corn dog webThis week, I was struck by a fascinating post by John Terauds on the word like and it’s meaning in relation to music—specifically classical music.

We don’t like every person we meet, or every movie we see, or every book we read. But the interaction itself still has the potential to change our life in some way.

I highly recommend both John’s post as well as Jaimy Green’s article from The Awl (which inspired John to muse on the issue of musical like vs. dislike).

Last summer, I was talking with Reuel Meditz and our discussion took a surprising turn as I suddenly found myself asking him about his reactions to musicians who can be terribly judgmental on the subject of others’ musical taste. He was very diplomatic yet direct and you can read more of what he had to say here.

The classical purist vs. the freestyle pianist is a huge debate. You have to be thinking, “Why do you make music?” I’m adaptable. Pushing boundaries and experimenting excites me. When Debussy wrote impressionistic piano pieces and Prokofiev scored a movie for the first time that was change. At the same time you need to always have a respect and love for classical music the way it was 100 years ago. It is beautiful and it is worth listening to the way it is. The fact is that you can live in both worlds. I love to live in both worlds.

Shortly after that, my friend Ann and I found ourselves on the subject ourselves. Her father was a Symphony musician who also led a band. When she began playing for weddings and events herself, she complained that some of what she was asked to play was worthless. His advice to her went something like this:

When someone asks you to play a piece you play it. You know what you know and love what you love, but that has nothing to do with what they like.

Both conversations got me thinking about the number of articles, tweets, and posts I have read lately bemoaning the fact that people don’t like classical music- don’t want to listen to it, think it is elitist, think it is irrelevant –you know the drill.

I began to muse on another aspect of this important issue a few days ago when I came across a blog post by Librarian Barbara Fister, Serial Scholarship: Blogging as Traditional Academic Practice. This says a mouthful.

…too often we settle for false assumptions about both our work and the intellectual curiosity of the public. The walls of our gardens assume there is a natural barrier between the way we academics think and what ordinary people care about. This, to me, is a way of proclaiming ourselves a special class of useless.  …Scholars think their work is, by definition unpopular for a number of reasons. It’s too radical and threatening to the bourgeoisie! too refined to be dumbed down for the masses! or just too nerdy to interest anyone outside a tiny circle of obsessives. Fitzpatrick overheard a couple of academics say that it’s fine to talk about “public history,” but clearly there is no such thing as public literary criticism. That attitude drives me bonkers. Here’s news for those who think nobody reads, and if they do, they’re doing it wrong: ordinary people read voraciously, and often read with great insight, which they share generously with other readers all the time. Why that is news we don’t want to hear is beyond me. (Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed)

Sound familiar? Yup. Substitute Classical Musicians for Scholars and there you are. Is it possible that we musicians also underestimate “ordinary people” and their capacity for insight no matter the genre?

There is no doubt that music and audiences are constantly changing and evolving. It is good and right and proper. But, I take away several things from all this. You will have to forgive some awkwardness as I try to write them here somewhat coherently.

1. Don’t confuse the person, the medium, or the venue with the art itself. Beautiful things can happen by anyone, anywhere and both musicians and music fans need to remind themselves of this fact often.

2. You notice I said music fans in #1. There is a certain connotation of passivity and non-involvement in the word audience.  Perhaps the involvement of the listener is less obvious and more ritualized in classical events than others but how different is this from golf or tennis?

3. I don’t buy the argument that people don’t listen to a genre because they haven’t been enculturated into it. It is our job to communicate. There are many works of music. Each one cannot be unique in its message, only in the telling. If the listener doesn’t get it, is it always their fault? One of my friends is a private chef. He says he always starts with what his client loves to eat and then moves on from there. Sometimes he discovers something new himself in the process.

4. You can’t control what someone takes away from a performance. The important thing is that they came away with something new—a confirmation, a question, an inspiration, a conversation. Even acute dislike is a healthy reaction.

Portions of this post were originally published in July of 2012. 

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