Stop trying to save classical music.

Instead, let it save you.

Please enjoy the following essay - but first I wanted to quickly let you know that this weekend Feb 2nd and 3rd I will be at Governor’s Comedy Club at McGuires in Bohemia, NY. I’m also coming soon-ish to Hartford CT, Ann Arbor MI, Louisville KY, Alameda CA, Wilkes-Barre PA, Vienna VA, NYC, and Seattle WA — All tickets and all my upcoming road dates here!

And now for the essay:

Stop trying to save classical music.

I’ve always loved classical music. As a kid I used to stay up late listening to WQXR (New York’s classical music radio station) on my clock radio. I’d play name that tune where I’d determine the key, compositional style/period, and instrumentation, and guess the piece that way. I was often right. I was also often alone at lunch.

Not every kid loves classical music. My love was largely due to being surrounded by it growing up: my older brother was a talented pianist who was often practicing in our NYC apartment for hours a day, and my father (a professional jazz saxophonist and lifelong lover of learning) not only played recordings and took us to concerts, but also sat with us at the piano and taught us how to identify various intervals, chords, and polyrhythms. Classical music was always familiar to me, and we often gravitate towards what’s familiar. But more on that in a bit.

As I entered my brooding phase as a pre-teen and teen, I’d spend hours after school in my room listening to Brahms Symphonies and Beethoven Quartets, letting images come into my head, daydreaming and escaping myself. I’d also do lots of sit-ups while the music played — a memory I recently shared with my partner that has now made him slightly terrified of me.

Music was my drug of choice, and when I wasn’t listening, I was practicing my viola for hours a day, dreaming of being accepted into a prestigious music conservatory.

That dream became a reality and I ended up studying at The Juilliard School — a competitive environment where I’d often hear another violist in the next practice room playing the same piece I was working on, only faster and better (depicted here in episode 2 of my web series Is A Violist). But besides the stress of competition, there was a looming feeling: that we were all studying a “dying” art form. What did it matter how fast or in tune we could play if what we were playing was mostly irrelevant in our society?

My peers and I would note the sea of grey heads at our concerts, the sounds of hard candy wrappers being opened, and coughing between movements of a piece. Our audience was quite literally dying. And of course, we’re all dying, but, it felt like the people at our concerts might die sooner. And then what would we do?! Play for corpses??

As far back as I can remember, I’ve heard the narrative that classical music is “dying” and therefore needs to be “saved.” Lately, I’ve been wondering at what point we will give it a time of death. According to scientists, we have about ten more years to make drastic changes to save the climate, and then it will be too late. When will it be too late to save classical music?

One answer is that it’ll never be too late, and that classical music actually isn’t dying, because it’s all semantics: someone’s definition of “dead” may be someone else’s definition of “doing just fine” (like when people think I seem dead behind the eyes, but really that’s just how my face looks). Sure, more people go see The Jonas Brothers than they do any symphony concert, but there are still orchestras all around the world that employ musicians, and therefore there are opportunities to go see these employed musicians in concert, and people do go see them! Right? I don’t know actually. I’m not trying to convince anyone that classical music is doing great culturally, just pointing out that a lot of emotions and thoughts come from words we made up, and you could say that classical music is “dying” because, well, one could say that anything is. Slowly but surely.

I should also take a moment to point out that when I say “classical music,” I’m really referring to the tradition of music that:

• is composed by someone and (often) performed by other people who didn’t write it, and therefore calls for somewhat equal praise for both the composer and the interpreter (something much less common in more popular music).

• often doesn’t have lyrics or if it does, they’re not lyrics to be sung along with or memorized by adoring fans.

• is performed in a room where the audience is supposed to be silent until the very end of the piece, when they’re supposed to clap.

The term “classical music” is a placeholder in this case for a tradition of performance. The “classical period” really only covers a short span of composers, and doesn’t even technically apply to Bach, Brahms or Stravinsky, who fall under the Baroque, Romantic, and Neoclassical periods, respectively. But everyone knows what I mean when I say classical music: the boring shit.

I’m partly joking of course, because I personally don’t find classical music to be boring (unless it’s like Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations or something— what a stupid piece), and immersing myself in it truly saved me when I was a depressed and alienated teen. I loved it so much I wanted to study only that in college — which led to me attending a music conservatory.

At Juilliard, and later as a freelance violist in NYC, I was involved in many conversations and ventures to try and “save” classical music:

• “New Music” Ensembles (New Music here meaning music composed in the 21st Century, but still performed in the traditional manner I outlined above).

• “New Music” Ensembles but where everyone in the group is hot.

• Alternative concert experiences, or what I like to call the “gateway drug” attempt: “What if we let the audience drink beer during the concert?! Heck, what if the whole concert happened in a bar?! That’ll show people that Schubert and Berg are lit — and then maybe they’ll buy season tickets to the Philharmonic!”

• Classical and pop-artist mash-ups — the musical equivalent of hiding your child’s vegetables in a sugary smoothie.

• Classical music raves. This one should be self-explanatory.

Now I don’t mean to criticize any one of these efforts. All of these can be incredibly interesting and enjoyable (especially the one with hot people because who doesn’t like hot people?) and even make a couple people go, “Oh I actually like more music than I thought I did!” and “Who knew hot people could play this stuff too? I thought they’d all be in powdered wigs!” and that’s all great (though chances are these “converted” people will simply stream a couple classical composers on Spotify, and it won’t translate to any robust support of the art form).

What frustrates me is this idea that classical music can be saved once and for all, or even that it should be saved altogether.

Why should it be saved?

First off, we’re again working with semantics here. Does saved just mean that it should be taught in more schools, especially as arts funding in education dwindles? I’m definitely in favor of that. After all, the time in my life when classical music was the most beneficial and enriching for me was when I was growing up. Also, as described earlier, my father’s efforts when my brother and I were children created two lifelong, diehard classical music lovers. The earlier one is exposed to this stuff, the more familiar it becomes. And as I stated previously, we like what’s familiar. In fact that’s how pop music works: the same lyrical tropes, chord changes, styles of singing, and beats, all pumped into our subconscious everywhere we go. This can further be proven by Christmas music, which is the one time a year everyone likes to listen to music in the jazz, classical, and choral styles (to name a few) because the songs and tunes are familiar.

Or does saved mean more funding for classical music institutions in general? I’m certainly not against that, but where is that money really going? Towards some poorly-attended “innovative” or “boundary breaking” series with a mission that is driven by a cause and not by an effective or moving concert experience?

Or does saved simply mean more people buying tickets to classical music concerts so that musicians get to have the career they want because they feel entitled to it? As a former full-time freelance violist in NYC, I certainly sympathize with this. Any concert I played I would hope was packed, because there was a higher chance of there being a next concert and therefore another chance to do something I loved and get a paycheck for it.

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t owe any of us the career we want. If that were the case, I’d get paid six figures for being a beef jerky taste-tester. But my refined palette and my love of beef jerky just aren’t that valuable in today’s society.

Perhaps the focused, introspective experience of going to a classical concert is something we grow into. Maybe this dying sea of grey heads will be replaced with the next generation of grey heads. Maybe the current sea of grey heads used to be young and not interested in classical music. Maybe it’s all okay.

No matter how you try to sell it, a piece without words by a composer, being performed by other artists, for a crowd that is meant to be silent (even if they get to sip beer) will never be a widely popular experience. The silent part may never have been popular: apparently in Mozart’s day audiences would cheer when they heard a part they liked — raucous crowds that went nuts for a sick second theme.

My guess is that most of the resources going into “saving” classical music are directed towards efforts to generate revenue. Perhaps these resources could instead be invested long term in music education, which had a very positive impact on my life. It gave me something to focus on that had both technical challenges and emotional rewards (and is the only proven way I know to foster a deep love of this kind of art that might translate into actual support down the road — though we should only view that as a nice byproduct).

Classical music will never “die” (or if it does, it probably means there are bigger existential issues at play). We will always have recordings and the ability to play classical music if we want to. And there will always be some classical concerts, as there should be! It’s a special experience.

All this effort to “save” classical music might be keeping us from actually appreciating it. And in fact that pure appreciation could rub off on others and generate more interest in the tradition than any “reimagined” concert experience might.

We musicians must remember why we found ourselves in this career in the first place — because we loved classical music. It saved us. At least it saved me.