Overview

"""What can be done about the state of classical music?"" Lawrence Kramer asks in this elegant, sharply observed, and beautifully written extended essay. Classical music, whose demise has been predicted for at least a decade, has always had its staunch advocates, but in today's media-saturated world there are real concerns about its viability. Why Classical Music Still Matters takes a forthright approach by engaging both skeptics and music lovers alike. In seven highly original chapters, Why Classical Music Still Matters affirms the value of classical music--defined as a body of nontheatrical music produced since the eighteenth century with the single aim of being listened to--by revealing what its values are: the specific beliefs, attitudes, and meanings that the music has supported in the past and which, Kramer believes, it can support in the future. Why Classical Music Still Matters also clears the air of old prejudices. Unlike other apologists, whose defense of the music often depends on arguments about the corrupting influence of popular culture, Kramer admits that classical music needs a broader, more up-to-date rationale.He succeeds in engaging the reader by putting into words music's complex relationship with individual human drives and larger social needs. In prose that is fresh, stimulating, and conversational, he explores the nature of subjectivity, the conquest of time and mortality, the harmonization of humanity and technology, the cultivation of attention, and the liberation of human energy."

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9780520250826

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Reviews

Despite its decline in popularity, classical music retains enormous personal and cultural significance.So avers first-time author Kramer (English and Music/Fordham Univ.), whose noble ambition here is to explain to a bigger classroom why more people ought to love what he loves. He's a smart guy and knows that he will gain little by dissing pop culture, so he does his best to discuss and even salute the popular. He alludes to films ranging from the expected (The Pianist) to the surprising (Soylent Green) and to such TV shows as West Wing and The Simpsons. He tries to keep it real, even committing some pronoun-case errors for (presumably) an I'm-just-plain-folks effect. He does his best to show how people are like melodies, how the piano is a soul inside a machine. His passion is palpable on every page. He asks keen questions, such as, How does the representation of pain give pleasure, particularly if the pain is strong and unrelieved? But Kramer ultimately ends up preaching to the choir. He assumes his readers already possess considerable knowledge of music theory, discussing without any explanation major and minor keys, leitmotifs and contrapuntal interplay; he quotes Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and other heavyweights, as well as the poetry of Shelley, Wordsworth and Arnold. It's almost as though partway through the manuscript he decided to forget about populism or popularity and give you his real - i.e., highbrow - reasons. The final chapter contains the most striking image: a busker playing a Bach violin sonata at a New York City subway station to an audience of more people than you would predict. This prompts Kramer to wax hopeful and even philosophical, but he underestimates one factor at least as powerful as the music: The girl playing it was hot.A love letter that sometimes loses control of its purpose. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Lawrence Kramer is Professor of English and Music at Fordham University and editor of 19th-Century Music. His many books include Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and Strauss (2004), Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (1995), After the Lovedeath: Sexual Violence and the Making of Culture (1997), and Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (2002), all from the University of California Press.

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