Is Classical Music Dying?

Recently, music has been categorized into two main kinds: classical music and modern/popular music. However, classical music is just classical music, but modern music actually contains sundry different kinds of mass music categories, for instance, rock, Rap, R&B and so on. With the larger and larger number of majority  listening to only modern music, some people start worrying about the risk of the extinction of classical music.

The article published on The New York Times on Nov. 24^th, 2012 was the correspondence from Les Dreyer who worried about that classical music is dying. Dreyer narrated that a schoolboy asked him if Richard Wagner was a pitcher for the Yankees as an example to start his claim. Les Dreyer stood on the angle that classical music is superior to the pop music and claimed emotionally that it “weaned away from the cacophony of rock”. In addition, he pointed out the reason caused the runoff of classical music is the lack of musical education to the young. Dreyer complained that the youth of the recent generation is forced to learn only “core” courses. Very few of them have chance to even touch classical music, let alone to fall in love with it. From Dreyer’s potential opinion is that classical music is way better and more valuable than modern “cacophony of rock”.

The second and the main part of the article are the different responses from different readers. Sundry opinions make the discussion very interesting. None of the readers totally agree with Dreyer. Some people agree with him partly, some people totally against him. Within the people who partly agree with him, many of them also worry that classical music is dying and will be replaced completely by modern music. However, unlike Dreyer who blame the prevalence of pop music, people have different perspectives about the worry. First, several people said that classical music is too expensive to be afforded by everyone. Only a few groups of people can afford the cost of classical music: sitting in a golden odeum listening to symphony even under some dress code. Second, people point out that the youth today have tiny chance to touch the classical music is because their parents actually grow up with pop music too. For the people who completely against Dreyer, mostly are disagree with his prejudices of the pop music. People agree that rock music also has precious values influencing people today as the classical music did before. They are just two different categories of music, but cannot to be compared and say which one is better or which one is worse. Besides, people also come up with other advice of the situation. Some people suggest cutting the prize of classical concert for the youth. Some people distinguish classical music and pop music as culture and entertainment (market-driven) and point out they are both important. Some people say that providing chance for youth to involve into the classical music like instrument learning is better than the abstract lectures.

The last part of the article is the response from Dreyer to the readers. He appreciates for some suggestions, but as stubborn as he was, treating rock music as cacophony.  What do you think about classical music and popular music? Do you agree that classical music in America is dying? As a reader, do you have any response to Dreyer’s idea?