Traducción

Why doesn’t the adolescent community attend classical music concerts?

This is a complex question with many variables between those that highlight education, the cultural politics that follow it (that don’t give complete priority to this type of music, rather, in the words of Esther Herguedas to the “culture of the spectacle”), and identification in the midst of identity and cultural intake.

Why do adolescents choose popular music above classical, which they, in fact, tend to reject? The answer is very straightforward: because they don’t identify with this music. And this happens because of the image or concept that they have of classical music: it’s music, as its name indicates, that is cultured, serious, that invites reflection, that the listener is not supposed to participate in (contrary to what happens in popular music concerts, for example), that is the result of individual sensibility and superior creativity, out of reach of the comprehension of the majority of people. This view of classical music is what makes young people see it as something enclosed, distant, and belonging to a group very far removed from their interests: the “old people” (from their point of view, of course), a group which, what’s more, they usually oppose.

Adolescents are in the process of creating their own identity, and popular music offers them something that classical music doesn’t: idols or cultural references so present in this imposed culture of exhibitionists. It’s much easier to imitate or attempt to imitate (in order to be accepted in the society) the aesthetics of a famous singer, of body shape and tight-fitting clothes, than the aesthetics of a great performer of classical music (especially if they don’t know how to play any musical instrument) that is foreign for the majority of the youth.

Why don’t the youth identify with classical music? Because they don’t understand it. And this is a serious problem with education.

The way of explaining music (so much alike in primary and secondary education and in the conservatory, according to the experience that I have had) is cold and distant, without looking for points of contact with the rest of the subjects or looking for points of interest with the students. Traditionally the history of music has been taught like something isolated, without connection to the aesthetics, to the history of the art, to history in general or even to their own instrument. This makes the study dry and difficult to apply to the actual sound, which is logical without an understanding of the music.

This auditory training must be established from primary education and should include every genre of music to ensure that everyone has access to whatever type of music they want without any discrimination, and that before they hear it they should be able to identify its components and the context in which they were incorporated, in order for the activity of listening to be really enriching and stimulate the students' critical ability.

http://www.filomusica.com/filo86/adolescentes.html (artículo original)