“Ex-iPod”?
I find myself listening to the classical music station on the car radio. (They also play Frank Sinatra Sunday nights, and some jazz.) I find it soothing. I can’t bear rap/Keisha/and the never-ending Katie Perry.
Perhaps ‘relevant’ is an odd way to describe music, and yet, I’m hearing the term (and its antonym ‘irrelevant’) more and more frequently. I think the fuller term ‘culturally relevant’ is what underlies ‘relevant’ in this context; strictly speaking, ‘relevant’ just means ‘pertaining to the matter at hand’.
A little background to the basis of the question - in the ‘business’ of classical music, change is now happening so fast that there hasn’t been time to fully assess the implications of the last change (or even the change before last, in some cases) before the next set of changes are upon us.
We’re gaining exposure in some ways, and losing exposure in other ways. We’re losing some ways of making money, and gaining others. It’s getting harder to fill a venue for your concert, even as it gets easier to let people know about it. It’s bewildering.
Against this background, the question of ‘relevance’ comes up frequently. What can we do to make/keep this music relevant, both to individuals and to society as a whole?
If you wouldn’t notice if a source of classical music disappeared, I would suggest that source might not have been relevant to you. If you wouldn’t notice if classical music disappeared altogether (a ridiculous hypothetical strictly dropped in strictly for the sake of the definition), then maybe classical music itself would be ‘irrelevant’ to you - strictly something to be played at the 7-11 to keep the hoodlums away. (Doesn’t always work - a friend of my nephew’s sold dope to pay his way through university, and developed a strong liking for the Baroque and Classical periods from waiting around convenience store parking lots. He’s got a bigger collection of Handel than I have…)
On the other hand, if classical music is something you look for on the radio dial, online, in the concert hall, then I’d say classical music is relevant to you.
Another question of ‘cultural relevance’ comes up in the context of our society’s pace - much as I love his work, I rarely have time to listen to a complete Mahler symphony anymore. That’s a distinct change from 30 years ago, when I would quite happily spend an entire evening doing nothing but listening to recordings, and a double-bill of Bruckner and Mahler was a feast for the ears.
At any rate, there’s a quick thumbnail sketch of some of the things I’ve encountered in recent conversation with fellow artists, presenters and agents. It is a time of great uncertainty for us all, it would seem, and yet, we still have our passion, our imaginations and our optimism to guide us.
And I want to re-iterate that I have intention of judging anyone to whom classical music is not relevant - just because I’m a fisherman doesn’t mean you have to like seafood, to extend an earlier metaphor.
Yes.
I have the central melody from Borodin’s On the Steppes of Central Asia tattooed around my right bicep in memory of my father.
I’m not a sophisticated listener - can’t identify periods, or often composers. I do leave the classical station playing for background music though. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons full volume with my morning coffee makes my day better. Some pieces (Mussorsky’s Great Gate at Kiev piano version, Mozart’s Requiem) give me chills.
Oh, for crying in my sink! Three edits and I still missed this - it should have read “…I have no intention of judging anyone…”
Excellent statement of your intent, Le Ministre de l’au-delà, and I would extend the notion of relevance (in all your senses) to the genre of Jazz, which has a much shorter history and a much narrower following (in terms of population) these days than Classical. But I would save similar discussion of Jazz for a separate thread, which would probably be like most Jazz-oriented threads at SDMB: barely even viewed!
I am not a big listener of classical, but I do go on streaks where I listen to lots and lots of it. I used to put it on at work once in a while, and everybody would get mad at me, because apparently the only acceptable music was 80s hair metal. This place was a feed mill.
Like others I too have a problem with the term “relevant”. While I am all about many types of music, including various genres of classical, very few of the types “speak to me” in a way that’s “relevant”.
So, no, classical music is not relevant to me. I am, however, a fan, especially of baroque and early music. But the only music that I “relate” to is 90’s indie/hardcore and 2000’s emo (oddly enough, 2000’s indie, not so much, although I do like it as music.)
How is it possible to be a fan of music that isn’t relevant to you? That makes no sense to me at all. If you’re a fan, it’s relevant.
I dunno. I said no because I don’t personally own any classical music and for all intents and purposes, I don’t play classical music but I do have classical music stations on pandora for use as background music at dinners and other get-togethers where I want unobtrusive audio.
Ahh…Bach.
We had very little exposure to classical music in my crap school ages ago. Everything I know came from other sources (yeah, cartoons, too). I can’t imagine this situation improving anytime in the future as arts and music in schools are given the old heave-ho. I wonder, do expensive private schools teach classical music appreciation or something? I have relatives who knew ultra-rich people, whose teenage kids and their friends regularly went to classical music concerts. (and popular music, too). They weren’t studying for careers in music, either. Just ordinary kids, though really rich.
Started listening to KUSC for my commute - better for my blood pressure, and their Los Angeles traffic reports are so very cultured.
I don’t listen much to classical music, nor is instrumental music my first love.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have many pieces I love, and can listen to for hours on end. It may not be a first choice, but there’s majesty there, to be appeciated.
The way that classical music has influenced and been influenced other forms of music, however, is impossible to ignore. I may not care for any particular piece, and I may not like a historically significant piece, but that doesn’t change that I believe classical music to be an important foundation for much of what I like to listen to more often.
As an aside to salinqmind, actually, the majority of what I know of music history is coming from three sources: Spike Jones, PDQ Bach, and now the 1632 books. At least two of those three sources are sufficiently low-brow for anyone. 
I listen to more and more classical music as the years go by. Maybe 40% of all I listen to is classical and jazz must make up for another 40 or 50%. It’s been years since I last bought any music that wasn’t either classical or jazz and I go to classical concerts maybe 10 times a year or more. (I end up seeing less jazz live, but that’s just because there’s not so much of it available where I live.)
I’m pretty eclectic as far as classical goes and listen to everything from Gesualdo to John Adams. Right now I’m on a bit of a Second Viennese School kick and have been listening to lots of Berg and Schoenberg (Webern is still a bit much for me, but I’m learning to enjoy it in more limited doses). I think my life would be severely impoverished if I couldn’t listen to classical music any longer, so it’s very relevant to me.
For Webern, I highly suggest starting with the Passacaglia, op.1, the Five Movements for String Quartet, op. 5, and/or the Six Pieces for Orchestra, op. 6. The lingering Romantic ties are clearer in those pieces than others. Webern is like the perfect distillation of 19th c. Romanticism. It’s worth remembering how much he adored Mahler, for example. Take the utmost expressive element, distill this into its most perfect form: that’s Webern. Strong stuff. But I love it.
I was just listening to the Five Movements for String Quartet a couple of hours ago. In the recording I own it’s sandwiched between the Slow Movement for String Quartet and the String Quartet, both from 1905, just 4 years before the Five Movements. It’s mind blowing to see how much Webern’s music changed in such a short period of time. While the earlier pieces are almost Romantic, the Five Movements sound aggressively modern to my ears. I guess it takes a better and more knowledgeable listener than I to hear any Mahler in Webern’s more mature work. Even so, I still can appreciate the Five Movements in some way; in the Six Pieces for Orchestra (and in all other orchestral works by Webern I’ve heard) the orchestration is so weird I just can’t get past it. I don’t even know how to describe it: it’s very spare but also very dense (I’m sure you and the other more musically erudite dopers cringed at this). So far the only Webern I can actually take is for strings, because then I don’t have to worry about strange combination of timbres on top of everything else. Unfortunately I am unfamiliar with the Webern Passacaglia.
Nope, classical music is not relevant to me.
I had to think hard to find some classical music I liked listening to, and that would be one that was inside a movie, so I was interested by the characters/setting first, then by the fact they were playing music.
Now, maybe there’s some kinds of classical music I like, since it’s so broad and that I’m not sure of the definition.
“Classical music” is as [culturally] relevant to me as “vanilla flavouring” or “four-door sedans”. Sometimes I enjoy them, sometimes I don’t. If none of them existed, I’d use something else; there wouldn’t be some kind of gaping hole in my psyche.
I voted “not relevant”, but I still think it’s an odd question.
It’s relevant to me, but in a different way than other music. I don’t generally just have classical music on for ambiance. I just don’t particularly like it for that purpose. I can only actively listen to it. And this also means that a lot of the lesser works are things I don’t like.
The exception is, as mentioned, movie soundtracks. But those aren’t really for ambiance or for listening, but to underscore what is going on the movie. They play an active role in showing me what the creators wanted me to think during the scene.
In fact, part of the reason I don’t like classical music for ambiance is that I find it’s too powerful, and somewhat overwhelming for background music. Unless something really interesting is happening elsewhere, I wind up getting sidetracked listening to it, even if it’s not something I particularly like. Or it winds up affecting my mood, and the best classical music does not tend to make for positive moods. And the bad stuff is frustrating.
Almost needless to say, I hated the trend of piping it into the classrooms as we worked back as a kid. At least, back then, I was better at ignoring it, though, and I did get my work done. But it would have been faster without it.