Is classical music a museum?

Theodore Adorno wrote:

The German word museal (museum-like) has unpleasant overtones. It describes objects to which the observer no longer has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying. They owe their preservation more to historical respect than the needs of the present. Museum and mausoleum are connected by more than phonetic association. Museums are the family sepulchres of works of art.

Is classical music such a museum? Is it turning into a museum?

how do we stop classical music from being this kind of museum?

Comments

  • In a way I think this is true. However, I think it's concerts rather than classical music as a genre that are like aural museums. Think about it: we dress up (well, some do), go to a self-designated venue for the listening of music and watch a load of musicians march respectfully onto the stage in strange penguin-like suits to play music by composers long dead.

    Don't get me wrong - I have been in the music business for nearly 30 years and I love music with a passion. But this question does raise the issue of the presentation of concerts. Most people actually want to sit in a hushed hall and listen intently to the music of the great deceased masters (and I count myself in that number). Some would advocate more 'progressive' ideas such as musicians not dressing up in their odd garb, playing concerts in shopping malls and factories and finding ways of making the concert experience 'interesting' and appealing to more people.

    While I crave to see more people (and, especially, more young people) at concerts, I think the vast majority of concert-goers want the 'aural museum' experience. I suppose we have to avoid using the word 'museum' in a negative way. Don't you just love walking around a really good museum, after all?

  • I confess to never having heard of Theodore Adorno and, if you are quoting him accurately, I don't think I want to hear of him again! Before I move onto your own question about classical music allow me to take issue with Adorno's statement, 'It describes objects to which the observer no longer has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying.' Are the magnificant and fascinating artifacts of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome in the process of dying? Museums are not tombs; they are invaluable places where our past is kept alive for our interest, enjoyment and education. Without knowledge of the past we have little chance of understanding the present and no hope of planning the future. Through museums the past lives and can speak to us. Excuse their dust and rejoice in the light they shed on our very imperfect modern world!

    OK, now I've got that off my chest, let me attempt to answer your question about classical music vis-a-vis museums. I think ... though I could be wrong ... that the notion of classical music being a museum came from those composers of the 20th century who followed the atonal/12 note system of composition. Tonality had died with Mahler, they believed, and it was necessary to move on into a brave new world in which melody was laughably 'old-hat' and where a kind of plink-plonk racket prevailed. Audiences which failed to applaud this aural chemotherapy were derided by its composers and their advocates as musically moribund. These audiences saw concert halls as museums where, according to the same composers and their advocates, these audiences belonged.

    Interestingly the audiences survived while the composers who reviled them seem to have disappeared. And you know, I don't think there is a self respecting museum that would accept any of these composers as exhibts!

    Tonality has returned. Modern composers may not all be easily understood but at least they encourage us to listen again to their music and we can sense, in most cases, that here a little bit of effort on our behalf might well be rewarded. Audiences will accept the new if the new is worth the effort. That does not mean they should reject the past. Composers from the past remain vibrant in the present because they still have something to say. We understand them! We love them!

  • I disagree with Adorno.

    Can you think of some kind of food you ate as a kid that you just loved, but you hardly ever have it any more? But when you do eat it, it takes you back, you remember how much you loved it as a kid and how happy it made you?

    Classical music is like that, for me as an individual because I was raised with it, and I think also in a larger sense for our culture. It's something like a museum in that it's something we remember, or perhaps from a time before we remember. But it is not dead and obsolete and belonging only to the past. So maybe, if this isn't torturing the analogy too much, it's more like a museum of beautiful arts and crafts from previous centuries than a museum of horribly obsolete tools and appliances.

    When I was a kid my parents listened to classical music. We listened to The Nutcracker Suite and Peter and the Wolf in kindergarten. Today I hear that music and I feel young all over again. The San Francisco Ballet does a big production of The Nutcracker every Christmas time and it's hugely popular. Little kids are brought to see it and I know they will love that magical-sounding music all their lives.

    But classical music also strongly influences the music of today. Music in movies and TV owe much to the tradition. For decades popular songs were lifted directly out of classical music. And several generations of us grew up listenjing to it in Bugs Bunny cartoons. So 'museum' maybe, but hardly 'mausoleum'.

    BTW I saw the new Indiana Jones movie this weekend. Listening to the score, I found myself thinking that parts of it could have been written by Brahms. 8^)

  • Well, a work of music (or any work of art) it is intimately connected with the person who created it, and with the historical context in which it was created. In my experience, museums serve to preserve history, not to kill the objects from history.

    I disagree with Adorno's claim that museum-like describes dying objects. History is not "dead" -- the wonderful thing about a museum is the opportunity it provides us for learning about our past (or someone else's past).

  • All too often classical music is presented as a museum. Clearly much of the business of classical music treats it like a museum , probably because thats what they think is good for their business. This is been true at least as long as the musical appreciation movement of the 30s through 50s. As a listener or a musician you have the choice to listen or play new music and also forgotten music. Classical music is not a museum for me, I go out of my way to go to concerts that include music I haven't heard of before. Its your choice.

  • I gather, from you quotation, that Adorno was referring to objects. I think music is different, unless one is thinking of old musical scores, for example. A performance of older music inevitably draws it into the present and is a new creation. I believe that it is essential for us to remain aware of, and in contact with our heritage as this enables a more meaningful development of the arts. I do not think that classical music is endangered in the way you fear. There have been attempts to start afresh and to discard the past, but such attempts are usually vapid and empty and short-lived.

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