Damian Thompson on the dearth of appreciation for classickal musick:

I remember episodes of the BBC’s Late Review, in the good old days when it was presented by Mark Lawson instead of the shrill millionaire socialist Kirsty Wark. Once in a blue moon, a piece of classical music would come up for discussion. Suddenly the luvvies, who had just been wittering on about the brutal starkness of Pinter’s dialogue, would start gasping like guppy fishes. Their musical knowledge was on a par with that of President Ulysses S Grant: “I know only two tunes. One of them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn’t.”

Don’t be misled by the fact that Britain has internationally renowned symphony orchestras and the Proms. These are drops in the ocean of our national indifference to the Western musical canon.

Sure, if old Daniel Barenboim is playing the Liszt concertos in London, the tickets will sell out because people love a musical legend. He can then smudge his way through the pieces and get a standing ovation because half the audience haven’t a clue what they’re supposed to sound like. (“He thinks his fumbles are better than everyone else’s right notes,” says one critic.)

The responsibility for this state of affairs lies with our schools. Of course, not every pupil can be taught to love classical music. But let’s say a third of them have the capacity to be profoundly touched by great music – to feel the electricity run down their spine as Schubert shifts harmonies in the slow movement of his String Quintet, or thrill to the savagery of The Rite of Spring. They may go to their graves without knowing that this music even exists.

A friend of mine in his late thirties has just discovered Beethoven and it’s changed the way he thinks about the world. But he came across the music almost by accident and he’s regretting all the lost years. Likewise, if my father hadn’t bought some Alfred Brendel LPs to play on our first stereo, my life would have been horribly impoverished. I’d certainly never have heard that sort of music at school.

I’m not sure exactly what effect exposure to classickal musick in school actually has on the shaping of one’s misspent yoot.  When I was a kid, we were duly bussed downtown to hear concerts by the San Antonio Symphony, and I remember taking musick appreciation classes all through elementary school, but I couldn’t say whether they really rubbed off on me at all.

What I do remember, and what ultimately shaped me, was hearing it at home.  For example, I think the first classickal musick I got to know was what the Old Gentleman would play on hunting or fishing trips (on 8-track in our ’72 Ford Country Squire station wagon, no less).  It was always the same three tapes: Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D-minor; the Beethoven String Quartet in C-minor, Opus 18, No. 4; and some of the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.  At home, he would frequently play the Bach Double Violin Concerto in D-minor, together with (for some reason) only the final movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 34 in C.  Then one year for Christmas – I was maybe twelve at the time – I was given a record of some early Mozart Divertimenti.  

The rest, as they say, is history.

I take a somewhat similar approach with the gels.  I listen to (and play) a lot of classickal musick.  They are all well aware of the fact and, indeed, many times cannot help listening.  It’s from this awareness that I have hopes that they will one day grow to appreciate such musick themselves.