As I'm sure many of you are at this point aware, there was a rather ill-informed and offensive article posted on slate.com earlier this week stating that "classical music is dead." (Click here to read the full article on slate.com) I have been contemplating a response to the the author's comments for a few days but was having a difficult time moving beyond the extreme anger inspired by the article in order to formulate coherent thoughts on the subject. And I was also trying to avoid resorting to simply calling the author a "jerk-face" or "ass-hat." You know, at least make it somewhat apparent that at one point in my life I graduated Summa Cum Laude and earned a Master's degree.
Luckily, another blogger (Andy Doe, of properdischord.com. I very highly recommend following him) took it upon himself to write a response that gave a voice to my thoughts and feelings beautifully.
PLEASE go here to read Andy's spectacular response to the the offending piece.
There's only one thing I would add as a response to the author of the Slate.com article: Thank you. Thank you for so blatantly offending me and bashing what I do for a living. I really appreciate how easy you found it to declare classical music to be dead when most of your cited facts either supported the idea that support for classical music is increasing, or they came from looking at the number of "likes" on Facebook. Last time I checked, Facebook is not a viable source of unbiased information, nor is it likely to represent a sufficiently diverse enough population to give much credibility to the number of "likes" actually counting as an unbiased survey. Thank you for insulting how I have spent the last 20 years of my life and for declaring those 20 years to essentially be a waste of my time. Thank you for being so willing to assume that classical music has no place in the world of today. You all too easily declare that it belongs only to the elderly, yet here I am, under the age of 30 and completely in love with performing and listening to music from over 100 years ago. I definitely find it preferable to most of the disposable crap that's being produced today. Classical music will never die as long as we are here to fight you for it. Arts funding will never disappear as long as we fight for it. Orchestras will never die as long as we fight for them. It is clear that you do not care for classical music yourself and therefore have no problem with writing it off as deceased. Be sure that you do not mistake your own opinion for fact, and the fact is, classical music is not dead. And as long as I have breath in my body to fight for it, it never will be.
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