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Comment by Hunpeter | Hacker News Reader

There is definitely a lot wrong with the classical music scene in general (speaking as a classical pianist - in training). Most notably elitism/classism. I guess classical music also has lots of image problems and just has trouble finding its place in the world. Between the fact that in the last 200 years we've started to actually play and listen to older music (not to mention composing in older styles), the advent of sound recording and then the information age or whatever, it's understandable, really.

I myself just feel lucky that I can enjoy most of this "challenging" music without needing to care about the magnificently strict structure, or how the composer wanted to channel God or something. All I ask is that people not question my sanity on the grounds of my liking of this kind of music.

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The classism/elitism problem is much more an image problem foisted/reinforced by pop culture than it is a real, inherent issue. When all you hear of classical music is on TV shows where it represents "the rich, elitist villain" or on ads for luxury goods, people reverse the association arrow.

How many people who perceive classical music as elitist actually have a personal experience of someone on the "inside" acting elitist and shunning them as "outsiders"?

Historically, literate music has always been confined to elite settings. The common people played folk tunes transmitted orally, and later "popular" songs and dances when mass publishing of sheet music became a possibility.

(There's actually no reason nowadays why this published "popular" music shouldn't become a part of the literate canon that's researched academically etc. But that only adds to a very long list of individual composers and entire musical traditions that end up being broadly neglected by standard academic POV's. It's also a general problem wrt. the study of human art and culture.)

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-poor-peoples-ac...

Sacred classical music was accessible to poor people in big cities. Secular classical music was less accessible though.

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the NYC classical/art music scene: I have many, many of those personal experiences.

I don't doubt it. However my point is that the scene is so small that direct interactions with the community hardly moves the needle when it comes to the broader cultural perception.

I'm a parent of two classical musicians in training, and I took cello lessons through high school. Today, I'm a jazz bassist, and a scientist by day.

I wonder if the cost and competitiveness of the training has something to do with the problem. The people who can win auditions are in fact elite musicians, and are almost exclusively from affluent families.

I enjoy the challenging music too, in the jazz genre. Given that I'm not trying to make a living at it, I'm grateful for the fact that I can play for a tiny but appreciative and loyal audience. I think there are a lot of niche genres that are sustained largely by amateurs and hobbyists.

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