Friend Alex called the other night, and we got to talking about music, and classical music in general. Alex, who is classically trained and owns an extensive CD collection - who has been know to be moved to tears by a Beethoven adagio or a Brahms symphony - tells me that he is tired of classical music. It's all noise, he says. It's all noise and emotion, and he's reached a point in his life at which he can no longer tolerate such excesses. "Why rub raw all the hurt and loss you've been trying to keep inside by willingly listening to a piece that will tear your heart out?" he asks.
Besides, he says, all that classical music, all those symphonies and sonatas and that lot, have become museum pieces. To go to a concert of classical music is to be surrounded by Q-Tips - skinny old people with white hair. Name the last piece of classical music that has amounted to anything, he challenged me. To find anything that will pass the test of time you have to go back to Bela Bleeding Bartok, and that's going back more than half a century. No, he says, the old stuff is all noise and emotion, and the new stuff is rubbish and will be relegated to the dust bin soon enough.
So Alex now tunes his iPod to the Polar Chimps, Emperor Rudolph and The Little Prince. I commented that classical music can hardly be called irrelevant if it can engender such a strong response from him, but Alex won't listen. He's funny that way.
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