Why is Classical Music so Elitist?

I was in the car the other day, looking around in the bulk trash area for furniture to redo. It's kind of my thing. I am usually in the car with my kids and lately they have been on a kick of listening to a steady stream of The Lion King, Sing, and Sofia the First on cd. I will be the first to unabashedly admit that there are some serious bangers on all of those cds, but it gets hard to hear on repeat all the time. When I am driving by my lonesome i prefer to listen to our local classical station, KBAQ.

I love it because I really have grown to disdain modern music, and even the stations that play decent music still are loaded with so many commercials that I go out of my mind waiting for the music to come back on. KBAQ is similar to PBS in that it is funded by donations and therefore does not have to rely on corporate commercial and sponsorship.

(Daddy, is it really true that we could save 15% or more on our car insurance by switching to Geico?)

As much as I love this station however, I always feel a little out of place listening to classical music while I am slumming around in my paint stained, ripped sweatpants literally looking through trash. I feel like I should be in a sitting room with ink and a quill penning a letter to my great aunt across the sea.

(I was looking for a picture of an ink and quill and Google did not disappoint!)

More importantly though, I often feel just straight up too poor to be listening to classical music.

Now if you know anything about the great composers of the time, you'll know that many of them came from extremely modest means. Most of them had huge families, and some of them even had Scat fetishes cough Mozart cough. My point being however, that they were pretty normal people for the most part. Granted, they weren't always performing for normal people. Bach was extremely distinguished and performed for many people with money, but his intention was for everyone to get to hear his music, which is why he wrote so much of it for the church.

So how did things become so skewed? Why do the DJs on KBAQ sound like certified, Grade-A Douchebags? Why does everything about classical music, from seeing it in giant ballroom scenes in period piece movies to having it played at giant cocktail parties for rich people, just make it seem unattainable to the average Joe?

Music has not always been accessible to everyone, and has very recently in modern history become more attainable. Instruments have always been extremely expensive, and the expertise to play them reserved for those only with free time. Considering that has applied to very few people throughout history, it makes a little bit of sense that classical music first appealed to the elite. In order to hear music, you had to either be lucky enough to attend a gathering that it was being played at (AKA have money) or you would have to own an instrument yourself, and know someone who could play it, or play it yourself (AKA have money.)

Of course there has always been versions of music through voice, but that version was much more simple, and to a large degree solely religious based. Since books were also difficult to come by, many parishioners learned hymns by heart and passed them down to their kin. This passed music down through the centuries, but not in the same manner that classical music was.

So why, once nearly everyone had access to music, was classical music still reserved for the elite?

The short and simple answer is: I don't really know.

It could be any number of things, from the fact that there was so much more music available to the ole tried and true case of still needing to have some money. Rock and roll became popular from gospel music, and transferred well to easier instruments. (It's not exactly easy to sing a Bach invention or play it on guitar, and pianos ain't cheap!) Plus, dances became much more universal and popular to even the lower class, and those people would only get music from those who could play it, which made swing dance wildly popular given the very small amount of instruments necessary to produce big sound.

This kind of forced classical music out of the spotlight, and reserved it once again for the elite with more well, elite parties and get togethers.

In the modern age, marketing is likely to blame for the gross elitist attitudes toward classical music.

While this is improving with time and better educational inclusions, it is still a hard thing to shake. As a music major myself, who studied opera and classical composers, I still listen to KBAQ and feel like it's not for me.

Popular commercials also make us think of classical music as elitist. There was even a classical music-style piece written specifically for an expensive jewelry company commercial.

(If this doesn't make you want to drop two months salary on shiny carbon, then are you even living?)

Marketing is extremely impactful, and affects us even when we don't realize it.

My true hope is that eventually classical music becomes more level and accessible to everyone. I would love to see all levels of income, every race and every age interested in seeing the symphony, or popping on the classical station every once in a while.

If nothing else, it would be cool to not feel like I'm too poor for something that should be for everyone!

xx - Beth