Music for the People

 Why I listen to classical live or on CD:

It's Saturday morning, and I've got the radio tuned to a classical music station. I want to hear Vivaldi or Mozart or Bach, and instead I am hearing two wonks discussing the minutiae of musical performance. They are talking about the advantage of a diminished seventh over D minor sharp,. Perhaps they are discussing how allegro is the allegro con molto, the way the second fiddles use the pizzicato, or the harmonics of the wind section. Or is it about why the composer chose to set the movement in a 4/5ths rhythm as opposed to 7/8ths.

If you don't want to read the article, here's the compelling-end-sentence:

Music theory is for music nerds, but music is for everyone.

-Lennard Davis, How to Kill Classical Music?: Discuss It to Death on the Radio