It's The Music, Stupid!

You want to read an epitome of perverse, wrongheaded thinking in proffering a solution to mitigate the problem facing the classical music concert today? Read this post (link taken from this post). That sort of pop-culture-contaminated thinking is becoming more common, more acceptable, and more widespread with each passing day, or so it seems, and it's beginning to sound very much like a death knell — not merely for the classical music concert as we know it, but for classical music itself. It's the kind of thinking that says that a classical music concert needs to be a show in order to attract a large enough audience to support the institution in much the same way that a rock "concert" is a show .

Well, there's a reason rock "concerts" are shows, and that's because the music is so slight, same-sounding, and simpleminded that it can't sustain interest over an extended period without a show of some sort behind it. Raw, ear-splitting, hard-driving rhythmic pulse goes only so far unless one is stoned out of one's mind.

None of that is true of classical music, and that's why even so much as a hint of extra-musical show at a classical music concert can serve only as a distraction. Even something as innocent as having the lights on in the auditorium during a performance is a distraction. The only lights remaining lit during a performance should be those onstage where they're needed so that performers can see and be seen (that is, be seen performing the music).

In short, it's the music, stupid! Where the classical music concert is concerned, it's all about that and that alone — first, foremost, and entirely.

See how that works?

No, on second thought, we don't suppose you do.