On the Position of Classical Music as Cultural Capital

Can Çakmur

It is midnight in Hanoi. I arrived yesterday, having not slept a minute the night before at the airport. I upgraded my flight to business class in the hope of getting a few hours of sleep, then had a long rehearsal of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto with an underprepared but friendly orchestra, for a concert that will earn me half a year’s wage of an average worker in Vietnam — at an opera house adorned with a pillar imported from Spain, in a country where the cheap shingle roofs of flats fly away during storms. The occasion: the opening of a chamber of commerce between the country of my birth, Turkey, and Vietnam.

I don’t even feel squeamish about having asked for this much money, as I can’t fathom the amounts this chamber of commerce will generate for its members. I simply can’t shake the feeling that we, the musicians involved, are mere confirmation of the social and financial status this institution is designed to serve. It is quite amusing, really; I often feel not unlike a chameleon. I’ll have dinner with millionaires, royals, and ambassadors, yet shun luxury from my private life both out of necessity and principle. I’ll eat Syrian takeaway twice a week and then, in conversation with donors, talk about how stunning the caviar is while drinking vintage wine.

This incongruence has been common among classical musicians for centuries. Yet it must also be said: the artist — myself included — accepts and even craves this elite-adjacent social status. It grants credibility to the value of our work, which is the only sort of capital we possess to gain entry into that milieu. I don’t know if I would have felt so important in Hanoi had I not been given the impression that my artistry was indispensable. What a strong illusion it is, that despite knowing I was essentially a figurine disguising a capitalist organisation, I still hold onto the belief that I am a protector of beauty, and as such deserve the opera house with the Spanish pillar, the business-class flights, the fine dining, and the expensive wine while my inner self proests, warning that by doing so, I become yet another cog in the grinding machinery.

I am 27 years old, and I am many things at once: for critics—whom I know from their words—I am “a major artist of today” who has made reference recordings of Schubert’s music; for my students, I am a professor who has most things sorted out; for my audience, I am a young pianist who might go on to achieve greatness; for my friends and family, I am a troubled soul who is missing far too often from their lives, and for whose well-being they are deeply worried; and for most, I am just a random stranger who could be studying engineering, interning at a law firm, or yet another lazy Gen Z who can’t put his life together. I am from Turkey, which I love for what she can be and despise for what she is. I am an immigrant in Germany; my non-Germanness visible at first encounter. I teach in London, where I, ironically, represent the German school. I am neither Eastern nor Western enough. I am selfish for a cause that is in its nature unselfish: the mere reason I am able to write this essay is the fact that I am a part of the elite which I am criticising. I am an artist, and I create for humanity—if a note I play soothes one broken heart, weaves one thread into a civilisation left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.

The problem, which led me to pick up my iPad to start writing this, and which I hope will turn into an answer, is that I don’t believe a word of that. I understand the argument that has been brought forth in conjunction with this caprice of mine: person X or Y thanked me for the beauty I’ve brought into their lives. Well, in the exact same way, I admire those who live differently, sustainably, intellectually… Wes Anderson had me shed tears a day ago while I was being served dinner on a plane. Why do I not believe in my very own Wes Anderson-ness?

The first thought that flew into my mind was that if I reached millions, and if classical music weren’t layered in such ambiguity that I -the creator of that very art- didn’t require the guidance of a certain Theodor Adorno to discern, say, the crumbling of society and the death of beauty in Mahler’s music, I’d have no need of this incessant monologue. If I could reach millions, like Wes Anderson, and manage to communicate and be understood and be misunderstood; then perhaps I’d believe more readily in that grandiose sentence above. It is my own contribution to the preservation of that thread of civilisation too thin a thread for my liking. It is strange that I should so violently refuse the logic of this conclusion, which I know to be true.

No, there is a deeper sense of disquiet in my refusal: it is a disbelief in my own self as an artist who executes high-brow art. It is the hypocrisy of the rift between the bohemian nature of much great art and its domestication. When art serves no purpose other than its own preservation, its once-clear stream of inspiration is defiled, not with malicious intent, but with saccharine indifference; reduced at best to a nonsensical discourse about its execution, and at worst to a pastime obligation of a certain social standing, honoured for tradition’s sake rather than true engagement. Either way, it is fetishised into irrelevance and transmitted to the uninitiated listener in a package of clichés. I am not hopeless about the relevance of art in general; rather, I am hopeless that the art of classical music still holds meaning beyond these pleasant distortions.

From within the industry, I notice the necessity of incessant positivity: of debuts, of glamorous tours, of selfies from the grandest concert halls, of the giddy exuberance following a successful concert. While, on one hand, I, too, crave a bit of harmless positivity in the madhouse the world has become; on the other hand, amid the noise and clamour, the genuine emotion, the soothing melancholy of good art gets lost in the stylised frenzy of concert etiquette. We play for the sake of playing, for the sake of illuminating those centuries-old scores in unheard ways. Yet rarely do we let go of our desire to provide novelty and simply play: anonymously, privately, for no tangible purpose. We expect a return from the music we make, and from our audience, to add tokens to our existing cultural capital.

I think of all those dystopian fantasies—take 1984—where the mere act of love, of acquiring an ornamental paperweight or a purposeless stroll, has a revolutionary weight attached to it. Music is indeed that revolutionary act, beautiful because it serves no convoluted purpose other than to describe the human condition. That which interacts with the actual achieves this as it did for the ’68 generation and rock music. I note, somewhat bitterly, that this deeper meaning of music has more to do with what was sung than with the intrinsic qualities of the music itself. Art-rock music mostly assumed the mantle of the revolutionary spirit while itself remaining as beige as any other entertainment music. The unfortunate consequence of this is the weakening of the matter itself. The music of the final scene of Don Giovanni gives no rise to an intense sensation of disgust. However, a staging of it with a hundred naked women on stage does even though the intrinsic value of the artwork itself actually remains the same. It is almost as if classical music has a need to prove its relevance in the 21st century and revise its symbolism.

There is contemporary music that achieves social commentary in a way classical music nowadays rarely can. Much of the classical canon consists of works that stood out by bending and stretching the common musical vocabulary of their time to its limits. It is not wrong to say that the musical thesaurus of our era has diminished and has to be compensated for by the lyrics, and to a lesser extent by the intricate production of layers upon layers of sound. As to the transformative power of lyrics, I often thought of the following: does the music of a deeply personal song like Hozier’s Take Me to Church justify its lyrics, or would the effect drastically change if the lyrics were trivial? How about a late Beethoven quartet, then, where Beethoven grapples with being shunned from society—not unlike Hozier does? How, then, will we convey that Beethoven’s music is a soul-crushing experience and not some “holy” music to be revered but not loved? How do we help the listener of today—who needs the interplay of lyrics to uncover the layers of symbolism and ambiguity necessary to express the inexpressible by means of words?

The second reason manifests itself in a multitude of ways. The most obvious one is the archetypal snob, sneering at all which is not worthy of the Pantheon of classical art. The problem is never the criticism of ignorance—ignorance is always worthy of criticism. It is rather the contempt the snob expresses at the perceived lack of value, sophistication, and even legitimacy. In revering the snob—who might indeed be a person of considerable intellect and creative power—their associates, in their wilful ignorance, make no attempt to internalise the criticism of “low art,” but readily take on the contempt. This process expands outwards, turning an aesthetic problem into a class problem, whereas the aesthetic problem is long forgotten. By putting classical music on this pedestal based on its rich tradition, the snob actually replaces its real and immediate meaning with a cliché. This cliché, combined with the wilful ignorance outlined above, gatekeeps classical music in a nearly impermeable way.

This is the dilemma I face: the snob, more often than not, possesses the intellectual thesaurus to dissect the nature of the art I represent. Yet this understanding exists in eternal conflict with a convolution of its unique values. Consider the following: Schubert taught one of the daughters of the Esterházy family, Caroline. By all accounts, he must have been deeply in love with her. A romance, however—let alone marriage—would never have come into question, as Schubert was neither noble nor wealthy. I often wonder how much he identified with the protagonist of Winterreise, who laments, “Why should they care about my pain? Their child is now a rich bride,” before seeking refuge with a charcoal burner—the lowest caste of society.

The snob may well be aware of these societal connotations, just as I am—most likely through the same sources. And yet, the same listener who weeps quietly at Winterreise might have no qualms declaring an artist who fled Syria, Ukraine, or Gaza a disruptor to our free Western society, ignoring the parallels to what they just heard and felt. This is the saccharine indifference that leads me to question the very fabric of the art I practice. Beyond the safe and sterile concert hall, we do not foster compassion but sow dissent. Instead of humanising one another, we demonise.

And then one walks through Vienna and is greeted by a myriad of posters for various Mozart or Strauss Orchestras clad in what is presumably 18th- or 19th-century clothing and wigs. There is a perceived idea of Vienna—one of fables and tales, of kings and palaces, and of Mozart and Strauss. In that idea of Vienna, Mozart and Strauss, just like the palaces and kings, are figurines. They are exactly what the archetypal culture tourist imagines them to be. Thus, the orchestra must recreate not any 18th-century setting, but the one where Mozart comes alive from that famous painting with the red jacket. It would have been harmless tomfoolery had it not been symptomatic of a romantic yearning for a vision of uncorrupted European culture. Something which never existed and is a defilement of the original becomes an all-encompassing symbol for being European. From the perspective of serious music, we tend to look down upon the practice and its audience, but in reality both are apt caricatures of classical music and its rituals. That yearning for unadulterated Europeanness from tales and fables takes very real form in the arch-reactionary culture politics of the political right. If we could somehow go back to “those” days, we’d reclaim the glory of the past—so the thinking goes.

If the appointment of the new Minister for Culture in Germany is any indication of the cultural policies of the new political centre, it is the quiet adoption of those long championed by the far right. This new conservatism does not aim to protect European art, despite what its rhetoric suggests. Wolfram Weimer warns that the supposed danger lies in a naïve multiculturalism that, in his view, dilutes Europe’s cultural strength with “lowly elements.” I disagree. The true danger lies in domesticating art into a glittering but meaningless babble—an aesthetic shell, void of any connection to the present, except as a tool of propaganda.

The irony is striking: the Catholic Church under the late Pope Francis has built interfaith bridges, while supposedly “enlightened” political conservatism refuses even the pretence of dialectical engagement. Art gains its expressive power through a dynamic relationship with the present world. It recreates, symbolises, and thereby critiques the world around it. That power cannot be legislated away. But what can erode is the artist’s place in society through lack of funding, closures and shrinkages and forcing commercialism to gain the upper hand.

Authoritarianism does not arrive with tanks; it creeps in slowly in luxurious limousines. While it is comparatively easy to rise up against overt oppression, the depletion of meaning is subtler, more insidious, and far harder to resist. And yet we, the artists, in our desire to remain adjacent to power and prestige, often contribute to this erosion. When we flaunt our glamour and cling to vague ideals of timelessness, we risk turning our art into the very thing that undermines its purpose.

Music, when approached with an immediacy lacking in today’s life, in intimate conversation with one’s own self, carries a tremendous restorative power. There is hope, for our music to be relevant for many. It is a medium through which we may see how much humanity we’ve lost to the never-ending wars and to the fences we build around our milieus. To reclaim the simplicity and the profundity of human nature, to remove the make-up of glamour carries a greater value today, where deception and demagoguery take the upper hand. The humanity in us dies a slow death in cultural gentrification. It is now down to us to swim upstream; not as cultural warriors to reclaim lost land, but as dignified relics of a crumbling humanity, in hopes of finding hearts to resonate with.