New video on my YouTube - FULL VERSION here www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqf2wrGlAQ0
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CLASSICAL MUSIC IS NOT DYING: IT HAS NEVER BEEN ALIVE
>>> DISCLAIMER :
1) this piece is a critique itself : it is in many ways using common tools that what it denounces here or there. So it is VERY easy to relativise and I wrote it and shared it as an exercise for the mind, for whoever would have the patience to go through it. It is in many ways my own « exorcism ».
2) I support without reserve music lovers who write about music and musicians.
3) I developed on what I identify as an ideology, not on this or that person’s choices. It is obvious that everyone is free to do and say whatever he/she wants. Some use these rights to denigrate or insult ad personam : it is far from what I am doing here. I squeeze concepts, not people. <<<
As far as I have experienced it, it seems that « classical music » doesn’t know what to do with spontaneous invention on stage. It is either perceived as exciting but « unusual », if not inappropriate, or simply quite uncomfortable.
How did we get here?
After a wonderful series of four concerts with the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz orchestra, playing Ravel’s G-major Concerto and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, musicians of the orchestra expressed their surprise after hearing me improvise differently every night (inside and after the Gershwin). I don’t think that my improvisations have anything particularly remarkable in themselves: it’s just that I improvise deliberately, and that’s apparently enough to be addressed as something « unusual ».
This raised some thoughts in my mind about classical music ideology and practice.
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« Classical music » is a recent marketing concept that desperately tries to contain centuries of diverse musical practices, most of which have one strong thing in common: they are written. So I prefer to call it « written music » or musical literature. Calling anything from Guillaume de Machaut to Ligeti « classical » makes no sense when we think about it. It is also naturally off-putting to most people, since « classical » rhymes with clean, square order and carries, whether we like it or not, the intimidating prefix « class ».
In what we call « classical music », the text — the score — has become the alpha and omega of musical practice. Composing or improvising lies very far from the interpreter’s usual education, which pursues only two aims: mastering the instrument « technically », and being able to play the score « correctly ». Those who make a difference and reach the « top » do so either by executing a technical feat (an incredibly fast and detailed trill, or a series of rapid alternating octaves) or by performing at least one piece with extreme « correct » accuracy.
It then becomes clear that interpreters are no longer creators, but athletic engineers. They must prove their legitimacy by obtaining diplomas from prestigious musical institutions and, for a small number of them, by receiving instruction from legendary maestros and winning prizes in international competitions. What they receive is supposedly « based on merit » — even though much of it is a lottery and a game of influences.
A classical musician is expected to spend his life PRACTICING. Which means : rehearse, repeat, review, revise, reproduce, remember. A dull tragicomedy of gestures, played most of time alone in a locked room.
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Classical music is dominated by constant fear of judgment from peers and critics. It is DESIGNED to avoid real creativity, invention, spontaneity. It has established itself apart from all other musical genres, almost as an anti-musicianship that considers itself supreme musicianship — training abilities that go AGAINST improvisation and creation.
It’s not that classical musicians don’t learn to speak the musical language; it’s worse: they learn NOT to speak it. The text is absorbed to be restored exactly as it is, not as a base for transformation or variation. The interpreter is the executioner of a score read as a fixed program, and will be evaluated for the QUALITY (as for fabric) of his rendition.
The classical music field is practically entirely shaped by the relationship between a musical performance and its immediate evaluation. Musicians themselves are trained in a way that makes them become critics of their own and their colleagues’ work, practicing with critics’ parameters in mind.
Some of these main parameters are: sound, technique, posture, taste (or « style »). We still lack a rational definition of those elements, despite the urge to separate the musicians who are “in” and the ones who are “out” with them. What is a beautiful sound (what about Michelangeli’s raw Bach–Busoni Ciaccona)? A « flawless » technique (what about Cortot)? A good posture (what about Gould)? The right taste (what about Horowitz)?These parameters are empty shells that cover the arbitrary, capricious world of subjectivity. Despite not having any consistency, they have become the main guiding lines of a musician’s work. But they are so vague that the musician usually relies for a long time on a dependence on a pedagogue, who will fill these empty parameters with anything he feels inspired to, from the most academic mantra to the most esoteric metaphor.
The most striking effect classical music has on its performing servants is revealed by their bodies on stage. I’m not talking about posture or the tension in their arms and hands — I leave that to experts in technical evaluation. I’m referring instead to bodies detached from the music they play, following a restrained, awkward choreography, as if every cell were screaming, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’
These bodies have forgotten the feeling of dancing, or the warm vibration of the voice in the chest while singing. They’re not musical bodies, but submissive and suffering enveloppes of the classical music ideology.
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Critics are not just a little bunch of harmless, frustrated amateurs. Critics are THE characteristic figures of classical music, its human final personification. They embody a major pillar of what is called “classical music”: they are the final stage in the transformation of a curious child who could have become a musician and lived a fulfilling musical life into a grumpy or unctuous (depending on mood and digestion) commentator on the works of others, without being personally involved in any kind of musicianship. It’s the last stage of the transformation of music into an abstract distraction or elite entertainment, subject to endless evaluations and comparisons.
In that ideology ruled by music criticism, which is like a genetically transformed musical organism, another important rule is that “greats cannot fail”: critics will usually praise blindly some elected “legends” despite all the slags or pedestrian things in their playing, sustaining it with bad faith. For much less than such slags, musicians whom critics decide to exclude from the elected crowd find themselves harshly blamed.
The « legends » are inaccessible, and they have zealous guardians who make sure they remain inaccessible forever.
As a consequence, musicians get infected by prejudices such as: « I have a limited career because of my limited technique », « he has an outstanding career because of his outstanding technique ». As if career depended on a “level” of musicianship. As if musicianship depended on having a career.
As it seems that anyone in classical music — from the music lover to the musician, including the teacher — can be seen as a critic, an abstract hierarchy has been created, ranging from the amateur to the « professional » virtuoso or « professional listener » (!), to give more authority to some than to others. The criteria used to place people on this scale are at the same time supposed to be objectively technical (even though they’re largely esoteric : the usual carnival of « acoustics », instrument sound and mechanic, « respect » of literal indications on a score) AND based on arbitrary and subjective credentials — a miracle of intellectual contortion, which leaves a wide dead zone for critics to decide if this or that musician « deserves » to be where he is, creating fake polemics and controversies that reinforce the hierarchy. As for any hierarchy, it is based on intimidation, and despite the adoration of supposed « competence » in classical music, it’s most of the time self-confidence that gives more authority to some than to others.
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Thus, if classical musicians get trained to become critics by pedagogues — and if any creativity has been expelled from the start — the only difference with critics is the instrumental craftsmanship. It’s the same ideology at work, just with duties divided in the end: the musician concentrates on instrumental expertise, and the critic on expressing with words an evaluation of the playing. The critic doesn’t touch the instrument; in « exchange », the musician doesn’t touch words and somehow forbids himself to express anything too strong about music. « I am so happy to play », « this is such beautiful music », « I dreamt of playing in this hall » — these are sadly the main substance of many interviews of classical musicians, where fake wonderment prevails by constantly repeating the « gratefulness of belonging to the family of musicians ».
Indeed, classical musicians aren’t supposed to express anything else than gratitude.
Sometimes a musician will share an anecdote about the life of the composer he plays — having read his biography. But that’s it, at best. No philosophy, nothing beyond strictly instrumental or score-reading statements — involving considerations on « style », of course. It’s not because of a lack of intelligence or sensitivity, but because curiosity (which cannot just be « exploring the repertoire ») has been cut at the root by the way we’re educated in classical music. We’re not supposed to talk about what we do, and going further than instrumental and score-reading comments is quickly considered a suspicious extrapolation — as if a scientist started talking about philosophy, to the consternation of his strictly scientific peers.
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It’s the way musicians practice and play today that brings legitimacy to critics — in addition to the latter getting bribed or boot-licked by musicians reposting their rags. I reposted critics myself: I stopped and wish to never do it again, because it feeds the classical music illness.
A critic won’t help the musical works reach more people, or anyone enjoy the masterpieces more — it’s quite the contrary. A concert critique is just the opinion of individuals sitting in the hall among hundreds of others: credit can be given to them only for doubtful reasons. They’re just tapping into a part of our human nature that delights in reading the picky judgment of someone on an experience we had or missed.
We love stories, especially when they’re told with added spices, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when these stories are told by lazy and bitter casuists to distribute prizes or anathemas on people who commit to sharing music with audiences, it’s merely reckoning and should be addressed as such, however precious freedom of expression may be.
How could critics make a living if artists were all giving truly different interpretations and involving their own compositions and improvisations in their programs? You can only compare what looks or sounds similar enough: two coats, for instance. You can’t compare a coat to a sunflower field. This is how I would imagine concert performances: the same piece played by two different musicians, one wearing the piece like a coat and the other giving me the vision of a sunflower field when he plays.
Because artists mostly propose similar repertoires and similar interpretations of this limited repertoire, audiences are naturally encouraged to listen and comment in the same way critics do, becoming obsessed by the tiniest differences of tempo or nuances as collectors do with their trinkets. ‘Perfect’, ‘too much’, and ‘not enough’ become the main verbal translations of a classical-music experience, much like what one might say to a hairdresser about the temperature of the water before a haircut. It is about practical comfort, not about art. Discomfort is excluded as something non-artistic: within classical-music ideology, art must be pretty, clean, moderate, and distant. Anything outside this framework is rejected as impure, following patterns similar to those of eugenics.
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Complaints are rising about the lack of education of children and audiences, about other musical genres gaining the mainstream… But what is there to admire about what is called « classical music », this concept created only for the sake of marketing when the recording industry exploded around the 1950s? It’s obvious that the concept is irrelevant, describing a corpus of mostly written works from medieval chants to Boulez as « classical ». And yet it is indeed unified — by codes of practice and appreciation. It is the soundtrack of a certain elite, characterized by exclusion and hypocrisy: we complain that classical music isn’t popular but at the same time we don’t want it to become popular because it would « downgrade » it; we pretend that it’s for everyone but then complain that not everyone comes to the concert hall, etc. etc.
Truth hurts: « classical music » has very little to do with… music. Composition and improvisation are considered « optional » in this field — although they were totally organic practices for almost all the “great composers” we celebrate. Someone improvising a cadenza or composing his own sonata is regarded as « having a special kind of talent ». The norm is the strict interpreter, with his instrument, his score, and his wish to be technically perfect and « loyal to the composer ». But how can one be loyal to any composer without also composing and improvising? From which angle can one contemplate a score without living inside the musical language and speaking it?
Then interpretation becomes something technological: most of us use cars, computers, microwaves without understanding how they work. It is consumption. Interpreting Beethoven without getting closer to what he was facing by writing yourself is behaving as a customer of his music, not as an artist.
I don’t think this statement is too extreme. What I do find extreme is that, in classical music, someone who has played a Beethoven sonata all his life — without any of the independence from the score that improvisation and personal composition bring — is automatically considered much closer to Beethoven’s spirit than an amateur who improvises from the very same sonata. It is the consecration of the ‘specialist’, the one who supposedly knows more than others simply because he has spent ‘so much time with this repertoire’. Unfortunately, no evidence has ever shown that spending a great deal of time on a piece guarantees being more ‘on the mark’ than someone who discovers the same piece and plays it for the first time. Music is not like science or technology: a large part of it depends on sudden flashes of inspiration, as in any art form.
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Thinking endlessly about some signs on the score, taking composers’ or urtext misprints as final words, adjusting phrasing and dynamics meticulously — all this is perceived as very noble and as the highest form of craft in classical music. Indeed, some musicians spend much more time on Bach and Mozart scores than the composers spent themselves writing them. The only argument used to justify this imbalance is: « yes, but Bach and Mozart were geniuses, and we aren’t ». But then — where are today’s geniuses? Did genius appear only at a certain moment in history, before disappearing and leaving music in the hands of non-genius « humble servants »?
Of course, looking so closely at the same score for such a long time makes you see things in it that are probably not relevant, and miss some very relevant ones: you cannot take for granted that « practising more », for a longer time and looking more closely at details, is without cost. Then you can spend your whole life playing hundreds of sonata forms and still be totally unable to improvise a short one, despite all the time you spent on them. Is it so inappropriate to say once again that something is rather strange here?
One can always hide behind the curtain of so-called « humility »: « I give my life to the sonata forms of the greatest; why would I do mine when I am sure it wouldn’t be as good? » — but it’s rather the contrary: it’s pride and ego, a refusal to RISK not being AS GOOD as the GREATEST…
True humility would inspire one to write precisely in order to get closer to the composers one plays, without fear of being « not good », which is crippling for any creative process. It would also consider composition and improvisation as a way to understand the musical language in action. It’s quite obvious: playing hundreds of sonata forms and not being able to improvise a simple one means that, despite all the time you spent on those sonatas, you didn’t invest much time in understanding how they are made from the inside. This also comes from relying too much on the idea that “no masterpiece can be reproduced”. That’s true — but some of its musical elements can be practically understood, internalised, and reproduced, which definitely helps us feel them more deeply. Rather than reproducing the gestures of the « legendary » interpreter or the teacher, why not become able to reproduce elements combined by the composer himself to make his piece?
Masterpieces can also be transformed and practiced differently: nobody except purists will be hurt by a Chopin piece played in a Bossa Nova, Minuet, Tango, or even Funk style. And this would not be entertainment, nor just a joke — it is actually closer to what can be called “musical practice” than endlessly repeating this or that passage of a piece in order to make it « perfect » — which means, « technically clean » and in the « correct style », following some dusty artificial rules. Unfortunately, what is emphasised in classical training is mostly purely physical tools, while the part left to the mind is limited to memorising the piece and following a fixed interpretation “program.”
Classical music training and its working routine have replaced restless curiosity with bleak and dry professionalism.
So we’ll have again, and again, another set of all the Beethoven sonatas, Chopin études, Shostakovich symphonies to add to the piles of the already existing ones. Interpreters will share their excitement about « climbing those musical mountains » or « facing these repertoire monuments », as hikers would take a selfie at the top of Mont Blanc. « An indispensable addition to any collection », « a new reference », critics will write. There will be controversies about some, because of a difference as tiny as a hair between two tempi or dynamics. It will sell for a bit and then die until another one appears. So we’ll have to stick to the old « unsurpassable » « legendary » recordings that critics will regularly caress in their texts, video or radio interventions to ensure we never forget what is supposed to be considered the eternal TRUTH.
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It is very sad that words such as mine here are often considered a « groundbreaking attitude » (when they’re not simply considered uneducated, naive, or arrogant) when I or someone else shares them. Because they are neither an attitude nor groundbreaking.
– It is not an attitude, but an organic evidence: how can staying locked in an exclusive love affair with instrument and score do anything good to music, when they are only a very small part of it? Otherwise we contemplate or evaluate the mastery of handling an instrument and reading a score literally. It is not music either, but passive entertainment or some sort of endless freak-show competition using music as a means to separate, not to unite.
– It’s not groundbreaking at all, because most of the celebrated musicians were composers and improvisers. Ironically, this is what could be called « tradition », rather than some made-up « school of interpretation ». Take the violin « school »: Vivaldi, Paganini, Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, Ysaÿe — weren’t they all composers?
My answer to the genetically transformed musical organism is rather simple. It only requires the will not to be deeply affected by judgment. Because the ideology I described above relies entirely on that: it needs the musician to be scared of judgment in order to work on him, and to atrophy in him what naturally asks to be nourished and to flourish: his creativity.
If a musician allows himself to be creative, there will ALWAYS be a ghostly voice trying to pull him back into the ranks: « you didn’t practice enough », « you should look more closely at the score », « your sixteenths aren’t even enough », « this passage CAN’T be played like this », « this is bad taste ». First, it’s good to remember that the voice you hear is not Bach’s, Beethoven’s, Chopin’s, or Ravel’s. Second, it’s actually a good sign that your playing has shifted something in someone’s mind — even negatively. This doesn’t mean you should never question yourself as a musician; on the contrary, it is only by breaking free from sterile codes and intimidating remarks that you can genuinely question your musicianship.
Interpretation isn’t meant to get rid of creativity. Why would « respect for the composer » mean wearing a chastity belt while playing?
I like to remember that if I play what’s written, it’s because I choose to do it, not because anyone told me to. And if I decide not to play exactly what’s written, that is entirely up to me. To think that playing scrupulously what’s written and nothing else prevents one from hurting the music is at best naive, at worst a blatant lie. To betray is not to change the score, but to mute the creative spirit of musicianship. By censoring yourself in order to be « just a humble vessel of music », you simply prevent yourself from being a musician.
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Music is not an exact science. It has some rational elements, but these are never detached from the meaning they serve. Better not to take the signs as if THEY were the meaning themselves.
Many pedagogues will remind their students how Chopin, Ravel and others hated to be played this or that way, using it as an argument of authority to castrate any musical overflow. They extract assertive sentences from their context as if they were eternal tablets of interpretation laws.
Music laughs at these stiff gesticulations. It will always escape from the hands of the one who wants to control it entirely. It laughs at critics lost in their onanistic comparisons of performances, at the stern pedagogues who think they can keep music on a leash, at those who believe one needs a « certificate » to be a musician, at the whole crowd that esteems instrumental expertise rather than loves the craft of speaking the musical language. It laughs at all these « humble servants » who hide their hungry egos under a veil of « respect for tradition », those who think that growing up musically relies on practice and discipline alone.
Being a classical musician, I don’t place myself outside the things I describe here. I have fallen into many of these traps and still slip back into the classical music cult at times.
But I feel a strong desire to free myself from everything related to this ideological envelope, because I can sense how deeply it harms music.
One of the few things I desire the most is to hear music’s laughter myself as often as I can, and to spread it by playing, improvising, and speaking wherever I can. The fact that this is considered « unusual » or challenging in a field besieged by etiquette does not discourage me. Quite the contrary: it convinces me to continue on my path. I might be wrong, but if that is the case, I prefer this inspiring mistake to a truth wearing inquisitor’s robes.
LD
Painting : Magritte, Le Château des Pyrénées, 1959
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I always thought that some pieces have a “harmonic signature” and thus are recognisable without their original melody - which is the case in some “themes” used in theme & variations form, that are more like “chord themes”. I know that some classical fanatics would take it as a blasphemy but I honestly don’t care at all, being not a classical fanatic myself but just a musician. 😊 #beat #harmony #classicalmusic #groove
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This, is the first movement of my piano quintet in e minor, wonderfully premiered in Vienna in Zögernights concert series, in House of Strauss, on October 11th 2025 by the fantastic :
Johannes Fleischmann (Violin 1)
Eduard Steude (Violin 2)
Mariko Hara viola 原 麻理子 ヴィオラ (Viola)
Alexandra Kahler (Cello)
Maximilian Kromer (Piano).
👇YouTube link in comments👇
Film and recording : TV man, from Japan.
It doesn’t aim to demonstrate anything, nor to represent any aesthetic concept. It’s just music I heard inside myself and copied onto paper, wishing that some might like to play and listen to it.
A “new piece” is paradoxical in classical music. For some, nothing truly new can appear because “all great music has already been written.” The words “classical music” often carry the fantasy of a finished history, with a fixed repertoire that is endlessly practiced and repeated by performers and analysed by commentators.
Others still believe in the possibility of a “new language” manifesting, thinking that the list of 20th-century experiments can still be enriched. This new language cannot be “tonal” (since everything has already been said in this tongue), or at least not “functional”, as a condition sine qua non.
Both visions share a common disenchantment.
This piece will satisfy neither view: in the strict sense, it is new (written very recently)—as if there were still instrumental classical music to write, how daring! Yet, the music speaks in a language too familiar to be considered “new”—which means it is too familiar to be considered at all.
I feel fortunate to have not lost all belief in composition, probably thanks to my relatively short institutional path. Most musical colleagues I meet on tour have been discouraged from composing due to the way classical music is taught today, with a focus on instrumental technique and literal score reading. Add to this the ideological pressure of “do something completely new or do nothing” or “if it sounds too much like this or that composer, why bother?”—and the root of inspiration itself is burned. I survived this. I can say that I still approach composition with a childish excitement and the same intense passion as in my teenage years, now enriched with experience gleaned on the road.
This quintet was not written to satisfy any particular view of contemporary music. I had enough trouble freeing myself from my own prejudices to worry about those of others. Having played rock and jazz in the past, I have witnessed a very different attitude among musicians and music lovers in those fields: they never ask, “in which style is this new song?” or contextualize it aesthetically as if that perspective mattered more than the music itself.
So, what can I say before you listen? The first idea for the piece came on the day my grandmother was diagnosed with incurable cancer, and I finished it a short time after she passed, two years later. There may be something elegiac in the tone… but the rest is up to you.
LD
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::: LUNAR PRELUDE AND FUGUE IN SEVEN :::
Dedicated to Josu De Solaun, as afterthoughts on his recent essay : « what’s wrong with classical music ? »
LUNAR PRELUDE
There was, is, and will be the moon.
One day a human pointed a finger at what was already there but not yet called “the moon,” and a sound came out of his mouth.
Others gathered around and repeated the sound, some pointing their fingers to the moon too, with great excitement.
Some were impressed in a different way. They saw everyone around the first human repeat his sound and gesture. They were more impressed by this human than by the moon.
So they pointed their fingers at this human, with the same sound coming out of their mouths. But this time it was not to point at the moon, but to point at the human pointing at the moon.
Others gathered around and repeated the sound, some pointing their fingers at the human who pointed at the moon, with great excitement.
Some attended the scene from a greater distance, feeling a bit too shy to join the first or second group. They looked at both and couldn’t decide what impressed them most: the human pointing at the moon and those around him imitating him, or the people pointing at the first human and those around them imitating them.
These shy ones already knew the moon; they had seen it every night, even though they didn’t yet have a sound for it. They saw one among them let a sound come out of his mouth while pointing at it. Then they saw others point at this human to recognize him as the one who had found a sound for it while pointing at it.
They did not feel like pointing their own fingers at the moon, nor at the first humans nor at the ones pointing at them; they kept their hands close to their bodies. But most felt closer to these humans than to the moon; they admired more the attitude of their peers who recognized the first one to point at the moon, and had great recognition for those who pointed at the first pointer.
Humans entered the age of interpreters, which has not yet ended.
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Interpreters raised their children in the cult of “the first one to point at the moon” and “the first ones to have recognized the first one pointing at the moon.” As soon as the moon had one name, they stopped looking at the moon and stopped inventing sounds to name it. The moon became only the word for the moon, and there was much more to tell about those who pointed at it and about those who pointed at those pointing at it.
Then it became a great honor to be officially enthroned by the human community as a successor of “the first ones to have recognized the first one pointing at the moon.” The moon wasn’t a topic anymore — was it ever a topic, once it got a proper name?
As soon as babies heard the sound for “moon,” it became associated with their parents, not with the moon. The moon wasn’t in the room where the word to name it was first heard.
The ecstasy of finding a sound for the moon while looking at it was replaced by the smaller ecstasy of imitating a word from one’s parents’ mouths and seeing them smile — and then from one’s teachers’ and preachers’ mouths and seeing them smile.
The moon has disappeared from human lives, though it is still here, and has always been here since humans have been humans.
But for ages already, only the word and fingers pointing at fingers, endlessly back into the past through generations of humans since the first one pointed at the moon, matter.
This is what is often proudly called “tradition.”
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The word replaced the thing. And then the sign replaced the word that replaced the thing.
Before the sound became a word, it could also become music.
The sound that the first human pointing at the moon let out from his mouth might have been the first or the last note of a song.
Music appeared after the moon, but before the word. The empire of words, as soon as it established itself and fed on humans’ disdain toward things, tried to trap music in its net.
It wasn’t easy, because in music there was nothing to describe — no thing to stamp with a unique word for everyone, no precise action nor item to name in music. And still, the empire of words, ruled by the interpreters of words, tried to trap music in its net.
It finally succeeded under the form of “classical music.”
FUGUE IN SEVEN
1
"Classical music" belongs to the empire of words. It’s the common name for a kingdom of signs and gestures contained within the empire of words. As music doesn’t belong to this empire — nor to anything else — unsurprisingly, "classical music" has very little to do with music. Like an imaginary religion that would have very little to do with the world.
Music is real, like the moon. But "classical music" isn’t. It’s an intimidating illusion generated by words to tell us how to listen and play — hiding the moon, but teaching how it should be looked at and talked about.
Like most religions and anything ruled by signs and words, it relies on a "tradition of text." The score is the bible of the classical musician. A classical musician learns to listen, feel, play, and think from and for the score. He is a scholar who learns all the scholastic declensions of charity without ever giving a penny to a beggar. How to spend your life playing an instrument without playing a single note of music? Go for classical training, and you have a chance.
2
"Classical music" consecrates the reign of interpreters under multiple forms: performers, students, teachers, critics, passionate commentators. It presents itself as the most superior form of music-making and concentrates its forces not on music-making, but on its "superiority," by excluding, selecting, disdaining, humiliating, classifying, evaluating, idolizing — as it is a kingdom, with its royal families, aristocrats, courtiers, and plebeians.
"Classical music" lovers deliberately set themselves apart from the rest of the music-loving crowd. This attitude is widely understood and respected: who doesn’t admire "classical training" among performing musicians of all other genres? "Classical music" is the example of a widely admired but very little loved social practice.
3
The great composers of the last four centuries are the pillars of "classical music." They’re revered as prophets, apostles, or even gods in the most restless minds. In a kingdom obsessed with its superiority, it’s the authority of the great composers that matters most: how each of them created a "style," which the interpreter who dares to play their music must scrupulously respect in order not to be excommunicated by the kingdom.
The "style" is the final stage in the replacement of music by words. It’s a mostly unwritten law, ruling the classical music simulacra of life with two main banners: the "too much" and the "not enough." The ears of the priests and devotees of "style" are no longer attached to their souls. Let’s call them the stylatics.
For stylatics, each sound coming from an instrument is a stimulus to which they must respond with "yes" or "no." With this approach, sound is not supposed to have meaning. Then, thanks to this obsession with "style" replacing music, rogue combinations of sounds played in a distinguished manner may be appreciated by stylatics with delight, while a raw folk tune cried by a street musician would be seen as "vulgar."
"Style" is the etiquette of "classical music" aristocrats. It never goes without its friend "taste," which has an even more impalpable flavor. It has nothing to do with music, but with a gallery of "sound outfits": "elegant," "vulgar," "tight," "crisp," "bright." In reality, these are multiple variations of a single adjective: "casual." Because anything that would disturb is eliminated from this immaculate perspective. As meaningful things are often disturbing in artistic expression, it means that most meaningful things are simply eliminated from the "classical music" perspective.
"Classical music" celebrates itself as a closed history. The cult consists in endlessly imitating the same gestures over and over again, in memory of past idols. The greatest music "has already been written," and the greatest interpreters "are already dead." The "classical music" creature lives among mausoleums of discs and scores.
4
The interpreters who are regarded as "professional enough" perform hundreds of concerts in their lives, most of them without giving birth to a single melody of their own. Some even "devote" their entire lives to Bach, Beethoven, or Chopin, without ever trying to improvise on two chords — while all the pieces they revere from the three names above owe a lot to improvisation. Had they been their contemporaries, those interpreters would probably not even have noticed them. Without being dead, or dead-alive by being totally institutionalized, you cannot expect any attention from the exclusively devoted interpreter.
"Classical" musicians are raised in fear of the "mistake," the memory lapse, and the "wrong" note — from the start and until the end. Whoever walks backstage at a major concert hall would hear renowned virtuosos repeating endlessly the same passage, even for pieces they have already played many times.
The live performance — this moment that offers the precious opportunity of pure presence and risk — is meticulously prepared, cooked in the slightest detail in "classical music." Is it for the music? No, it’s to give the audience the impression of total control. Being masterful is more important than being meaningful.
Some senior maestros will say with a smile that they still "practice and learn," without having yet composed anything. What is it that they still learn? The listeners are taken to some mystical state, sensing some hidden depth behind those words.
5
"Classical music" claims to be one of the highest forms of human culture. But it profoundly disdains culture by practicing it as a dead thing.
Many guardians of "classical music" live in denial of jazz, rock, pop, and hip-hop: they believe in a form of "music" that relies on exclusion. They consider themselves more evolved than most of their peers and throw the anathemas of "relativism" and "demagogy" at anyone who would ask: "Why is it so important to claim that a Chopin waltz doesn’t have the same 'value' as a pop chorus?" — while this question is obviously not asked to pretend that everything has the "same value," but to wonder what the word "value" or "level" has to do with art.
Asking about the meaning of this or that form of artistic expression would probably bring us to richer debates, but "classical music" guardians don’t care about meaning, as said above. They care about the apparatus — the prestige associated with the illusion they cherish.
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"Classical music" feeds the social myth of "merit" through the most visible face of its practices: its entertainment and star system. It values hard work and a sense of sacrifice as "exemplary," while all this largely relies on a lottery. But the same approach that praises the wealthiest human beings for "deserving" their wealth — which, as a consequence, also considers the poorest as "deserving" their poverty — perceives the winners of the classical music lottery as committed, serious hard workers who have patiently made their way to the "top" through many obstacles. There HAS to be a rational explanation for their fame.
Those success stories attract many young people from all over the world, who will practice — "hard work" relying exclusively on this — until they "make it." These young people quickly set aside their artistic nurture because it clearly appears to them that this is not what will bring them "success."
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I, the writer of these words, have become a direct product of this classical music kingdom. I gained institutional recognition through a prize in a competition, signed with a major label; there are people around the world whom I never met and will never meet who know about my work and attach positive or negative adjectives to my playing. I fell into all the traps I have described above: comparing interpretations, idolizing some performers, believing in the "truth of the score" and the performer’s necessary "professionalism."
But today, I remember that I was once able to look straight at the moon, fearlessly. I want to return to that nakedness of the soul, and discover reality again — to wake up from the horrendous nightmare called "classical music," which has nothing to do with Scarlatti, Mozart, Mahler, Horowitz, or Cziffra; this man-made construction of the mind has given birth to generations of blind and deaf soldiers donning the armors of critics, teachers, or performers to protect their illusion of prestige and "merit" from… music. Because that’s what it is: music is a recalcitrant contaminant for the guardians of "classical music" — it must be kept from entering the concert hall, lest it break the charm.
The desperate assaults of "classical music" against music will always fail in the end. Because music doesn’t even have to defend itself: it’s there, all around and inside us, forever. Like the moon, and what happens inside us when we look straight at it.
It’s entirely up to us to leave behind the empire of words and the destructive codes of "classical music," to play and create instead. If there were more interpreters who would compose, improvise, write poems, be involved in many other human and artistic activities besides "practice," everything would change for the better, without any doubt. The adoration of the score prevailing over musical language and meaning would give way to a healthier approach to musical literature.
It’s too easy to criticize the system rather than its soldiers and followers, while the system largely relies on what performers express on stage or in the studio and how it’s received by audiences: if the powers of creativity and invention take over, you’ll see the reign of critics and "masters" naturally fade away. It’s only by giving credit to the ideology of constant evaluation — by playing as students being evaluated — that this whole ecosystem can survive and exercise its toxicity.
I am sure that many good soldiers of the kingdom of “classical music” will agree with all this — in theory. But what I am expressing here is not theoretical; it’s about changing our practice. I have already heard and read so many “yes, but” — as if there would always still be a reason to continue entertaining the “classical music” mirage. As if composing, improvising, and getting free from interpretative codes could be added as options to make the illusion more “exciting.” But I am speaking of a radical change, not of an ornament, a decoration, or a topping on the “classical music” kingdom.
CODA
Let us be carried on the wings of music by becoming intimately familiar with its language, breathing within it, and never separating the soul from the mind when diving into its poetic depths still waiting to be explored.
Long live music — and may "classical music" rest in peace, buried with all past empires, under a clear, bright, full moon.
LD
Picture : Arkhip Kuindzhi, Moonlit night on the Dnieper 1880
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Debuting in @gewandhausorchester Leipzig is something very special for me, even more considering it’s the first time of my life that I come to this city ! It’s a blessing to be here with my friends of @kremeratabaltica and very dear Gidon Kremer…
Two among the most important places in Bach’s last 27 years of life are still standing : Nikolaikirsche and Thomaskirsche. The Thomasschule, where he lived, composed and taught, was standing close to the city old fortifications - now the « ring », driving way around the old town -, next to the church’s entrance. It has been destroyed in the very beginning of 20st century.
It’s heartwarming to remember the great man’s courage against bureaucracy and institutions, providing so much extraordinary music for the joy of his contemporaries - and our own joy, generations after. Before he got appointed at St Thomas, the councillor Abraham Christoph Platz declared : « since the best could not be obtained, mediocre ones would have to be accepted ». Let’s meditate on this.
Pictured : view from the « back » of the church, and little selfie inside… #bach #leipzig #organ #baroque
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::: A LITTLE RIDDLE :::
I see this on an urtext edition of Mozart’s K503, scrupulously reproducing what’s written on the manuscript : a dominant chord held for 2 bars at the piano (D7), against the strings playing a subdominant (Am7) on the first of the 2 bars.
What would I do ?
A. As the urtext and manuscript have a definitive value for the classical musician, I play what’s written without any question. There’s nothing strange about this harmony: as an interpreter I just have to play the score.
B. I hear that it sounds strange but I still play what’s written : Mozart was a visionary composer, he consciously wrote this « genius » harmonic cluster. If necessary, I support my choice by mentioning a lot of versions by legendary pianists who play exactly as it’s written.
C. I listen to « reference » versions of the piece and notice that some follow the urtext as mentioned in answer A., and some play something that is not written (in various forms, see Argerich or Michelangeli). I pick the version I find the most adequate and do strictly the same.
D. I believe that there’s something wrong with this harmonic clash and decide to follow the harmony played by the strings with my left hand : Am7 on the first of the 2 bars. #mozart #music #concerto #score #harmony
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::: A LITTLE RIDDLE :::
I see this on an urtext edition of Mozart’s K503 third movement, scrupulously reproducing what’s written on the manuscript : a dominant chord held for 2 bars at the piano (D7), against the strings playing a subdominant (Am7) on the first of the 2 bars.
What would I do ? (I do the riddle for fun : I already chose without hesitation when recording the concerto some years ago)
A. As the urtext and manuscript have a definitive value for the classical musician, I play what’s written without any question. There’s nothing strange about this harmony: as an interpreter I just have to play the score.
B. I hear that it sounds strange but I still play what’s written : Mozart was a visionary composer, he consciously wrote this « genius » harmonic cluster. If necessary, I support my choice by mentioning a lot of versions by legendary pianists who play exactly as it’s written.
C. I listen to « reference » versions of the piece and notice that some follow the urtext as mentioned in answer A., and some play something that is not written (in various forms, see Argerich or Michelangeli). I pick the version I find the most adequate and do strictly the same.
D. I believe that there’s something wrong with this harmonic clash and decide to follow the harmony played by the strings with my left hand : Am7 on the first of the 2 bars.
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#liszt #piano #Devil #faust #music Going back to some good old tunes beside my current concert programs…
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À Lyon ! Informations ici.
www.pianoalyon.com/concerts/lucas-debargue-3/
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