Contemporary Classical Music

Quite often I hear people speak of contemporary classical music. So, I cannot resist the temptation to suggest that this expression ought to be forgotten. It is an oxymoron. If it is classical, it is not contemporary; if it is contemporary, it has not yet had time to become classical. In the case of today’s composers, we would thus have to accept the absurd notion that their music is classical even before it is conceived — a priori.

In fact, by that label people often mean (while ignoring the sense of the word classical) what in English is called highbrow music, which distinguishes itself (and wishes to distinguish itself) from lowbrow music. Highbrow music essentially means pretentious music — music that claims to possess a value higher than others, an intrinsic value, independent of place, occasion, or function.

In our tradition, under the mantle of Christianity — which has banished corporeality (that is, the translation of sound into physical movement) — highbrow music is characterized precisely by its being decorporealized.

That is to say, unsuited to dancing (doing so would be sacrilegious). It is, consequently, music that requires a devoted, silent, motionless audience, eager to take part in a rite of secular sacredness.

Every now and then, within that austere environment, one strangely hears talk of dance. Wagner once said that Ludwig van’s Seventh Symphony was the apotheosis of the dance.
But what dance? Wagner could not dance. Beethoven neither. And do the listeners of the Seventh feel themselves irresistibly swept into some Dionysian rite — like a St. Vitus’s dance?

Well, it does not seem to happen.

Let us simply accept that nothing contemporary can be classical. Posterity will decide whether it deserves that pretentious adjective.