Article #237903

Classical music’s blessing is also its curse: you’ve simply got to pay it attention. Plus: No wonder Rossini was an Olympics hit – he invented disco

If you’re reading this, you too may know the essential power of the music we call classical to chart and change your life. That power of connection and empathy is among the miracles of human creativity, and it’s something that everyone has a right to. That is despite decades of underfunding of music education and the whole sector in this country; despite generations of the astounding innovation of its practitioners being ignored by government after government; despite the ravages of technology companies who would replace human-created music with rights-free AI given half a chance. With all of those pressures, and more, it’s no wonder that classical music is in a psychological state of defensiveness and a perennial struggle for relevance, and ends up trying to do things on terms that are set by the streaming companies and social media, not by the art form or the artists themselves.

Classical’s blessing and curse is that it demands our unmediated attention and our time, making it unfit for purpose in the second quarter of the 21st century. What to do with hour-long symphonies and evening-length operas in a cultural feedback loop of ever-shorter attention spans and a media landscape in thrall to the playlist, the reel, the image, the moment? Who has time for time?