Good evening.
Before I go into classical music and its relation to 21st-century society,
I would just like to introduce myself.
My name is Elena,
I’ve been studying classical violin at a competitive level for nine years now.
The way I started is actually rather a funny story.
Growing up, my mom would always show me and my sister
videos of one of her favorite violinists, Joshua Bell.
I’m not sure if you are familiar with the average age
of classical violinists who perform in beautiful concert halls
all over the world.
But they tend to be on the older side
because, by the time they get to the status of mastery,
it’s been a while.
Not Bell.
Bell is a good-looking, charismatic young guy.
And I’m not ashamed to say that by the time it came for me,
as in any good Eastern-European household,
to choose an instrument to study,
I had maybe developed a little bit of a crush on him.
So I thought,
“OK, if this cute boy can do it, obviously, I can too, right?”
I learned it would be a little bit more complicated than that.
Which just makes me so sad to say
that classical music is a dying discipline.
It fell from the grace of beautiful concert halls
filling up with people clamoring to hear the latest symphony
to Millennials who just don’t care about Brahms anymore.
It’s not relevant to my generation anymore.
Classical music remains to be an art form
with elitist and snobbish connotations to it.
And, though tickets to Yo-Yo Ma continue to be impossible to obtain,
the majority of my generation
just does not seem to want to make the effort to understand
all the work that goes into both composing and performing such pieces.
Now, I ask you to recall the last time that you’ve sat down
and listened to a 30-minute long concerto or symphony
and given the composer your full, undivided attention.
Right. It’s been a while for me as well.
Because, frankly, what teenager has the time and leftover mental capacity
after getting through their school day,
to appreciate a work of art that takes so much effort to truly understand?
I mean, it’s perfectly understandable
to want to watch a movie in your free time, for example.
That’s not to say that we don’t hear classical music anymore.
We just don’t realize it.
For example, every single car commercial – ever –
during the holiday season,
plays music from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker.”
Most people don’t realize that the “Dance of the Polichinelles”
or the “Trepak” is part of a much larger picture,
not just background music to the newest Honda.
So it’s not that classical music isn’t around.
We’ve just fallen completely out of touch with it.
Meanwhile, there are parents such as mine,
who consider classical music to be a vital part of a child’s upbringing.
I know this because I see it, weekly.
Every week I volunteer in a program called “Song Catchers,”
whose mission is to provide little children
access to a formal musical education,
which they probably would not have otherwise,
because it can be extremely expensive.
Now, when I first started working there, I noticed something very interesting.
Though there were ample teachers,
there just did not seem to be very many students.
I thought this was very weird.
I mean, here we are, giving away high-quality, free music education,
and people just don’t seem to be that interested.
Now, that in itself is indicative of a much larger problem.
It means that my generation
no longer glorifies hard work and devotion to a craft.
That’s not to say that classical music is the only worthy art form,
it’s the only music we should listen to – that’s it, nothing else!
It’s just that the difference between classical music
and the type that we tend to hear on the radio,
think Rock, or Pop, or Rap, it is quantifiable, and numbers don’t lie.
I recently stumbled across a Buzzfeed article
about a writer who wanted to see if,
under the guidance of a knowledgeable music producer,
he would be able to produce a radio-ready pop single in one week.
Spoiler alert: yes, he was.
He produced, in one week,
a song that I could imagine being played right now, today,
with other pop songs.
Now, compare that to the five, six, seven months it takes
for someone to prepare a classical piece for an audition,
a piece like Reed Peterson just played.
And when I say “prepare,”
I mean polishing it to the point of absolute perfection.
Because in the classical world, if what you are playing
is not 100% perfect, no one will want to listen to you.
One week versus five months.
There’s a bit of a difference there.
So what is next?
Well, if young students are not interested in studying classical disciplines,
will we continue to see sold-out Yo-Yo Ma concerts?
I doubt it.
I know that, if given a chance,
most of my peers would not choose to listen to classical music.
And even I don’t always listen to classical music, either.
So if classical listening is, on average, on the decline for my generation,
what are we listening to?
Well, there is crossover art.
Crossover art is music performed by a classically trained artist
who uses that technique for something outside the realm of classical music.
For example, one such artist,
who is pretty popular with my generation, is Lindsey Stirling.
She is an incredibly talented, classically-trained violinist and dancer.
She hasn’t used this technique to perform concertos
or to dance with the ABT,
but she is able to use it to play tunes on an electric guitar
and dance in front of huge pyrotechnic displays,
and, let me tell you, it does make for quite a show.
Though crossover art is by no means meant to be substituted
for a shrewd classical study,
it can be a great way to get people’s attention.
However, the mere existence of this type of art form
shows that what used to be appreciated in its pure and unadulterated form,
now has to be simplified for my generation to enjoy en masse.
So what can we do?
Well, values can only be acquired through education.
I’m sure you are all waiting for the obligatory
“Let’s expand music programs in schools,”
but let’s expand music programs in schools.
Let’s teach children to be artists, to explore the world around them,
to express themselves.
Because at the end of the day,
when we think of an orchestra playing Beethoven,
the emotions in that music,
and even the range of instruments themselves,
show to demonstrate human emotions as they truly are:
layered, messy, sometimes even discordant.
But even if one were to put aside
the beauty of human experience reflected in classical music,
it really isn’t the music itself that we, as a society, so desperately need.
I’m sure we’d be able to live without it.
To engage in classical music is to work for years on end,
to try to reach this elusive status of perfection.
Classical study builds resilience,
it tests patience and develops a work ethic.
And we, as a society and as a generation,
have become desensitized to art and emotion as a whole.
And even to talk about classical music and classical study
is to risk something pompous and elitist.
All classical disciplines
are difficult to learn and difficult to enjoy
because they take so much time and effort to truly understand.
So, ultimately, what’s next is nothing,
if nothing is done to educate our generation and the next.
Classical music will continue to fall out of relevancy,
and we will become a society
that is out of touch with all the values it teaches,
because that is what it’s truly about.
(Applause)
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