Being a music major who plays almost exclusively non-classical music, Yoon’s presentation on the similarities of classical music and more contemporary music styles was especially intriguing. While I agree that classical music is often under-appreciated simply due to its apparent inaccessibility, I have beef with his claim that classical music should be listened to as much as any other music style. Musical preferences are driven mainly by ones life experiences, and, as a result, people listen to music that illustrates experiences that they can relate to. This is where I feel that classical music loses its audience. It is simply impossible for music that was written about life experiences 200 years ago to be completely transferrable to our current experiences. Sure, the emotions we experience are unchanged, but the ways in which we experience them are completely different. For example, if I wrote and mailed love poems to try to woo women in today’s world, my success rate would be extremely low. In the 1700s, however, I might be a player. And it is this change in context that causes classical music to be largely lost in translation from Medieval and Renaissance-era Europe to today’s world. Thus, as an American living in 2009, given the choice between Mozart and Metallica, I’m going with Metallica 99.9% of the time.
This is not to say, however, that I don’t appreciate the beauty of classical music every once in a while. And, thus, I feel like a persuasion advocating for greater appreciation of classical music would be a stronger statement. Just like I enjoy visiting foreign countries to expand my cultural horizons, I also enjoy “visiting” classical music every once in a while to hear about experiences from a different time period. And while I might still prefer America and good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll, classical music is still something that can be enjoyed every once in a while.
As a poet, I'm going to disagree with you about the success of wooing others with love poems. Have you ever seen a writer's convention? Seriously though, I think quite a few people do still woo with letters and poems. At the same time, your argument about music has merit. I think one connection that might be interesting to look at with Yoon's work is how the musicians of any period borrows from the music from previous periods to make their emotions / aesthetics appeal in a new way. In that view, rock and roll would be a part of a continution rather than a disruption of classical music, and classical music (meaning the music created in the classical period rather than non-lyrical music composed for contemporary symphony audiences) is an important art to understand in order to appreciate the complexity of contemporary music.
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