Anyone read "The Life and Death of Classical Music" by N.L.?

[Scion7]

Lebrecht's already caused me several    -  and I've barely skimmed it yet.

[some guy]

Hey Scion7, does Lebrecht anywhere in that book define "classical music"? I don't expect you to do the dirty work for me, but as you've already started....

It's funny. Everyone seems capable of understanding that each individual piece of "classical music" is a constructed thing. It was made at a certain time. That before that time it did not exist. But when it comes to the category, that understanding fades. Classical music, it is most often assumed (implied) just is. It is and always has been.

But it's a made thing, too, with a history. The term first appeared in print in 1810, in Germany. It had made it to England by the mid-twenties, but still did not catch on universally until late in that century. So none of the music written in the so-called "classical era" was written as classical music. Even music written for several decades after 1810 was not written as classical music. I don't know how many people have written music that they considered "classical," I do know one composer who does not think that anything she has done is "classical music," even though that's the large category where her work is placed. I suspect there are many more than her.

So any assessment of "classical music" that does not consider the history, the etymology, of that term, is deeply flawed from the outset.

I'd say that the term itself was deeply flawed as well, from the outset. It was designed to codify a tradition, so it retrofitted a bunch of things, but not all things. Songs, for instance, were not "classical music," not at first. Neither were arias from operas. Indeed, I have heard people as recently as the 1990s argue that "opera" is not "classical music." And of course we all know precisionists who want to limit "classical music" to the "classical era," only, an imprecise absurdity as most of that music was written before 1810.

So while I have palmed my own face numerous times over the years over Lebrecht's various curmudgeonly sillinesses, I also don't have any skin in the "how healthy is classical music" game, either. People have made music for thousands of years. People will continue to make music in the future. Some of it will be pop. Some of it will not. Even were there no recording technologies for preserving musics of the past, there would still be music to enjoy, some of it even from the past. I have only one thing to say to Lebrecht: "dinna fash."

[Scion7]

No.  He goes without saying what the general consensus of what "Classical" music means to the vast majority of people.  It's not that kind of book.

It's a treatise on why the industry is slipping (no pun intended towards Slipped Disc) - but he's full of undigested ca-ca a lot of the time.