Classical music and class

[Michel]

Most of us are WASPS.

What can be done to spread classical music to different races and class, within our very ethnically diverse nations?

Why is it not commonly enjoyed by working people or ethnic minorities? Is it because we associate more with a Haydn, and they associate more with Bib Bill Broonzy? A facietious question, certainly, but does it contain some truth?

Do some people feel so alienated from the producers of the music, being as they are dead white males most of the time, that they struggle to see what the music could do for them so they don't even bother trying? And when they do try, does this fact turn them off when they listen?

It surely doesn't help us when we listen to Hip Hop that we are listening to the very unsavoury characters we build our suburbs for with gates and fences around them to protect us. Of course we consider it rubbish, it threatens us, and classical music threatens them. Is this true, or am I yet again a fool?

[Mark]

I think your thread title is erroneous. You talk not so much about class but about ethnicity. There's a world of difference between these two.

[sidoze]

again? well at least you're giving the fops some work to do.

[Topaz]

This website contains some interesting information on current trends in the classical music market.

[Szykneij]

Most of us are WASPS.

False.

or am I yet again a fool?

True

[Michel]

I think your thread title is erroneous. You talk not so much about class but about ethnicity. There's a world of difference between these two.

Read Marx, then come back in six months.

[Todd]

Read Marx

Groucho or Richard?

[Mark]

Read Marx, then come back in six months.

Read current (politically correct) EU legislation. Then come back ... if you can understand it at all.


My point? Class isn't a word which many would associate with ethnicity. Do that in the UK, and expect to be classified a racist. Class is about social standing, 'breeding' (whatever the hell that is), and more. NOT about the colour of your skin, or the plain fact that you're not a WASP. I think you're attempting to oversimplify just to get a rise.

[karlhenning]

Groucho or Richard?

Listen to transcripts of Harpo . . . .

[Mozart]

Im a poor jewish boy, oh and im Syrian. Does this mean I have to give up Mozart? 

[Tancata]

What can be done to spread classical music to different races and class, within our very ethnically diverse nations?

Why this thing about spreading classical music? Give the masses a bit of culture for once? Sounds a little self-aggrandizing to me.

[Florestan]

What can be done to spread classical music to different races and class, within our very ethnically diverse nations?

The first step, without which everything else will fail, is to cut once and for all the political correctness crap.

[Kullervo]

This thread, as well as your last thread, exists because for some reason you see classical music as "rich man's music," which is simply not true. Look around, talk to music students, go to concerts. You'll see that the audience is made up of much more than elderly rich white men.

[Larry Rinkel]

This thread, as well as your last thread, exists because for some reason you see classical music as "rich man's music," which is simply not true. Look around, talk to music students, go to concerts. You'll see that the audience is made up of much more than elderly rich white men.

That's true. These men often drag along their wives too.

Seriously, though, nothing has done more to bring classical music within the reach of the average person than recordings and other technology such as television. It was said that when the Met did a telecast of La Bohème with Pavarotti some years back, more people experienced this opera that night than on any night in history.

The Eroica was premiered in an aristocrat's palace. Had you, I, or any of us lived in 1804, do you think we would have had the access to classical music that we take for granted today?

As for the class thing, it's undeniable that the "working people or ethnic minorities," as you call them, do look with suspicion on classical music. I don't know how to break through to such people, as the barriers are so strong, and some of them feel very aggrieved or angry if you speak to them about classical music. They think you're being an elitist or snob. But at least the opportunity for them to know this music is there, perhaps more than at any other time in history.

BTW, I'm Jewish, not a WASP, and I daresay a love of classical music is fairly common in Jewish-American families.

[Norseman]

I thought classical music was big in e.g. Japan and that it has a lot of respect there that seems to have been lost to a certain degree in Europe/America.. But that's just an impression I have, and it might be exaggerated..

[Michel]

You lot are harder to wind up than you used to be. Or perhaps you've just vented your frustrations in the last thread

Classical music is grotesquely Euro-Centric, though.

[karlhenning]

Classical music is grotesquely Euro-Centric, though.

That's an unflattering caricature of the fact that Europe is where it developed.

[Florestan]

Classical music is grotesquely Euro-Centric, though.

One can equally say that the No theatre is grotesquely Japano-centric. Or that philosophy is grotesquely Helleno-centric, nay, Plato-centric.

This nonsense is a welcome example of what I had in mind when talking about PC crap.

[Larry Rinkel]

You lot are harder to wind up than you used to be.

So sorry we lot are disappointing you.

[Scriptavolant]

Classical music is grotesquely Euro-Centric, though.

So what? It is not our fault if we were composing great music something about 6 Centuries before the American declaration of independence.