My partner is currently studying for her Masters in Classical Music Composition. To that end she has been getting into the local classical music scene and I have been going along.

I love classical music, there is nothing better on a rainy night to bring the lights down and turn up a Bach Fugue, or maybe listen to the Requiem Mass or even bring out some Debussy.

However nothing gets me more angry than modern classical. I used to dismiss it out of hand as pretentiousness or simply an a-tonal mess. The last performance Cath and I went too started off well but rapidly went downhill. The worst offender was a well-known composer who has had her pieces played around the world. In this piece there were three performers, one on Soprano Sax, one Alto Sax and the other on percussion. They were all facing a projection screen. A movie was projected on the screen of failing pieces of cut out coloured paper and each performer was assigned a colour. They would randomly play notes while their colour was on screen.

Say it with me now: This is not music. It was a hideous mess of random sound, I just felt horribly embarrassed for the performers and the audience. They finished and…everyone applauded.

We had an intermission and Cath was kind enough to let me beg off so I went to the pub and watched the cricket.

While I was sitting there though I got thinking. Is it really their fault? Let’s have a look at some of the music genres around today. Rap was first really performed in the early 1900’s, Rock music? Went mainstream around the 1960’s, was really started though around the 1930-1940’s. Hiphop? Started in the 1970’s! Classical music? That started in 1100. That is over 900 years of music.

In that time we have had some of the greatest artists ever encountered. With that kind of pedigree it would be daunting if not impossible to live up to those standards. When Cath first started writing for her masters and she asked for my advice I was blunt and said I did not enjoy the music she was writing and I asked why she did not write more in the Classical or Romantic era style and the answer was no one writes in that style because it has already been done better than anyone possible could.

So I think that is why we are left with these people writing for random videos or playing the piano with a teddy bear or using a prepared piano.

This is not the road it should be going down. People should be proud of what has been achieved and use it for inspiration for their pieces not simple look at it and conclude you could never be that good. It really smacks of my previous post The Great Leveler.

I could be wrong but I get the feeling that classical music is dying by being its own worst enemy.