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The prognosis on classical music
Posted: January 12, 2007
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Fellow blogger Greg Sandow has emerged from his reading and research on classical music confident enough to make the following prediction:
...the era of classical music is going to end. Not this year, not next year, maybe not in 10 years.... But sometime reasonably soon, the era of classical music will be over.
What does it mean to ''be over''? Greg says this:
To be as precise as I can, I might say that the apparatus of classical music, as we know it now, will very likely fade away. We won't see many concerts (or at least not nearly as many as we see now) featuring only music from the past. We won't explain classical music primarily in historical or structural terms. We won't tell classical musicians that their main job is to serve the great composers. We might not ask our audience to sit in silence, clapping only when it's told to.
And while it may seem a wrenching prediction, Sandow suggests that a new ecology might well emerge in its place that's more personal, more connected, and more sustainable for the coming century. Loss is an essential part of renewal. And he suggests this particular art system is ripe for something new.