In one of his typically witty "Impromptus", Jay Nordlinger writes that "you’ll never go broke proclaiming the death of classical music":

You may know of Joseph Horowitz, who makes a living saying that classical music is dying, or dead, in America, thanks mainly to the stupidity of this culture. You’ll never go broke proclaiming the death of classical music — they’ve done it in every generation for centuries now. There’s always a willing audience. As Charles Rosen, the scholar-pianist, once wrote, “The death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition.”

You’ll love this — it reads like a parody that one of us might have written, in a particularly unkind mood. In The New Statesman, Horowitz published a piece titled “Classical Music in America: An Oxymoron?” (Europeans would love to think so. In reality, these are boom times for classical music in America. But you can’t spoil these people’s treasured line.) Horowitz writes:

With the re-election of George W. Bush, many Americans found themselves asking questions about the future of American democracy: about the impact of money and of political machination, and about the power of both to sway an electorate already addicted to fast-food news and talk radio.
Considered as an experiment in the democratisation of high culture, classical music in America restates these questions.

The indulged and uninquisitive American electorate [!] is paralleled by classical music audiences that ask for little and give little back. A tangible acuity of knowing attention still found in Berlin or Budapest is no longer much encountered in New York.

Yeah, right. As I say, some people aren’t open to persuasion, or reason. They have a great investment — primarily an emotional one — in the belief that America is inhospitable to music. In the meantime, there is a cornucopia of music around them: more orchestras, opera companies, chamber festivals, etc., than ever before. More musicians, more presenting organizations, than ever before. More recordings than ever before. (But, true, the big labels are going bust, as well they should, for all their errors.)

Gary Graffman, the pianist and longtime director of the Curtis Institute of Music, has wearily tried to puncture the myth of classical music’s death, or ill health. He was forced to title one speech “Dead Again” — for classical music is always “dead,” even as it lives, or thrives.

The myth will never die, but neither will music, thank goodness. In some areas, we’re hurting, for no age is a perfect one. The recital is in trouble — largely because of the explosion of chamber music — and music education, in primary and secondary schools, is not what it should be. This is so even though schools have more money than ever before in our history. It’s a question of priorities, not resources.

Anyway . . .

Oh, and, by the way, you’ll hear people wail over “the graying of the audience.” There’s no one but old people in the audience! This, too, you hear in every generation. It has always been thus, and ever will be.