For all those old fogeys out there who have issues with sexy chicks playing classical music, read this! This is Haylie Ecker's (of bond) response to those critics who gave them hell after the Miss Universe pageant for the "dumbing down" and "sexualization" of classical music:
"There was a time when the world of classical music was all about passion! Emotionally high, sexually charged, drug induced; it was the original sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. The classical music image was saucy. Serious music, especially opera, throbbed with sensuality and eroticism. French composers wrote ballets with scantily-clad women twirling about the stage. "It worked more or less like pole dancing," says Robert Fink, a UCLA musicologist. "Guys would send them notes backstage and have meetings with them later." Mention this to a big white-moustached classical purist of today, and you?ll probably catch a twinkle in his eye. He knows the score.
If the classical composers of yesterday had had reality TV shows of their own, they would have given fellow Maestro Ozzy Osbourne a run for his money. "Days of Our Lives" were the days of their lives: Mozart the tortured soul, Tchaikovsky the closet homosexual married to a nymphomaniac, Berlioz the drug addict, and Mahler part of the token love triangle (his wife was sleeping with his best friend). But never mind soaps, Hollywood eat your heart out! Brahms could have provided the script for a male version of "Pretty Woman" - playing in brothels and seedy saloons in Hamburg slums to feed his family, before getting his big break from a well-connected stranger. These characters had the kind of lives that would have sent the tabloids into a frenzy!
So what killed classical music's rock 'n roll image? Why do so many people today find it difficult to accept the popular image portrayed by the likes of bond? Is it snobbery? Partly, but there are also two historical factors to blame. Firstly, the Victorians got hold of classical music and buttoned it right up to the chin. Sensuality and eroticism were out, Puritanism and high tea were in. The listener sat stock still in a chair, eyes closed, letting the melodies course through him. It was less a source of merriment and more a time for serious contemplation.
Secondly, while the Victorian dampeners were still on, the recording era was ushered in and became the final cadence of classical music's rock 'n roll image. Gone were the days of needing an orchestra or quartet in front of you to hear a piece, or the seductive opera divas working the stage like a lap dancing bar - image took a back seat. And as recordings became more readily available the need for live performances declined and so the age of the walrus moustache peering from the plastic CD case was born. Throw him a mackerel!
Today, there is plenty of print devoted to the sexy image of classical music, as if it were both new and wrong. The truth is, it's been nothing but hot babes and rock stars from the very beginning. But now the zing is back where it belongs - in classical music. What's wrong with the people who are performing exciting new music also being attractive, or having an image that is eye-catching and memorable? Surely that's the icing on top of the cake! That's what any audience wants and pays for. Paganini was clued up: the most virtuosic violinist of all time was image driven. He soldered a supernatural image onto his talent and created the sensation of the 1830s: Paganini-mania, comparable to Beatle-mania in the early 1960s. He arrived at his concerts in a black coach drawn by black horses, robed in black, like a bat ut of hell. He swept onto the stage like a demon, shook his long black hair, flashed his teeth, and played an entire music programme from memory. No one played without sheet music back then - it was another of his supernatural powers. His image sold out concert halls. He developed a new style of music and created the modern violin technique. In the same way that Paganini's talent and image combined to win him hordes of adulating fans, today's performers such as Bond are drawing millions of listeners to their new style of classical-pop crossover.
Of course, there will always be people ready to criticize flamboyant performers - Schumann hated Liszt for his exhibitionism, wild dress sense and commercialism - but the fact is that these characters do more than anyone to create audiences for their type of music. I laugh at the thought of a prudish couple settling down for a late evening hot chocolate, with Liszt echoing in the background. Little do they realize, Liszt was the Justin Timberlake of his time; he was a honey! A sex symbol with an entourage of girl groupies that went hysterical at the flourish of a virtuosic run. Nor was Schumann was any less of a rock star. He was part of the biggest love affair in musical history, which gave rise to German Romantic music. In the same way that Justine Frishmann inspired Blur's Damon Albarn and Suede's Brett Anderson to accelerate the Brit-pop movement, Clara Wieck-Schumann drove her husband and Brahms to ever-greater heights of musical composition.
It's wrong to think that today's image of classical music being smothered in female talent and sensuality is anything new. What's the fuss about? Music IS seductive! To play an instrument is an extension of the soul - how much more sensual can you get? When looking at the storyline of a Mozart opera or Bizet's Carmen it's easy to imagine oodles of lip-gloss and hair!
We almost lost it, but thank heavens, the classical world that was for a while starved of its mojo, is getting it back. Along comes a fairy princess, kisses the dinner-jacketed walrus on the CD cover and revives the spirit of Classical Rock 'n Roll. Nigel Kennedy emerges looking like Axl Rose playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto in a head scarf, ripped jeans and stubble. YoYo Ma, another thrill-seeker, has recorded the Bach Cello Solo Suites on the top of a New York skyscraper for television. Classic FM TV is cracking its whip! This new classical MTV spin-off has a chart whose record of the week is John William's Indiana Jones Temple of Doom. Pavarotti is holding a concert next week, singing with the likes of Bono and Stevie Wonder. And bond is creating a new style of music altogether, derived from classical and mixed with pop. For sure, we'll still pout, and toy suggestively with our bows, because it's an image that gets a reaction and is working just fine. Classical music is no longer just a face for radio or the phonograph, the ballyhoo world that classical music used to be is back! Undo that top button, and enjoy it.
-Haylie Ecker
Many thanks to my friend, DrMudslide, who is also a friend of Haylie's, for passing this on to me.
