There are two problems with the OP's original question(s)

First, it's necessary to recognize that by asking, Is classical music still relevant today?, followed by, Does classical music still have a place amongst today's audience, or has it been relegated to more specific listeners (i.e. music students, people learning instruments, elderly people)?, you're essentially asking two entirely different questions, because the popularity of classical music has little to nothing to do with it's relevance. You have a non sequitur on your hands; It's akin to asking, Did you pack your lunch today, or did you walk to school?

Secondly, we don't have an accurate definition of what classical music is as it pertains the question. Is classical music music that has been composed through standard musical notation? Well, we know that almost all genres and styles have used that method. Is it music that has been composed for orchestral ensembles? We know that a lot of classical music was composed for smaller ensembles and solo instruments. Are we talking about a particular type of instrumentation? We know that classical music has been written for just about every instrument that has ever existed, including electric guitars and synthesizers. Are we talking about a particular time period? We know that classical music has continued to be composed from about 1000 AD until today, even though, ironically, we use the term classical as a catch all term, when it more specifically denotes an era of music between 1730 and 1820.

For all intents and purposes, all contemporary music is classical music. most of it just happens to use a more rigid, restrictive set of compositional criteria. So, classical music is almost comprehensively relevant. End thread.

I don't really mean end thread. I'm just being antagonistic.

Mozart's use of circle of fifths at 1:10 in this sonata sounds super contemporary and jazzy and ahead of his time. And while that's not exactly an argument for yes... yes, classical music is still relevant.

I'd say yes and we must admit that classical music has an huge impact on music in general.

Yes because it's better than other music.

If you mean contemporary "classical" then no.

I still bump it on my way to work in the AM depending on my mood.

Yes, more than ever. Considering the downhill trend of American music since the 90s. Nothing much is really worth listening to now except classical music.

Classical music is super relevant and has a huge social role. It carries the responsibility to translate/describe with music how life is like in a certain historical period and geographical spot. I mean, when you listen to Bach you can picture yourself in a church in Germany, you can feel religiosity, you are transported to the 17th/18th centuries. Likewise when you listen to Shostakovich you can feel the tension, the madness, despair of the years of war and uncertainty in Soviet Union. You always can tell (briefly) when the piece was composed just by listening to it.

It's just like painting. Now people have cameras, photography. And we have rock, pop, blues, etc ad infinitum. Still, the precursors are relevant and of course can't be left aside.

I agree with Duga and Driveyourcardowntothesea
 

Yep, classical was a cultivated art form, but the basis for so much modern music because it so rigorously and thoroughly explored musical possibilities. It was like the transition from alchemy to true chemistry.

As for getting bored with it, yeah, maybe not enough variety of exposure? I personally can listen to more Romantic era stuff than Baroque any day, much as I love Bach. I need the emotional dynamics. Of course, some of this was due to advances in musical instrument technology, but then, that was driven by the demands of composers like Beethoven!!

And don't forget, Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 has been incorporated into far more cartoons than any other piece of music ever! Especially Warner Bros.' Rhapsody Rabbit and that Tom and Jerry knockoff.

Laws of nature
 

Darwinian theory states that you must adapt to current needs. This is true of everything. If classical music does not look to the future and adapt accordingly,it can not survive. It will die a long and painful death. At the moment it is not even sickly! Even though it is being dwarfed by it's neighbour pop,rock... music. All around the world there are thousands of 'voluntary' performers in thousands of amateur music groups and their enthusiasm is not waning. There are hundreds of professional orchestras around the world even though budgets are tight. It is a tough old world out there but there is no real evidence that classical music has become irrelevant. But will in the future have to become more adaptive.

If it is not immediately relevant to (young) people, they regard it as boring! They don't have to listen to it properly.

I am not even sure if people are aware that anybody who watches certain adverts, plays video games, listens to radio (esp adverts), watches or takes part in sporting events, listens to national anthems, goes shopping (background music in certain stores), watches certain wrestling matches(!) is listening to either a direct form or some derivative of classical music.

I enjoyed classical from about 18-19 years old. It is a refined taste but nothing beats an beautiful piano solo.

It can be a refined taste if you sit and listen to it, seriously. However, there is a lot of classical(/classical style) music that is just part of the wall of music sound that people don't even notice. How many football(soccer) fans would revile at the thought of listening to classical music but are subjected to it when they are chanting support to their football teams. Especially in Italy. The champions league soccer has its own 'classical styled' theme tune. Many sports teams are introduced with classic music. It's part of the irony of life.

Actually, YES! People keep on researching, recording, performning and studying classical music. So I must say classical music is still alive!

The poll needs some in between options.

No, music in the classical/art tradition is not as "relevant" to contemporary audiences as pop, rock, edm, dub, folk, metal, etc.

If you ask the average Joe what dubstep is, they say "Wub wub wub." If you ask them about Rock, the list their five favourite bands. If you ask them about "classical," they A. think that only means Bach and Mozart, and that nothing has happened since, and B. don't listen to it.

Usually, when I DO find someone who likes classical, they either mean Howards Shore and Hans Zimmer (Close, but musicologically it's really pop) or they mean bach chorals and Moonlight Sonata.

Anything aside from big-name period composers is relegated to those who really love to explore music. But then, the same is true of art-oriented music in all genres. Everyone knows Metallica, but how many people listen to Maudlin of the Well or Katafalque? Sure, Kanye's big, but Aesop Rock (still big) has a much more niche following. Miles Davis is a household name, but can we say the same of Angelica Sanchez?

So, no, "classical" music is not relevant like J Beebs, but yes, it is relevant like any other form of music that benefits from more active listening, and which sometimes requires acclimation.

hecck yes! i listen to it when i am home all the time,daily.

From what I've heard at the moment, it's not really my cup of tea, but I do really respect the genre. There's other genres I definitely don't respect.
But I dunno, I hope that when I'm older, I've explored all kinds of different music, including classical. Right now my priorities are at Punk, Rock and Metal though. But I'm 17, I still have plenty of artists to listen to. I think I'll be starting with either Blues or Jazz when the time comes.

Classical music might be more relevant in the modern era then it ever has been before. How many schools have a program dedicated to its practice and performance? How many university's offer programs dedicated to writing and performing music, focussed on classical methods? How many cities have multiple orchestras? Then there's all of the radio channels specifically dedicated to it, and an entire industry of film scoring based in the classical tradition.

Western musical tradition still produces almost everything printed in staff notation, whether it was written in staff notation or not.

The other thing about classical music, is that as we move forward, contemporary classical music in informed by a whole new set of perimeters... in the past it often took themes from folk music, and now classical music has spread all over the world and is being informed by every other genre or culture......

So basically - yes - classical music is still relevant.

I salute to the geniuses of classical music, because without them, there'd only be pretty pop, hippety hop and other modern noises we get subjected to on a daily basis.

As long as there's Scala, as long as there's Vienna's annual winter ball -there shall be classical music..

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.

Evidence of the geo-cultural gaps that exist in the US, I'm sure. It's not to say that new music absolutely never gets performed where I'm from in the Midwest, but in my experience, if it does, it's largely by college ensembles. But then, my experience is limited, so maybe I'm just missing something right under my nose. Either that or I'd be better off not living in the Midwest.

Every place is different. However, I think you are correct that most of this kind of music is guarded safely behind the walls of academia. While there are real enthusiasts in my neck of the woods, the classical music scene is made possible by rich, old, artsy-fartsy liberal white people with unusual hair styles. I know quite a few of this type. One of them, a lady in her 60's, drunkenly grabbed my friend's succulent 19-year-old ass at Stockhausen concert in a private villa on top of a mountain in Pacific Palisades (unthinkably posh community). It was perhaps the most entertaining concert I've been to. Where this demographic does not exist in high(ish) concentration, you'll probably only find classical music in schools, community orchestras, and privately funded orchestras, and it is unlikely that they will be playing anything but "the hits" (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler...).

Now that I can finally post links (Don't know why a good chunk of my posts weren't showing up in my post count anyway... I count 24, including this one.), here are some relevant thoughts from someone who cares much more than I do:

Classical isn
Accessibility is a Dead End | Aaron Gervais, composer
Classical concerts are great. Stop apologizing for them.

Classical music is still relevant today. For example you will hear it in the background of your favorite Disney movie and has a subconscious effect as to what you listen to. Films like Brave and Frozen all include classical music in the background as well as Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. I doubt it will ever stop being relevant.

It'll never stop being USEFUL. If "relevance" is measured by whether it resonates with an [average] listener, whether they feel it expresses certain things better than they themselves can, -it's relevant in a way that contents of a museum of old fine art are relevant in a very large city. Sometimes enthusiasts visit it to study/appreciate, sometimes people go there because their school made them go, some are glad it's there & "one day they should really go check it out". Similar thing has happened & is happening in jazz.

Quality Cucumber had some great points; I'd like to add that music (IMHO), in any shape or form, has to be needed in order to be relevant. It needs to offer anthems-of-times within a given society or its circles. Random example would be: people discussing the news & someone voicing their reaction via a quote from a song/composition.

Yes I listen to bach all the time

versatility
 

One special characteristic of classical music is that it has the ability/potential to be relevant anywhere it exists. It relies on not the performer but an art that can be learned by anyone who puts their mind to it. Pop songs today are popular because of the people who perform them. The whole art of today's music relies on the performer instead of the actual music. For example, if someone wants to listen to the Moonlight Sonata, it will matter very little who performs it. If someone wants to listen to Thriller, however, the sound quality that is expected is that of Michael Jackson, and any performance by another will be met with great disappointment. So as long as people have the music and the means to reproduce the intended sound quality (piano, violin, etc.), classical music will be relevant in today's society as long as people put forth the effort to create the music themselves and also as long as people appreciate that effort.

Its always relevant at the BBC proms.

Hello everyone! IMHO classical music matters now and will always matter, because it touches the deepest feelings in our souls. I've got goose pumps every time I listen to Tchaikovsky!:o:

Music will always matter, no matter what genre it is, simply because it will always touch SOMEBODY. It will speak to someone, and that's what music is for. As long as that is met, it will always matter. They feed each other.