Do you have to be so snobby about classical music? (Part 1 of ?)

I have to confess, my original intent for this post was much grander than what I ended up with. I had two recent examples of classical music snobbery from opposite ends of the silly/serious spectrum: a listicle about being a classical musician, and an online discussion about a scholarly book about musicology. Both of them make assumptions about what should be considered “real” classical music, and I wanted to use them to make a greater point about how classical music is policed at every level: Is the audience knowledgeable enough? Do the performers play the right repertoire? Do the composers write in the proper style? Do the scholars say the right things? When it comes down to it, these questions are built on snobbery.

But the cliché of snobs liking classical music (or classical music being for snobs) is just too big for any one post, and trying to tackle all of it at once gave me writers’ block. So instead, this might just turn into an ongoing series where I call out classical music snobbery as I see it and offer suggestions to help steer things in a more constructive direction.