Classical Music Insights

Classical music: the term means many things to many people. To some, it is anything with an orchestra, to others anything over a century old. The uninitiated may think of classical music as elitist and beyond their comprehension. Scholars in the field insist that the term “classical” refers only to Mozart and his contemporaries, preferring other, more specific terms for other times in history. None of those views is completely useful. Orchestras are part of the field, but not its sum total. Besides, sometimes, orchestras appear in pop music, and there is plenty of fine music that does without an orchestra. Age, too, is not a defining factor: folk music, even some drinking songs, have been around for centuries without becoming classical, and there are great composers still alive and working in the twenty-first century. As for charges of elitism, classical music is accessible to anyone with ears, a brain, and an open mind, particularly if that mind is armed with some background information, which this book hopes to provide. To the scholars in the field, one can observe that indeed, they have defined the “Classical Era” as roughly 1750 to 1820, and prefer the term “art music” if something more all-encompassing is needed. However, if society as a whole wishes to call all this range of expression “classical music,” it seems petty to quibble. Moreover, quibbling only reinforces ideas of elitism. So though our subject matter for these twelve chapters is broadly speaking “art music,” it is the word “classical” that appears in the title.