The final part of Webster’s definition, “value,” is the most important in understanding the weight put on classical music today. Classical is a way of giving music and the person who created it an exemplary status as a historical figure. The word gives the artist a sense of authority, which can only be done after the fact. When looking at who we consider important in the classical music world, it is often music created by someone both dead and who has authority. Think about how this maps into other genres too, who do we consider the rock and roll greats? Or the jazz greats? Very often they are both dead and have been given authority after the fact.

Today we think of many musicians as classical musicians. Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach–all of these composers didn’t hold authority in their genres and fields until after their deaths, at least nowhere near how important we consider them today. They didn’t follow the same rules we do, or call their music what we have dubbed it. We give their music authority, we classicize it. 

Who was the first musician properly “classicized”–that is, retroactively given authority? William Weber, in the introduction to his book The Rise of the Classics in England, defines George Friderik Handel as the first classicized musician, about twenty years after his death. The reason Handel was one of the firsts to be revered in this way was because he was the first to revive music. This tradition of reviving music, which has become integral to the classical canon (and is the only reason we can hear this music today, there are no recordings from the 1870s) likely began as a way for people to feel “high-class,” and England was the perfect breeding ground for these very notions. Weber describes why exactly England was the birthplace of classical music, and why Handel was so popular for this practice, namely its status as a commercial country, one catering to the taste-making sensibilities of the middle class through proper classical venue infrastructure and economies to support the practice. What I find more interesting, however, is why the tradition of revival has stuck around and why we find it so important to revere and honor the past.

Why do we put this kind of pressure on the past? Why do we build up these musicians as masters? Why do we give the dead authority? 

Similar to Weber’s discussion of England, Abigail Fine’s introduction to The Composer Embalmed, explains how the practice of collectors owning bits and pieces from composers is documented as a precursor to modern-day museums. She describes our obsession with classical music, which started twenty years after Handel’s death, as a “moral and intellectual self-cultivation through engagement with high culture” and focuses on the middle class as the main player in this tradition. This engagement with classical music, and the eventual invention of proper museums, are ways of engaging in the “illusion of eternity,” and is often highly connected to class status.

The way we remember, engage with, and share the past is often inaccurate. Is this just our human nature, are we bound to change things as we see fit?

Looking at representations of the historical–films, architecture, concerts–we often see inaccuracies, usually as an attempt to connect to modern sensibilities. In films, certain costume choices may be made so that we as an audience understand that this character is supposed to be hot, or evil, or smart. Because film is a visual medium, we are given visual clues to understand the plot of the story. The same can be seen when listening to re-orchestrations of certain musical pieces–these changes are ways to get a modern audience onboard with listening to an already amazing piece of music. These changes are not always intentional, and not usually because of any problem in the original, other than the fact that modern context can require a modern interpretation.

Listening to classical music, and even using this language, calls upon a long legacy of revival, beginning with England’s 18th and early 19th century middle class attempting to gain status in high culture, and most importantly utilized as a modern interpretation of the past. The word classical is a word that is quite unspecific, not defining an agreed upon place or time-period, or defining a style that actually developed and existed. Classical is mostly just an expression of modern-day opinions and designations put upon past musical traditions, practices, and composers. It is important to understand that most of what we consider classical music is born of a society we don’t commonly know much about, and much of the stylistic elements of this music are informed by practices foreign to the average listener. 

What can understanding these nuances change about the way we talk and consume classical music? How can we stay aware of the many ways in which our own perspectives may sway or change the music we consume? Or how the way we consume music actually changes how we define this music? And finally, how do we know its content in the first place? 

Many of these questions may remain unanswered even as we better and better understand the past, and though the actual events of the past can’t change, our perceptions inevitably will. How we choose to engage in the past is our choice, and an important one.

Written by Peri Zoe Yildirim-Stanley

Painting by Joseph Danhauser: “Franz Liszt, am Flügel phantasierend” (1840)