Lonely listener

I’m always delighted by the variety of people who subscribe

to my online book on the future

of classical music. (The next episode comes out on Wednesday [

class=SpellE>advt.]). Recently I’ve gotten, just for instance, the

marketing directors of two important orchestras, one in the

w:st="on">US and one in the UK,

a music student exploring new ways to describe classical music in

w:st="on">Banff, in Canada,

and someone in charge of program notes with an Australian orchestra.

class=GramE>Plus a professor of piano and piano pedagogy at a small Bible

college, not to mention an assortment of musicians and long-time classical

music listeners.

But Eric Davidson really touched my heart. Along with his

subscription request, he sent this message (which, as always, I’m posing with

his permission):

I’m a 24 year old law student from

the US

who loves "classical" music, though I have no particular talent for

playing or composing. Enjoying this music is often a lonely pastime, and it’s

interesting to hear how it became so.

I responded with some encouragement, which I mention only

because Eric told me he really found it encouraging. I suggested, for instance,

that he look into starting a classical music listening group, along the lines

of the book groups that have sprung up everywhere. I’ve seen this done

successfully by the owner of an independent bookstore in Brooklyn,

and it’s an idea I’d love to see catch on.

But above all, I understand Eric’s loneliness. I often hear

something similar from classical musicians, and from classical music students.

Of course they know other people who like classical music — their colleagues,

or their fellow students. But they also have friends who aren’t involved in

their field, and these people, they often say, don’t know anything about

classical music. So in a way it’s the same thing Eric is saying.

One piece of good news, surely, is that there are many people

in the same position. So if someone they could meet each other…and maybe if

people like Eric could meet some younger classical musicians…

(The next book episode, by the way, will be about modernism,

which — without at all rejecting modernist music — I see as a kind of

pathological development inside classical music, because of the way it grew

inward-looking, formalist, and even dictatorial, imposing itself on mainstream

audiences who had no taste for it. But what I’m writing about in this next

episode are the reasons why modernism, when it first arose, was not only strong

and important, but necessary. And I’m going to look back with wistful interest

at the days (in the 1920s) when modern music was hot, and seemed to be on its way

toward developing what we’d now an alternative audience all its own.)