"So-called 'classical music' is one of the highest, most specific, coherent, and refined expressions through which the West has reflected itself, giving meaning and a lexicon to its own cultural identity... Classical music is also a business, a business in tremendous crisis for infinite reasons, not only due to the collapse of long traditions and the educational void, but because we live in a world where concentrating on the same object for more than 10 seconds has become a luxury and a lost habit. And classical music requires time, a lot of time: a symphony by Mahler or Bruckner requires an hour and a half of concentrated listening... What has been done? As in all civilizations at their twilight, 'fool's gold' has been created—fetishes that give the illusion of life. There is a desire to 'bring music to young people,' 'bring music to everyone,' 'make music accessible to all,' and other clichés that Sir Francis Bacon would have called 'idola theatri.' In a great universal lottery, certain musicians with all the characteristics to please the 'general public' (another fetish-expression) have been selected; a bit of classical, a bit of pop, a bit of lounge, a bit of ethno, a bit of every possible sauce and marinade has been mixed in, it was called CROSSOVER, and an attempt was made to keep 'classical music' alive with a therapeutic persistence that would even dismay Senator Binetti...\n\n\nHere: today, by classical music, one means not Haydn's Quartets but 'Con te io partirò' or other things 'between genre and genre,' or a gray border zone with the New Age molasses that is very prevalent...\n\n\nBut why on earth must we 'bring music to everyone'? What is this stupid contemporary obsession with trivializing everything, falsifying everything, transforming everything into fast food or junk food? Why this sacred terror of COMPLEXITY? Complexity is also depth, penetration, a journey into otherwise unexplored places, competence (a word that interests no one today). Oh no, 'art is for everyone,' it's about 'what it conveys to me'... but who said that? The 'Magic Flute' can be listened to with the innocence of a child, and it is an unparalleled enchantment. But when one manages to rediscover that same innocence after having plumbed all the depths of that masterpiece—the web of symbolic, mysterious, philosophical connections; the carving of musical forms; the metamorphosis of themes; the relationship between tonalities and their representative meaning; the relationship between Mozart's music and the precise state of Western civilization at this very hour—one will emerge from underwater with a cognition and an ability to surrender that is infinitely superior. Taste is not just a natural gift; it is a raw stone that becomes multifaceted, luminous, and brilliant through patience, effort, study, humility, and love."
[Francesco Maria Colombo]
