What should we call classical music?

In March 2018, The Telegraph published an article that had classical music aficionados up in arms. Although it doesn’t take much to agitate this crowd, the headline was indeed provocative:

Classical music must ditch its name and refer instead to 'orchestral music', Royal Philharmonic director says

My initial reaction was similar to that of my music scholar colleagues: “What?! There is so much classical music that isn’t orchestral! What about opera? Solo works? Songs? Chamber music? Choral music?” and so on, naming as many genres of non-orchestral classical music as we could to show just how wrong, wrong, WRONG that idea is.

But when I actually took the time to read the article, I realized that the headline was misleading—likely intentionally so, to stoke those flames of OUTRAGE! that generate page views…

…because that’s not actually what the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s (RPO) managing director James Williams said.