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0:30

What is Classical Music? The term

0:32

is applied to radically different compositions across

0:34

more than 1 ,000 years of history.

0:36

We need a better definition. Written

0:39

by Matthew O 'Coin. Published in the

0:41

May 2025 issue of The Atlantic.

0:43

Read by Zach Rosen. Produced by

0:45

Hark Audio, a podcast curation app.

0:47

You can find this in other

0:49

narrated Atlantic articles, along with curated

0:52

podcast moments on the Hark Audio

0:54

app. If most

0:56

music lovers were asked to identify

0:58

the defining characteristics of their favorite genre,

1:00

jazz, folk, rock, hip -hop, I would

1:02

guess that they might simply say,

1:04

well, it sounds a certain way. It's

1:06

music, they might go on, that tends to

1:09

have a particular rhythmic feel, or that

1:11

usually features, say, the saxophone, or

1:13

the electric guitar, or the sitar. Presented

1:15

with exceptions to these patterns, What about

1:18

a cappella jazz ensembles? What about

1:20

unplugged rock albums? Most listeners most likely

1:22

offer some variant of I know

1:24

it when I hear it. But counterintuitive

1:26

though it might seem, I don't

1:28

think sound is always a helpful

1:30

way to understand genre. I'm a composer

1:33

and conductor in the field that's

1:35

broadly known as Western classical music, a

1:37

term that's routinely applied to radically

1:39

different idioms across more than 1 ,000

1:41

years of musical history. Within this

1:43

huge array, you'll find the engulfing sonorities

1:45

of William Byrd's choral music,

1:47

the intimate revelations, too private for

1:50

words, in chamber works by

1:52

Franz Schubert and Anton Webern, the

1:54

majestic topography of Jean

1:57

Sibelius's orchestral landscapes,

1:59

and, more recently, a multitude

2:01

of works by composers as different

2:03

from one another as Chea Chernavin,

2:05

Taishan Sori, and Thomas Addis. The

2:07

unruly and elusive entity known as

2:09

classical music does not sound like

2:11

any one thing, and the sheer

2:14

abundance of the tradition might invite

2:16

the conclusion that trying to define

2:18

it at all is a hopeless

2:20

exercise. But that would be a

2:22

mistake, especially at this moment. Like

2:24

every other sector of cultural life,

2:27

classical music has been roiled over

2:29

the past decade by intense debates

2:31

about the field's ongoing lack of

2:33

diversity among performing artists, composers, and

2:35

leaders of musical organizations. The

2:37

stakes of these discussions, which

2:39

have involved charges of Eurocentrism,

2:41

head -in -the -sand elitism, even white

2:43

supremacy, have at times felt

2:45

existential, given many institutions' financial

2:47

straits. Maintaining a 90 -piece

2:49

orchestra is generally a money -losing

2:51

proposition in America today, and

2:54

as a result, classical music

2:56

organizations lean heavily on private

2:58

donations. Why, many onlookers have

3:00

asked, should an orchestra or opera

3:02

company gobble up millions of dollars

3:04

from wealthy sponsors to subsidize the

3:06

salaries of musicians who mainly perform

3:08

music by white men from centuries

3:10

past. Music for which, judging by

3:12

ticket sales, demand is limited. What

3:14

is classical music? Whom is it

3:16

for? And what about it is

3:18

worth defending? Our answers to these

3:20

questions will depend on what exactly

3:22

we love about this music and

3:24

what we care about preserving, enriching,

3:26

and expanding. Claiming that classical music

3:28

deserves a prominent place in American

3:30

culture merely because we want to

3:32

safeguard a particular sound, style, or

3:34

cultural or ethnic lineage, music that

3:36

sounds like Brahms or music from

3:38

one of three Central European countries

3:40

would be a losing cause. But

3:42

a better answer is out there.

3:44

Rather than defend the classical in

3:47

classical music, I want to champion

3:49

a particular creative process. What links

3:51

Hildegard von Bingen and Kaya Sarriaho,

3:53

Johann Sebastian Bach, and George Benjamin

3:55

is not a specific sound or

3:57

aesthetic, but a shared technology of

3:59

transmission. At its core, classical music

4:01

isn't classical. It is written music.

4:03

By written music, I mean music

4:05

that comes into being through the

4:07

act of composition. Music from practically

4:09

any tradition can, of course, be

4:11

written down. If you're a Beatles

4:13

fan, you can buy a collection

4:15

of Beatles sheet music. And if

4:17

you want to plunk out your

4:19

favorite jazz standard, you can order

4:21

a copy of The Real Book,

4:23

which contains the essential harmonic and

4:25

melodic information for hundreds of well

4:27

-traversed tunes. Both a real book

4:29

and a 1 ,136 -page tome called

4:31

The Beatles, Complete Scores, are sitting

4:33

on my piano as I write

4:35

this. Though all music can be

4:37

documented and experienced in multiple ways,

4:39

scores, recordings, live performances, one approach

4:41

to distinguishing musical traditions is to

4:43

ask which form a given tradition

4:45

treats as authoritative. It would be

4:48

odd, for instance, to claim that

4:50

a collection of printed scores constitutes

4:52

the definitive document of the Beatles'

4:54

canon. Because the unquestioned reference point

4:56

is the band's studio albums. My

4:58

Beatles compendium proudly declares its

5:00

own contingency. Printed on the

5:02

front cover is an all -caps

5:04

proclamation that its pages contain

5:06

full transcriptions from the original recordings.

5:08

In other words, albums first,

5:10

scores later. Taylor Swift's

5:12

2019 decision to re -record her earlier

5:15

albums was a potent gesture, even

5:17

a radical one, precisely because in

5:19

pop music, the studio album typically

5:21

possesses an authority upon which all

5:23

subsequent iterations, whether live performances or

5:25

written transcriptions, are based. Only by

5:27

returning to the studio could Swift

5:29

achieve control over her master recordings

5:31

and literally set the record straight.

5:34

Jazz musicians and aficionados tend to

5:36

have a different perspective. Even though

5:38

certain albums, Kind of Blue, A

5:40

Love Supreme, have attained the status

5:42

of holy relics in the minds

5:44

of many listeners, I think most

5:46

jazz lovers would agree. that the

5:48

genre is not defined by the

5:50

worship of specific studio recordings. Fans

5:53

are more likely to value the

5:55

evanescent moment of live performance, with

5:57

its potential for spontaneous expression. For

5:59

that very reason that a familiar

6:01

tune can sound different every time

6:03

it's performed, a major artist such

6:05

as Miles Davis might have performed

6:07

and recorded a certain song, My

6:09

Funny Valentine, for example, many times

6:12

throughout his career. And there's no

6:14

reason to automatically treat a particular

6:16

performance as the authoritative version. In

6:18

spite of the real book's name,

6:20

jazz musicians rarely consider the printed score

6:22

to be the real thing either.

6:24

No self -respecting jazz musician would play

6:26

a real book score exactly as written.

6:28

Western classical music is an unusual

6:30

case. The reference point for a given

6:32

piece of music is the score,

6:35

rather than a studio recording or a

6:37

live performance. Beethoven's symphonies have

6:39

been recorded hundreds, if not thousands

6:41

of times, and they've been performed

6:43

many more times than that. but

6:45

every one of these performances and

6:47

recordings refers to the same score.

6:49

For a composer, the score is

6:51

the foundational site of creativity, and

6:54

the act of score -making links

6:56

together artists who could hardly sound

6:58

more different from one another. Say,

7:00

an Italian composer of the late

7:02

Renaissance, an early Baroque period like

7:04

Claudio Monteverde, and a 20th -century American

7:06

avant -gardist like John Cage. Even

7:08

an extreme case, such as Cage's

7:10

famous 433, a work in

7:13

which performers refrain from playing their

7:15

instrument for four minutes and 33

7:17

seconds, depends on its score, a

7:19

simple and playful set of written

7:21

instructions. In fact, to a greater

7:23

degree than most notated music, 433

7:25

is inconceivable as a work of

7:27

art without those directions. If we

7:29

let ourselves be guided by this

7:31

question, which musical artists regard the

7:33

score as a creative starting point?

7:35

We arrive at the broadest and

7:37

most welcoming definition of classical music.

7:39

all kinds of unexpected affiliations and

7:41

affinities emerge beyond music that's typically

7:43

thought of as belonging to the

7:45

tradition. Many of the big band

7:47

masterpieces of Duke Ellington and Billy

7:49

Strayhorn, for instance, strike me as

7:51

indistinguishable in their creative genesis. From

7:53

orchestral works by Igor Stravinsky and

7:55

Aaron Copland that were being written

7:57

around the same time, they are

7:59

notated in exquisite detail, usually for

8:01

large ensembles, and Strayhorn's gorgeously balanced

8:03

wind and brass voicings remind me

8:05

in particular of Stravinsky's. To my

8:07

ear, Strayhorn is a symphonist at

8:09

heart. His work, and its fundamental

8:11

writtenness, has more to do with

8:13

that of many so -called classical composers

8:15

than it does with, for example,

8:18

that of an artist like Ornette

8:20

Coleman, a free jazz master who

8:22

ostensibly hails from a tradition that

8:24

is continuous with Strayhorns, but whose

8:26

method could hardly be more different.

8:29

Written music matters for the same

8:31

reason written language does. To write

8:33

is to free oneself from the

8:35

constraints of memory. It's possible in

8:37

a novel or an essay or

8:39

a nonfiction narrative or a book

8:41

of poems to devise an aesthetic

8:43

structure full of details, depths, and

8:45

digressions that would be far harder

8:47

to construct in a purely oral

8:49

storytelling tradition, one in which verbal

8:51

transmission works through either memorization or

8:53

improvisation. When you write, you don't

8:55

simply set down your thoughts. In

8:57

the process of writing, your thoughts

8:59

are transformed and allowed to assume

9:01

a newly complex shape. the miraculous

9:03

scaffolding that emerges from the accumulation

9:05

of thoughts on the page. Our

9:07

world is awash in written language,

9:09

but not written music. The musical

9:12

genres that dominate mainstream American culture

9:14

are all more or less oral

9:16

traditions. Most pop songs can be

9:18

taught through verbal communication. Play this

9:20

chord, then that chord, and demonstration.

9:22

Here, listen, the melody goes like

9:24

this. In the 19th century, by

9:26

contrast, the best way to widely

9:28

disseminate a piece of music was

9:30

to write it down. Many music

9:32

lovers in the emerging middle class

9:34

had at least basic proficiency as

9:36

singers or instrumentalists. If you were

9:38

such a music lover, you might

9:40

buy scores of the latest songs

9:42

or chamber music so that you

9:44

and your friends could read through

9:46

them around the piano at a

9:48

party. Audio recording, which emerged in

9:50

the second half of the 19th

9:52

century and became even more inescapable

9:54

in the first few decades of

9:56

the 20th, changed the landscape. The

9:58

technology is its own kind of

10:01

writing, a direct transcription of sound

10:03

itself. and by cutting out the

10:05

intermediate step of translating one's musical

10:07

ideas onto the page it forged

10:09

new pathways of transmission radio broadcasts

10:11

records cds and exponentially sped up

10:13

the process through which music could

10:15

be shared to be clear i

10:17

think audio recording is a miracle

10:19

a world without recorded music is

10:21

unimaginable to me but because a

10:23

musician no longer has to be

10:25

literate to gain worldwide acclaim the

10:27

technology had the collateral effect of

10:29

sidelining musical literacy. The influence on

10:31

the music itself was transformative. Mainstream

10:34

music was soon pervaded by

10:36

miniature forms that could be memorized.

10:38

The four -minute song, not the

10:40

40 -minute symphony. Reading

10:42

and writing music once again became

10:44

an activity for specialists, a modern

10:46

-day equivalent of medieval monks laboriously

10:48

copping out illuminated manuscripts. Sure, any

10:50

kid who takes piano lessons or

10:52

plays in their school's concert band

10:54

will still learn the fundamentals of

10:57

musical notation. But our culture doesn't

10:59

offer many incentives to stick with

11:01

notation as a primary means of

11:03

creative expression. Why expend the crushing

11:05

effort to write music down in

11:07

detail when you can capture sound

11:09

with uncanny clarity and ease using

11:11

your iPhone? Whether the turn away

11:13

from musical literacy was inevitable is

11:15

open to debate. Recording technology enabled

11:18

not only music but also spoken

11:20

language to be broadcast worldwide. Yet

11:22

verbal literacy was spared a similar

11:24

fate. Doomsayers warned for decades that

11:26

radio and TV would eclipse books,

11:28

print media, literacy itself, but the

11:30

written word is as prevalent today

11:32

as it ever was. We should

11:34

be weary of the seemingly unassailable

11:36

cultural preeminence of oral musical traditions

11:38

because, in music as in language,

11:41

the medium shapes the message. Mainstream

11:43

musical culture privileges brevity and harmonic

11:45

simplicity. I'm surely not the only

11:47

composer. who has had the songwriter

11:49

Harlan Howard's peerless definition of a

11:51

country song, Three Chords and the

11:53

Truth, quoted at them as a

11:55

kind of challenge. Bob Dylan and

11:57

Bob Marley didn't need more than

11:59

a few chords to make musical

12:01

history. Why do you? The very

12:04

act of writing down a piece

12:06

of music can be viewed with

12:08

suspicion. In a 2008 interview with

12:10

The Guardian, the multidisciplinary artist

12:12

Christian Marclay offered a dispiritedly reductive

12:14

version of this perspective. Quote, I

12:16

don't write notes. I can't read

12:18

or write music in the traditional

12:20

way. unquote, he declared. Quote, I'm

12:22

not one of those fascist composers

12:25

who says, play this, unquote. This

12:27

is a curious claim. I've never

12:29

seen authors called fascist simply because

12:31

they insist that we read their

12:33

words one after the other in

12:35

the order they wrote them down.

12:37

And yet Marclay's misplaced scorn for

12:39

notated music reflects implicit assumptions that

12:41

a lot of us carry around.

12:43

Because relatively few people can fluently

12:46

decipher the gnomic hieroglyphs of musical

12:48

notation, the thinking goes, The music

12:50

that's transmitted that way must itself

12:52

be forbidding, obtruse, redolent of ancient

12:54

hierarchies. But what I love about

12:56

the act of writing music down

12:58

is precisely the freedom it affords.

13:00

Though a piece of music is

13:02

a temporal structure, composing it takes

13:04

place not in real time, but

13:07

outside time. The process is one

13:09

of unearthing sound by delving into

13:11

silence. A composer can make certain

13:13

musical discoveries only weeks or months

13:15

spent inhabiting an imagined sonic world.

13:17

just as a writer might experience

13:19

certain epiphanies only years into work

13:21

on a book. In music, as

13:23

in language, you can learn a

13:25

lot about yourself by wrestling with

13:28

a blank page. All of this

13:30

is made possible through the elegant,

13:32

limitlessly expressive writing system that is

13:34

musical notation, which is as miraculous

13:36

as the alphabet itself, and can

13:38

be used for purposes every bit

13:40

as varied. Notation doesn't just open

13:42

the way to the creation of

13:44

unbounded musical universes. It also enables

13:47

astonishing forms of human communication. An

13:49

orchestra, a chorus, a jazz big

13:51

band, a marching band. These are

13:53

complex macro -organisms whose inner workings require

13:55

formidable feats of interactive precision, all

13:57

of which depend on information encoded

13:59

in a written score. I can't

14:01

think of another comparably intricate form

14:03

of social coordination outside the military.

14:05

Musical literacy is a highly specialized

14:08

skill. To become a fluent reader

14:10

of music, a student needs to

14:12

be given the kind of focused

14:14

instruction that not all public schools

14:16

have the funding to provide. Exposure

14:18

to music education, beyond the rudiments,

14:21

all too often becomes a question of

14:23

whose family can afford expensive private

14:25

lessons. We can react to this fact

14:27

by feeling guilty about it and

14:29

letting notated music be tainted by its

14:31

association with elitism, or we can

14:33

push for an expansion of musical education.

14:36

We all understand that to teach

14:38

a child to read and write is

14:40

to endow them with potent means

14:42

of expression and self -discovery. Why should

14:44

musical literacy be any different? Even a

14:46

basic grounding in musical notation can

14:48

transform a child's sense of what can

14:51

be communicated to another human being. Especially,

14:53

and this is crucial, if notation is

14:55

treated as a tool of creativity rather

14:57

than simply an unpleasant test of the

15:00

ability to play all the right notes,

15:02

or else. If we understand that writing,

15:04

in music as in language, has the

15:06

potential to be a force for liberation,

15:08

and that it can transcend localized questions

15:10

of style and aesthetic, we might come

15:12

to a fuller sense of what music

15:15

can be in our lives, the many

15:17

forms it can take, the many truths

15:19

it can tell. And if I could

15:21

prescribe one thing for our world at

15:23

this moment, it would be to deepen

15:25

and expand our understanding of what it

15:27

is to listen. To

15:31

preserve democracy, one has to

15:33

believe in it. To

15:35

believe in democracy, one has to

15:38

understand it. Where it

15:40

came from. How it works.

15:42

What's true. What's not true.

15:44

What others did before you.

15:46

How it could be better.

15:49

How to make a difference. I'm

15:52

David Frum, a staff writer at

15:54

The Atlantic. I'm starting a new

15:56

show where each week I'll dig

15:58

deep into the big questions have

16:01

led our politics and our society.

16:04

I'll explain progress the peoples

16:06

of the democratic world have

16:08

made together and remind you

16:10

that the American idea is

16:12

worth defending. Listen to

16:14

or watch The David Fromm Show wherever

16:16

you get your podcasts.