind has been ridiculed as the epitome of classicist snobbery. Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death gained similar opprobrium. (And Postman embraced the accusation of Luddism.) Musical classicism can often be seen in a similar vain. Theodor Adorno's "On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening," is one such snobbish musical expose that manages to drive a wedge between popular art and classical art. Heaven forbid that you like the music of John Coltrane! You fetishist freak! (Adorno hated jazz in particular.) And then there is the snobbery of music composers themselves, such as Arnold Schoenberg, who, when asked if he was a Bolshevist, defended himself by saying he was in fact a monarchist. Sure thing Mr. Schoenberg. Bring back the monarchy! That's not snobbish at all.

     The heights of musical and artistic snobbery can be found in the "formalist" theory of art expounded by Clive Bell. (I put "formalist" in quotations because formalism has been explained in many different ways, and accusations of formalism were often used in the Soviet Union as a way a censoring Western music, making "formalism" a kind of slur with no consistent usage.) Bell's theory of art aesthetics was that art is supposed to give the audience a unique emotion which can be found only in art. To the extent that art gives a person normal feelings such as sadness, happiness, joyousness, anger, longing, pity--in short any emotion that can be felt outside of art--then what is taking place is not really art. In order to be art, the emotional response is one unique to art. 

     What a way to alienate audiences! If an art critic is able to get this aesthetic emotion from a piece of art, but the general audience is not, the message is clear: there is something defective in the audience. They are uncouth, unsophisticated, ill-educated, incapable of these "higher" emotions. "Art" and "music" became elitist. Popular art, by definition, was no longer art. 

     To be perfectly fair, I am not criticizing any of these authors so much as pointing them out as examples of where this image of the snobbish classicist comes from. Their actual arguments should be considered on their own merit. I personally enjoyed reading Clive Bell's theory of art, as it explained many of my own reactions to classical music. Where Bell errs, however, is in creating a litmus test that excluded popular art from the art world. While his theory could have been used as a means of assisting the general audience in accessing art, it was used instead as a means of enforcing artistic elitism. 

     For myself, I have never bemoaned the death of classical music (or any classical artform for that matter), and I have never found modern music to be any kid of serious threat to the music that I know and love. Nor have I ever considered modern music to not be music, as, for instance, Ben Shapiro has said about rap music. I do not share the pessimism of classicists, and I hope I do not share their snobbery, though I am certain I can come across that way at times. 

     The fact of the matter is, if you feel like you've been snubbed by the musical elites, it's because you have, just like you've been snubbed by the literary elites, and the art elites. And the best thing that classicists like myself can do to regain some respect with the public at large is stop being so blasted judgmental. 

     Classical pianist Charlie Albright wrote a short but well stated op-ed for CNN a couple years ago on this topic. As he puts it, the best thing we can do to save classical music is to let it die, by which he means that we need to kill the snobbery, the sterility, and the artificial rules that current classical decorum requires. This isn't to say that we should lower our standards in music, but we definitely need to lower our egos. 

     This was not the blogpost I originally set out to write. I wanted to write about how strong the classical music tradition is today. In fact, I think classical music is alive and stronger than ever. But I felt I needed to write this first. How can I show my love and appreciation for popular art if I don't disavow the classicist snobbery which pits classical and popular art against each other? Consider this my disavowal. In hope in the near future to talk about the current state of classical music, which I am very optimistic about.