When classical music stops being classical

In a way, we could say classical music has always been connected to the social elites, inasmuch as it’s them who have had power, money and namely leisure time to accurately cultivate themselves in disciplines that are not directly connected with survival, such as literature or painting. Maybe that’s the reason why still today the words ‘classical music’ could inspire a certain feeling of intricacy, boredom or demureness.

But that argument is not valid anymore. Maybe the only advantage of living in a mass society is the fact that we have enough technological resources and a portion of free time that allow us to venture in this bad supposedly inaccessible world of classical music.

Aware of that, some well-known figures of the classical music world are nowadays trying to deny that premise. In the audiovisual field, we especially acclaim the task done in 1996 by the British conductor Sir Simon Denis Rattle, who wrote and presented ‘Leaving Home’, a seven episode arts documentary awarded with a British Academy of Film and Television Award (BAFTA) for Best Arts Programme.

In each of the seven episodes, Rattle conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and combines the chief musical developments of the 20^th century that it is playing with explanations about the historical background and suggesing images. Only knowing about the politically and socially convulse context of the 20^th century can the viewer understand why and how this ‘odd’ music came out.

In fact, the adjective ‘classical’ is almost opposite to the message that ‘Leaving Home’ wants to transmit. The ‘standard’ classical music of the 18^th and 19^th centuries (Mozart, Hadyn, Beethoven) is actually the vanishing point for the music composed in the last century or, at least, the basis from which these last composers depart. Rhythm, melody, texture and dynamics were almost forced to change in a world that was also creating new running patterns. The music from the last century is perhaps a way to understand the turning point of the 20^th century history or, at least, one of the best things it has brought.   

Marina Hernández