If we’re serious about casting aside classical music’s “tour-de-force of anti-hype”, the genre needs a name-change, says Craig Havighurst. He has a new term to suggest.
In his Young People’s Concerts, circa 1958-'72, Leonard Bernstein lamented the limits and imperfections of the term Classical Music. We use it, he said, “to describe music that isn’t jazz or popular songs or folk music, just because there isn’t any other word that seems to describe it better.”
Nearly a half century later, we find author and musicologist Alex Ross opening his 2010 book Listen To This with a similar complaint. “I hate ‘classical music’: not the thing, but the name,” he writes. “The phrase is a masterpiece of negative publicity, a tour-de-force of anti-hype... Keep reading on Medium
In his Young People’s Concerts, circa 1958-'72, Leonard Bernstein lamented the limits and imperfections of the term Classical Music. We use it, he said, “to describe music that isn’t jazz or popular songs or folk music, just because there isn’t any other word that seems to describe it better.”
Nearly a half century later, we find author and musicologist Alex Ross opening his 2010 book Listen To This with a similar complaint. “I hate ‘classical music’: not the thing, but the name,” he writes. “The phrase is a masterpiece of negative publicity, a tour-de-force of anti-hype... Keep reading on Medium