The secret and lucrative success of classical music and poetry

Every so often, you will hear lamentations about the sorry state of high-brow forms of art, particularly classical music and poetry.

These forms of art, we are told, are dying. They are dying from both sides, so to speak. The output has become low and bad. And, well, nobody cares.

When is the last time you saw someone who isn't insufferable get excited about classical music or poetry produced after, say, 1960?

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But here's the thing: High-brow art is actually thriving. Classical music and poetry are among the most beloved works of art, with amazing new output, masters of the genre, and enormous popular success. It's just that they're trading under new names.

Literally billions of people every year pay money to listen to classical music in a dark room for hours. Except it's not called "classical music." They call it "film score."

The vast majority of film music is really classical music, using an orchestra, and the forms and instruments of classical music. And many film score composers are much better than contemporaries who produce so-called classical music. Yes, John Williams sometimes sounds like a bombastic Shostakovich knockoff with an inferiority complex, but not all the time, and some of his work displays a real spark. The music for Star Wars is not just one of the most beloved and popular pieces of music of the 20th century — in other words, an enormously popular work of classical music — it's also very good. Danny Elfman, Ennio Morricone, Howard Shore: These are all composers who belong in any symphony house. (So does Koji Kondo, composer of Nintendo's music.)

The point is that as people wring their hands about how classical music is unpopular, unloved, and going bankrupt, and that the classical music composed today is bad, in reality, we have composers of bona fide classical music putting out excellent work, getting paid millions for it, and having their output loved by millions and millions of people. We just don't call it classical music.

The exact same phenomenon is going on with poetry. I won't bore you with the "hip-hop is poetry" trope, even though it's totally true. Song lyrics are poetry! Sometimes we recognize it, usually when the poets are dying or close to it. There are countless songs whose lyrics are, well, excellent poetry. (Bob Dylan!) And these are beloved and appreciated by millions of people, even as we wring our hands about how there aren't good poets anymore and nobody is interested in poetry.

What explains this strange phenomenon? That these classical forms of art are thriving, but out of sight under our very noses, as it were, outside their official precincts? And what does it say about us?

The case of poetry gives us a massive clue. Song lyrics typically have to obey some of the usual rules of poetry — rhyming, rhythm, alliteration. But since the second half of the 20th century, most "official" poetry has jettisoned the classical formal rules of poetry that used to govern the genre for centuries.

The results there have been the same as in every other form of art where this has happened — a few astonishing breakthroughs and works of genius, but also the discombobulation of the entire art form as it stops resembling itself.

Poetry tried to break through formal rules in part to become more popular. But the problem is that in doing so, it actually became less accessible, since those formal rules are not just constraints on the artists, but also ways for the viewer or reader to understand the work of art (sometimes literally, as in the case of figurative and abstract painting).

Art cannot exist without form, nor can human creations without rules. Poetry did not shed form, it simply replaced good form, honed by centuries, with form that was evermore obscure, unofficial, and ad hoc. Far from making poetry more accessible, it only made it even more the province of a self-selecting clique of experts who can pat themselves on the back for producing and reading stuff that conforms to their made-up notions of beauty. This is a fancy way of saying that official poetry destroyed itself because its officialdom became a bunch of postmodern snoots. Is that a gross overgeneralization? Sure. Is it true as far as these things go? You bet.

The point is that if the artistic officialdom of these forms of art stopped encouraging self-destructive tendencies, such as a hatred for forms that have proved their usefulness over centuries and an insufferable elitism, maybe people would love them more, because those forms of art that don't have those aspects are actually very popular and successful artistically.

Which brings us to the last, and most reassuring point. The fact that these forms of art are trying despite their stewards' best efforts to butcher them to death can only be explained by the fact that there is a longing for them deep within the human soul. That these forms of art answer a call which comes not from human whim, but from somewhere deep within the fabric of the Universe. That poetry and symphony and orchestra really are in harmony with the great song of creation. And this should be a relief and a joy to all of us.