A better definition of "classical" music

Conductor and composer Matthew Aucoin suggests we call it "written music:"

The unruly and elusive entity known as classical music does not sound like any one thing, and the sheer abundance of the tradition might invite the conclusion that trying to define it at all is a hopeless exercise. But that would be a mistake, especially at this moment. Like every other sector of cultural life, classical music has been roiled over the past decade by intense debates about the field’s ongoing lack of diversity, among performing artists, composers, and leaders of musical organizations. The stakes of these discussions—which have involved charges of Eurocentrism, head-in-the-sand elitism, even white supremacy—have at times felt existential, given many institutions’ financial straits. Maintaining a 90-piece orchestra is generally a money-losing proposition in America today, and as a result, classical-music organizations lean heavily on private donations. Why, many onlookers have asked, should an orchestra or opera company gobble up millions of dollars from wealthy sponsors to subsidize the salaries of musicians who mainly perform music by white men from centuries past, music for which (judging by ticket sales) demand is limited? What is classical music, whom is it for, and what about it is worth defending?

Our answers to these questions will depend on what exactly we love about this music, and what we care about preserving, enriching, and expanding. Claiming that classical music deserves a prominent place in American culture merely because we want to safeguard a particular sound, style, or cultural or ethnic lineage—“music that sounds like Brahms,” or “music from one of three Central European countries”—would be a losing cause.

But a better answer is out there. Rather than defend the “classical” in classical music, I want to champion a particular creative process. What links Hildegard von Bingen and Kaija Saariaho, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Benjamin, is not a specific sound or aesthetic but a shared technology of transmission. At its core, classical music isn’t “classical.” It is written music.

His essay from this month's Atlantic is worth a full read.

What makes this debate more poignant is that "classical" music is often used to score films, TV shows, video games, and other creative productions that want the more "traditional" sound of decades past vs using modern trends. But you don't need to actually play an instrument to compose "classical" music and it's been decades since I wrote anything down. With computer-driven music apps like Logic, I can drag-and-drop MIDI triggers that draw from a 42,000+ sampled instrument library by East West. With all the articulations and adjustments possible in Logic, MIDI, and East West, I can "write" a full orchestral arrangement at my computer. East West even has templates that "create" pieces from user-selected attributes. That's not even AI at work, just some complex and flexible templates. Do I prefer the analog sound? Yes, I do. Do I want to support real people play real instruments? Yes, I do. Can I afford to do that? Nope. So I spend $140/year on a subscription that gives me ridiculously broad access to amazing samples and then tweak them to sound lifelike. Music ain't what it was a century ago, and I won't be surprised if it continues to evolve away from live performers. Sadly, that may be a type of evolution at work.

Aucoin's essay makes some valid points, but if classical music were defined by the score, then all recordings of, say, Beethoven's 5th symphony would sound the same. That's simply not the case, even for recordings of the same piece by the same orchestra under the same conductor made at different times: Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic recorded the Beethoven symphonies three times: in the early 1960s, in 1977 and in 1984. The performances are very different, as Karajan's interpretation of the written music evolved. Moreover, recent recordings of Beethoven's symphonies by period ensembles such as the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique directed by John Eliot Gardiner are radically different from any of the large-orchestra performances, because they seek to re-create the music as audiences of Beethoven's time would have heard them, not only with a much smaller ensemble of musicians but also with faster tempi. So we have a range of styles of performance of Beethoven's symphonies -- the epitome of classical music by long-dead white guys -- that rivals the glorious diversity of jazz. And you don't need to be able to read a note of music to enjoy either genre, or indeed, both.