What makes classical  Classical?

By Colin Eatock

The term “classical music” ­– once so clear in meaning – has become murky. On the one hand, it is invoked in a positive sense, to suggest “bestness”; on the other hand it has acquired (in some circles) negative connotations of stuffy over-formality and pretentiousness.
 
This Janus-faced ambivalence was prominently displayed in August when the CBC held a press-conference to announce its new line-up of Radio 2 programmes. First, they proudly announced that classical music would continue to be the most played genre on the revamped network (a debatable point). Next, they showed a two-minute promotional video – a collage of the various musics and musicians we could expect to hear on Radio 2 – which contained only about 10 seconds of classical music. It was as though the CBC was embarrassed by its own classical content. I guess they didn’t want to look “elitist.”
 
So why has the term “classical music” become so complicated, loaded-down with diverse and even contradictory implications? Why does it mean different things to different people?
 
“Classical music,” in its narrowest sense – the sense favoured by many music historians – refers to European music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, most people use the term more widely than that. Yet trying to define exactly what “most people” mean when they use the term is a thorny problem. (This summer, Harbourfront Centre framed a series of concerts around the question, presenting a mix of traditional, contemporary and non-Western “classical musics.”)
 
Much of the difficulty stems from the fact that “classical music” is not a single concept, but a group of competing concepts huddled together under a common umbrella. Here are a few of the ideas that, I believe, underlie common usage of the term.
 
1] Music which has survived its era, to be enjoyed by later generations. This certainly applies to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. But it also applies to Elvis Presley. Indeed, in the myopic world of popular music, any song that’s still getting airplay a decade after it was first recorded is hailed as a “classic.” (I have yet to hear the term “classical rock” – but I’m expecting it to appear any day now.)
 
2] Music that is classically proportioned. We don’t really know much about what ancient Greek music sounded like. But the argument is sometimes put forward that certain musical styles are analogous to the formal ideas in Greek art and architecture. This comparison is often invoked for composers such as Mozart and Haydn – but it breaks down when confronted with Wagner, Varèse or Cage.
 
3] The music that is preferred by the aristocracy. Bach, Beethoven and Brahms do well by this definition – and it’s this sense of the word “classical” that we invoke when we speak of the classical music of India or Japan (i.e. the kind of music that the ruling classes in those societies listened to). However, aristocratic associations have also given classical music a bad name among those who decry it as “elitist.” If rich people like it, it must be bad.
 
4] The music that is preferred by the intelligentsia. This definition picks up historically where definition 3 leaves off. By the 20th century, aristocratic patronage had pretty much dried up: Schoenberg and Stravinsky didn’t have patrons. However, their music did attract the admiration (or at least attention) of a well-educated class of people who were interested in contemporary art and ideas.
 
5] Music that is especially refined, elaborate or complex. This definition is often invoked by those brave folks who argue for the inherent superiority of classical music over popular music. It’s a tricky proposition, however. One could, for instance, argue that the classical music of India is more elaborate than European classical music because Indian musicians have a 22-note octave, whereas there are a mere 12 pitches in the Western chromatic scale. And if complexity is held up as the highest musical virtue, then Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbitt emerge as the greatest composers ever. But how many classical music fans would agree with that proposal?
 
There are other criteria that could be brought to bear on the question. There’s instrumentation: pretty much any music that an orchestra or a string quartet plays, or a classically trained singer performs, is arguably classical. Presentation is also significant: just as anything that’s hanging in an art gallery claims to be art, any music performed in a classical concert-setting claims to be classical. And of course tradition is a strong factor: classical music is what your piano teacher taught you that it is.
 
All the above definitions are flawed in some way: incomplete, ambiguous, and fraught with dicey cultural assumptions and value judgments. It’s tempting to suggest that a new terminology is needed, just to be able to discuss this question. But attempts to establish more precise terms have met with only limited acceptance. “Serious music” has been proposed – but it’s a term that some find offensive, as it implies that everything else is frivolous. (Fans of jazz, rap and esoteric rock music certainly consider their music to be serious stuff.) For a while, musicologists liked to talk about “Western art-music,” but that term seems to be on the wane.
 
Even though trying to define classical music is like trying to nail soap-bubbles to the wall, the term shows no sign of dying away. We seem to need it. But maybe the fluidity of the term isn’t such a bad thing, as it allows for healthy debate, and a continuing evolution of the concept. At the very least, the ambiguities surrounding the term are an honest reflection of our culture’s increasing uncertainty about classical music’s values and boundaries.
 
Yet if the term “classical music” is fuzzy around its edges, at its core, our sense of what classical music is all about remains strong. Ask a hundred people passing by the corner of Bloor and Yonge what kind of music Mozart wrote. It’s likely that most of them (or at least most who know who Mozart was) will say he wrote classical music.
 
Until someone comes along with a broad yet precise encapsulation of the idea of classical music that leaves no loose ends or noses out of joint, permit me to contribute one more tentative definition. Classical music is the kind of music that CBC Radio 2 used to play most of the time – but doesn’t, so much, any more.
 
Colin Eatock is a Toronto-based writer and composer.