It will always be as relevant as people want it to be.

Yes. Why wouldn't it be? What is it about our current world that would render it irrelevant? It was beautiful then; it's beautiful now. Beauty is its own relevance.

this sounds like a dumb question to me

i just wanted to add that classical music has made many movies and cartoons more enjoyable without people even having to indulge in that artsy ****.

I'm amazed that four people have voted no.

I think the fact that "elderly people" listen to it is proof that it's still enjoyable to many.

Elderly people were definitely not around when these pieces came out, in the 17th and 18th centuries. My overall conclusion is that the "elderly" aspect is a stereotype - but it arises from the fact that a significant amount of people out of our population, maybe with stereotypical "old" characteristics, still listen to classical music.

Edit-
P.S. why do I keep replying to these threads asking "is X still considered music/relevant/enjoyable?"

I should stop looking for ways to incense myself. :shycouch:

Absolutely not. Modern music exists due to the introduction of alien brainwaves into the televisions and intranets, so anything that existed before, hm.. before modern music was 'cool', is irrelevant and should be wiped out.

But of course, almost all music has to develop from something, and even though most music today is based on something more modern than Mozart, older music still influenced the music that came after it, and all the way up to whatever is blaring in people's heads nowadays. And besides, people like me still listen to older music anyways, so of course it's relevant, just more so in more musically oriented people.

Pretty much everyone without exception likes some Classical music in some settings, although it's mostly romanticism. It still features heavily in modern media as soundtrack, and you'd be hard-pressed to find important events that do not feature Classical music to some extend, often solely, be it the Olympics (although London suffered badly from baby boomer influences) or a stately celebration of an important national holiday.

Do I think the music itself is irrelevant? Absolutely not. However, it doesn't help that the institutions of classical music are often mired in repeating the same classics at the expense of the genre's evolution. Sometimes, it's hard not to think classical music is irrelevant when you're going to concert halls and largely hearing the same dusty old pieces that have been being played for generations.

Things don't pick up dust if you use them often. ;) Why not make use of hundreds of years of great work? People still do play newer stuff, but obviously it can't compete in volume with the vast mass of historical works we have at our disposal.

The thing that makes classical music classical music is that it has a tradition. I agree that there are certainly popular "classics" that get played out more (or at least get funded more), but not every program is so conservative. Maybe it's because I live in a major metropolitan area (Los Angeles), but I can find entire concerts consisting of music written in the last decade on any night of the week. I rarely go to the LA Phil's concerts, but Jacaranda, Green Umbrella (the LA Phil's "new music" program), People Inside Electronics (PIE), and various ensembles, festivals, and groups that I follow are extreme;y active with new music programs during the regular season. The art is far from stagnant. The general public usually doesn't get Franco Donatoni, though. Instead, the institution of classical music thinks that music that was relevant in 1794 would be similarly relevant today.