Why Classical Music Deserves To Be Heard

Ivanovka, a private country estate Sergei Rachmaninoff spent the summer in, where he composed.

The sun set over the skyline of Birmingham. I watched it dip beneath the horizon, sitting on a blanket laid across the lawn. Tears streamed down my face as the climactic theme of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor resonated through my very soul. The melody enveloped me in nostalgia as I sat there indulging my emotions. But unfortunately, music like this, music that takes you on an emotional pilgrimage, is dying.

Classical music’s popularity has been declining in decades past. After the Covid-19 pandemic, classical music audiences around the world decreased by as much as 20%. This decline isn’t anything new; the popularity of classical music as we know it has been on a downward trend ever since the development of jazz in the 1920’s. In the 1960’s, when bands like The Beatles exploded in popularity and topped the charts, the fate of this once ruling genre was sealed. This wasn’t caused by a lack of effort on classics' behalf; composers like Leonard Bernstein made a point of bridging the gap between classical music and more modern styles. The majority of people however preferred the novelty presented by rock and similar genres. Fast forward to 2006, the Spotify app was released and since its inception, classical music has never been able to crack the top 10 most listened to genres.

Shouldn’t we be happy to have escaped the stuffy, ‘boring’ music of yesterday? Well, while the pop genre - which has topped the list of most popular genres for the past 10 years - is near universally adored, it’s hard to say whether that inclination is due to legitimate taste or the easy listening experience it provides. This is of course in stark contrast to most classical music, which requires a certain degree of attentiveness to be fully enjoyed. In today’s hasty age, the idea of a time commitment without immediate gratification is at odds with our newfound impatience. It requires the listener to invest time and build a personal relationship of sorts with the material consumed. Just like high literature, classical music can transport its listener to a different time and place. It takes you on an intellectual and emotional journey that the average pop fan could never experience. And it’s this poetic depth, so rare in today’s pragmatic age, that makes classical music worth fighting for.

Orchestras and big companies alike are trying to make classical music as accessible as possible with projects like Apple Music Classical, but unless we realize that it’s our attention that fuels and fans the flame of classical music, we’ll be the generation responsible for its fizzling-out and dying off.