Do the Classics Make You Classy, or Just an Enforcer of Class?

Alex Ross’ book, Listen to This (2010), is full of thought-provoking, genre-twisting conversations about music and its place in modern life. One of the most fascinating essays, “Learning the Score,” is about classical musicians bringing music to inner-city kids and the attempt to meet them half-way. At the end of the essay, one of the musicians tells a story:

“There was an article about us in the paper, in which [a mother] was quoted as saying that she loves our program because classical music “is for people who have class.” It was funny that she said that, when my whole thing has been about trying to undo these stereotypes, deconstruct the idea that this music has ‘class,’ and make the point that music can be made anywhere by anyone at any time…I was trying to get out of the world that she was trying to get into. But, in the end, we’re moving in the same direction…We are both moving toward Violin.”

This is a fascinating illustration of the conundrum of modern art and those who practice (and teach) it. Telling the first violinist of a modern symphony orchestra or an English professor at a state university that they have “class” would amount to an insult today. Indeed, these people spend a good chunk of their lives trying to ‘deconstruct’ the very essence of what they perform and teach. A violinist is just as likely to perform in a modern-jazz ensemble as play the symphonies of Beethoven in concert, just as an English professor will teach courses in the rhetoric of You Tube alongside more traditional offerings in British and American literature. Like the musician in the article, they are trying to move away from class and position themselves as Socratic gadflies, so their students/audiences will question the very role of art in society. There’s a certain amount of guilt in this stance, since only a very small percent of people make it so far inside the artistic establishment. So why in the world would they spend their entire careers trying to sneak out the back door?

Here we come to one of the great contradictions of the modern artist: they are supposed to tip-toe away from the idea of being an ‘artist’ while at the same time trying to make their names as exactly that. It’s an extension of the punk rock ethic where anything commercial is garbage, and yet all these bands are playing and touring incessantly for record deals. I’ve talked to poets who proclaim “the author is dead,” and insist on “letting the people write the books,” meaning relying on chance and overheard conversations. And yet, these very poets still make sure to publish their poems in respectable journals and publish chapbooks with their names on them, and complain when nobody buys them. So everyone is supposed to feel guilty for doing what you were trained to do (and what you love), so you do it differently, in a way that both is and isn’t art…or is so ironic about the creation of so-called art that we can question whether or not they actually had anything to do with it.

At the same time, believing too much in the role of art and your identity as an artist is problematic. In the past, art became a tool of class and culture, indoctrinating entire countries with the so-called ‘rules’ of an imperial power. Shakespeare, sadly, has been used as little more than a grammar lesson for the King’s English, as generations of students memorized speeches without context to prove their mastery of the language. In this way, the mother’s wish for her son to have “class” is both quaint and tragic, since she sees her own language/culture as wanting somehow. Or perhaps she merely sees classical music as a ticket to a better life, the same as college. But should it be? Why should listening to classical music make you educated or distinguished? In the end, it’s just notes on paper, or the movement of sound through time. In a hundred years, so many things we dismiss today will become classic (or at least vintage) and gain a patina of respect. Consider the recent Star Trek movie, Star Trek Beyond (2016), where the crew blasts The Beastie Boys’ song, “Sabotage” through space to confuse enemy spacecraft, and Dr. McCoy asks, “is that classical music?” (watch here: (1048) Star Trek Beyond — Beastie Boys scene — YouTube)

Is that all it takes, time and death to make something classic? If so, then that merely suggests that things we can no longer understand (i.e. “old”) are somehow more powerful because they have absolutely no relation to our daily lives. Like museums. Most people look at them as mausoleums of dead culture, the ancient works propped up like so many sarcophagi to be admired or feared, but never to be understood or loved (despite the museums’ best attempts to provide education in the form of audio tours or informational programs). Of course, the irony is that old works continue to be relevant to our lives because they haven’t stopped being ‘human.’ Art speaks to us because it was created by people who were just like us, obsessed with the same minutia of daily life that powers the internet or any number of bingeable shows on Netflix.

So often, we let the medium get in the way of understanding and enjoyment. Because we don’t look at oil paintings regularly, when confronted with one, we only see an oil painting. In the same way, classical music sounds like a symphony, a concerto — terms we haven’t the foggiest clue what to do with. As time marches on, our children’s children may feel the same confusion when confronted with a miniseries, a pop song, or a comic book. These forms belie the human content within, which remains easily accessible for those who look. A work isn’t magically exalted because it appears in oils, nor is a work drastically diminished when it appears as issue #43 of a comic. The medium is a vehicle, but not the message — or at least, not the entire message. So when we speak of works being “classy,” on the one hand we’re just saying, “the stuff I don’t get but smart people understand!”

Yet if really pressed, some of us might admit that there are some rather pedestrian paintings out there. And quite a few that are border-line perverse! How many ‘classic’ paintings are simply semi-pornographic depictions of mythology or someone’s mistress? Indeed, many paintings were commissioned by great rulers to hang in their boudoirs like modern-day centerfolds, so they could…er, enjoy their marvels at leisure. On the same hand, there are comic books that are amazing works of art, telling complex, literary stories that belie the seemingly ‘cheap’ medium of frames and superheroes (check out Thompson’s Blankets or Landis’ Superman: American Alien). Mozart dashed off tons of minuets and dances for the Viennese dance hall, merely so people could dance and have fun and perhaps have sex afterwards. Yet when played in the concert hall, people will sit stiffly at attention (or maybe fall asleep) like they’re at church and applaud tepidly when the vivacious, move-your-ass music comes to a halt.

In short, we need to use our eyes and ears when it comes to art, and not be afraid to recognize the human impulse that created it and continues to speak to us from across the centuries. Work is not ‘boring’ or ‘important’ simply because it’s further removed in time from the present moment. But here’s the rub: what is contemporary isn’t necessarily “brand new” or “revolutionary,” either. So much of what passes as new is simply a variation on what came before, reminding us that art is a continually evolving conversation, the new enriched by the old, and the old invigorated by a fresh perspective. That’s why Shakespeare continues to dazzle audiences even today. Sure, some find his language impenetrable and his plots convoluted. Yet by changing the setting, the characters’ genders and race, and adding new contexts for old works, the plays gain in relevance and excitement.

Some will cry “blasphemy!” when we transport Romeo and Juliet from Verona to Venice Beach, but that’s actually more in keeping with Shakespeare’s aesthetic, since A Midusmmer Night’s Dream only pays lip service to classical Athens. We also know that Shakespeare’s actors only made the barest concessions to period dress, preferring to translate the characters and situations of Rome to Elizabethan England for one very simple reason: so the audience could understand. Art is supposed to be relatable (within reason) and not make you feel like an idiot.

So rather than scrap the classics, or assume that they have to be played ‘straight,’ in an inflexible staging of inartistic purity, why not see them with modern eyes? It’s not anachronistic to read Shakespeare through the perspective of the twenty-first century, since even with appropriate research and historical context, that’s the only perspective we can read from. Trying to reconstruct the past is a hopeless enterprise, and only teaches us what we don’t know about the way things were. In classical music, fierce arguments rage over whether musicians in Mozart’s time used vibrato (the bending of a note for expressive purposes) or not in their performances. The Period Performance specialists say no, even though Leopold Mozart, the composer’s father and a renowned violin expert, wrote a treatise on violin playing that includes lessons on vibrato. While this doesn’t condone the wholesale use of vibrato in a performance, it certainly doesn’t exclude it, either. There are also lengthy debates on whether it’s acceptable to play with steel strings, or you should only use gut strings, as used in the past (though whether or not musicians of the past would opt for gut strings if given the choice is another matter entirely!).

The point being, music should sound good, and should sound as spontaneous as possible. No idea or technique should be excluded that aids a performance or opens up a possibility, as long as these techniques aren’t simply novelty for novelty’s sake. The same goes for painting or writing or anything else: how do we recapture the sheer joy and excitement of a work that might have been doomed to a dusty corner of a museum, or the second volume of a 1000+-page literary anthology? Art is supposed to make us feel alive, while also questioning what makes our lives worth living in the first place. If it doesn’t, and we’re just marking time until the performance ends, then it’s not a classic, but a dead end.

To go back to Ross’ book, all of us should be moving toward art, whether that approach takes us back to the old masterpieces, or forward to what’s being written today or tomorrow. But neither should exclude the other. New works can be just as classic as old ones, since age alone doesn’t make art. Art is a perspective, an approach; and creation doesn’t just come from making a new work. You can ‘create’ a new performance of a symphony, or a new interpretation of a tried-and-true classic. The more art separates us into cliques and categories, the less we can see it for what it is, and why it was made. A music appreciation class shouldn’t make you a snob, much less a connoisseur of culture. What it should do is make you realize how much more there is to discover in every field, in every genre, in every age of thought. Discovery is the key to art, and the more we make art about knowing and gate-keeping that knowledge, the less we have to say to each other and the worlds-to-come.