It was with dismay and sadness this week that I learned in Slate of the demise of classical music. A genre I’ve loved for years, which was so loosely branded as to encompass one thousand years of history across dozens of countries and cultures, is gone.
In my grief, I groped for an explanation. How had this happened? Just two weeks ago, I was watching
Pierre Boulez conduct Mahler 10 on public television in Cleveland, yesterday my
wife was practicing Scarlatti in the living room while I cooked in the
kitchen…but it’s too much to bear.
Despite the creeping despair, I searched the rest of the internet
for clues. How could such a
durable and yet nonsensical category of music finally have met its untimely
demise? Was it a total
loss? Could Monteverdi still be
revived, or at least some medieval sacred music?
What proof did we have that it was truly dead? But, my friends, the answer came in the
dark of the night, with the comforting glow of Facebook illuminating my pale
visage: classical music is UNDEAD.
It had been right in front of my face. The signs had been showing up for years: time and time again, I’d endured
the panic…suffering the familiar shock, racing downstairs to check that my
record collection was still there.
Yet, it always seemed to reemerge, not with a majestic roar but with its
steady refusal to be completely extinguished.
Was I a fool to ignore what was hiding in plain sight? Could these constant reincarnations
have ever been anything else?
My refuge, as always, lay in Wikipedia. I combed the annals in search of a clue. With dread climbing up my spine as a
serpent stalks its unsuspecting prey, I keyed the search:
"An undead is a being in mythology, legend or
fiction that is deceased yet behaves as if alive. A common example is a corpse
re-animated by supernatural forces by the application of the deceased's own life force or that of another being (such as a demon)."
Oh, joy and horror, that it could be naught else!
How to reconcile that my lover was this mangled beast? Those sounds that had suckled me, the
staggeringly diverse repertoire that only barely formed a coherent musical genre
was a ghastly multi-headed hydra.
Reeling, I confronted my present quandary with cool detachment and a clarity
reserved only for madness.
I had to think, All
of these years, I knew that “classical music” was a clumsy, blunt instrument
used to lump together centuries of human creativity. Yet this thought had never troubled me before. It seemed as if the apparitions hiding
within (for I now know them to be nothing less, dear reader) could survive the
steady onslaught of lazy journalism…but how? I didn’t question that, I dared not. It was enough for me only that it
survived, for I could not bear the truth.
My unsteady thoughts turned to the “other beings” to whom the
Wikipedia tome referred. That
classical music had usurped its own hidden life force to reanimate was obvious,
but it must have had help.
Who? The dizzying array of
possibilities threatened to overtake my already enfeebled mind, as I now could
trust nobody. My friends, my
classmates, even my own family could be in league with the abomination, feeding
its grotesque ambition.
Suddenly, the truth:
the graying audiences, the conspiracy of silence in the concert hall,
the lack of demographic savvy…these were the white hunters, holy warriors
laboring in secret to save me from the evil that I dared not face. Oh, if only I knew...if only my naïve and careless love for many extremely different kinds of music
had not blinded me!
I sensed that the grip classical music had on me from
childhood was suddenly severed, as if by naming the creature I could defeat its
unholy spell. Perhaps there was
still time to arrange my escape, to hide from its gaze, if only for ---
-- wait, Justin Bieber was ARRESTED?
