Classical music, old music, so what?

The anecdote – let’s call it that – had made people smile or cringe. In 2012, the Belgian city of Kortrijk announced that it was considering playing classical music to dissuade young people from congregating in the Béguinage park. An initiative already adopted, in the evening, on the platforms and in the corridors of the Brussels metro, indicated the local press.

Bach, Mozart or Ravel would therefore be foils, their melodies and their off-putting chords, their genius reserved only for older ears? No doubt very serious experiments have proved that youth and classic are incompatible, inspiring city councilors to make such decisions. They nourish certainties already firmly rooted in people’s minds, associating what is also called “great” music with the oldest among us. (By the way, we can clearly see the ambiguity of this term “great” music: it imposes itself but from afar, like an ancient statue magnifying a bygone, inanimate beauty.)

Fight against divisions

Concert halls and opera houses cannot accommodate such a split between generations. Driven further by the public authorities, these cultural places are multiplying the actions intended for children and adolescents, hoping that, seduced, they will continue once masters of their adult life. But, after all, should the music lover, whatever his age, be formalized, even scandalized, to be thus “mummified” because of his tastes? Can’t it turn the situation around and highlight its flattering and dynamic facets?

The advantages of “old music”

An old man’s music is music tamed over the years, requiring long-term practice to grasp its depth, richness, the infinite subtleties that a too hasty youth perhaps lets pass without even realizing it. An old man’s music is a music that knows how to escape the sirens of marketing, media hype, the anxious desire to stay in the game and to please everyone, even if it means giving up its singularity. An old man’s music is music that dares to be slow, flirts with silence, is not afraid of “divine lengths” (1) the better, suddenly, to let itself be overwhelmed by sound storms and rhythmic earthquakes.

A music of old is an adventurous music, which likes to travel from the Middle Ages to our days, from Europe to America, from the courts of the Old Regime to futuristic auditoriums, from the solemnities of the Church to the boldness of the Russian Ballets. An old man’s music is music that exalts the sometimes astonishing talent of performers whose technique and sensitivity prove how much human beings are capable of developing dazzling faculties through hard work and passion. Not so bad, after all, to be old. Or judged as such!

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