Solitary Confinement: Part 2

This is to clarify/expand on my last post. If you haven't read that post, then read it here. For the record, I'm trying to state my opinions and thoughts very clearly. The problem is, I get super-excited about things. When I do get super-excited about things, I tend to dash off a blog post about it and leave it at that. And my super-excited mind doesn't always articulate things very well. So please bear with me as I start trying to be more serious about this blog. That's all.

Anyway, here's a clearer idea of what I was trying to say.

People used to sit around and play classical music in parlors. They would sit around after dinner and sing Schubert lieder together! Like in Jane Austen novels! Somehow, classical music has completely shifted away from that communal mentality. I think that part of that shift has to do with the ever-growing gap between classical music and popular music, but that's a post for a different time. (I have all *kinds* of things I could say about that.) The real problem, I think, is this intense aura of ceremony and pomp in which classical music has cloaked itself. Classical music is only performed in the most formal of settings. There is a stage. There is a spotlight. There is a soloist.

I feel as if there's this idea that any performance of classical music has to be a spectacle. My argument is not with the spectacle itself, but with the fact that classical music is only ever performed in this setting. Classically trained musicians never play together in informal settings, at least as far as I am aware. If we do play in informal settings, it's as practice for playing in formal settings. All of the solemnity is stifling. I'll go back to folk music, as I did in the first post. Folk musicians will sit around and play music for each other. I think that's really nice. I think classically trained musicians should do that as well. I think it would be good for them, myself included. I truly believe that not only would a more appreciative sense of the music evolve out of that idea, but that a more distinct comradeship would develop among classically trained musicians.

(For the record, this little post took me a cumulative six hours to write because I kept going off on all sorts of excited tangents about Liszt's rock-stardom and why people feel afraid of classical music and the barriers between performer and audience. I hope you appreciate my succinctness.)