For those about to Bach --
we salute you

Your favorite rock stars' favorite classical music pieces on "Exile on Classical Street" "Exile on Classical Street" London Records By CYNTHIA JOYCE Though certainly well-intentioned, efforts to save classical music from obscurity (and symphonies from bankruptcy) only ensure that the average American will hear William Tell's 1812 Overture at least 573 times in their lifetime (more if they watch cartoons or Westerns) and Pachelbel's Canon at least 800 times (more if they frequent weddings). And if dubiously titled "music appreciation" courses don't create an outright aversion to classical music, they do little to foster a personal interest in anything beyond the standard repertoire. For many, those classes leave indelible memories of tyrannical teachers with thick foreign accents and borderline personalities who forced you to listen to too much Wagner. If you weren't turned on by Romanticism -- if you were, say, a budding little Baroque aficionado -- you could just take those undeveloped sensibilities to your grave. But there's always another idealistic huckster determined to make the classics palatable to the rock-loving masses. The latest project -- "Exile on Classical Street," a compilation of several rock musicians' favorite classical pieces -- tells rock fans that, when it comes to classical music, they don't have to trust their instincts; they can rely on those of their idols. Says London Records' Steve Singer, who produced the project: "Somewhere along the line I had read about how Keith Richards listens to a lot of blues and Beethoven. I thought, 'Boom, there's a connection here. These guys don't just listen to rock 'n' roll.' ...I thought it would be great to bring a classical record to the pop world with legitimacy." No doubt Singer is well-intentioned, but he misses the point: Rock fans rarely question the legitimacy of classical music -- they just find it unapproachable. The idea that works like "Clair de Lune" and "Pictures at an Exhibition" are somehow legitimized by attaching a completely unrelated personality to them (even if it is someone presumably as learned in the fine arts as Sting or Elvis Costello) is absurd. Still, it makes sense that such a misconception would arise from rock impresarios, who depend upon the creation of a cult of personality to sell their products. With most classical music, there's not much room for individual personality -- the music already exists and is there to be interpreted, not invented. Conductors and musicians act as a vehicle through which an idea is channeled, and the more charismatic "personalities" are suspected of masking a lack of true talent with their bravura. Theatrics may help to get people's attention, but then it's the theatrics, not the music, that will hold it. As any overworked and underpaid symphony performer who is forced to play dreaded "pops" concerts will tell you, there are few experiences more demeaning than having to play "Phantom of the Opera" while the conductor runs around like a maniac wearing a mask and cape. Sure, the audience probably gets a kick out of it -- a kick that the musicians would love to deliver personally. "These guys make music, they live it," Singer said of the 12 artists 12 artists who participated in the "Exile" project. "Even though they come from a different spectrum of music, they're just as informed in the fine arts." Even if this assertion were true -- and the less-than-illuminating liner notes suggest it isn't -- it wouldn't guarantee "Exile's" effectiveness as classical music missionary work. While historical knowledge certainly can deepen your understanding of a work of art, it won't necessarily help you enjoy it. Apparently the self-righteous Bono finds new resonance in Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in light of the crisis in Bosnia; he writes in the liner notes, "The soft wailing, or 'keening' as we call it in Ireland, of this string symphony keeps alive the agony of a culture almost at a point of extinction...and makes a monument of their grief more accessible than any war memorial." But what specifically does Shostakovich have to do with Bosnia? Bono doesn't say. If Michael Stipe's brief comments about Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" -- "Great morning music" -- makes it sound as if classical music means about as much to him as a good stretching exercise, at least he cuts through the classical-music-as-noble-pursuit rhetoric offered by Bono. It's that attitude that has long alienated rock music audiences who just don't feel they can live up to it. In the desperate attempt to make classical music seem "hip," WBCN/Boston music director Carter Alan offers his own condescending little tidbits on "Exile": "Perhaps Franz Liszt is the best evidence that reincarnation is real, since he returned a century down the road as Jerry Lee Lewis!" Now why would someone presumably committed to educating ignorant rock fans force-feed them such meaningless drivel -- don't they get enough of that from reading Rolling Stone? Why not tell them instead that Richard Strauss, whose "Beim Schlafengehen" was picked as a favorite of Marianne Faithful, was known to incite crowds to riot with his controversial erotic operas? Or that the first performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" ballet (a favorite of Bruce Hornsby) so enraged the audience that the dancers, unable to hear the music over the din of the crowd's catcalls, couldn't finish the performance? In The New Yorker's current special issue devoted to music, Alex Ross writes that "A culture obsessed with youth, novelty and gadgetry won't easily embrace a music that requires close listening or historical understanding." It's assumptions like this that lead to perversions like "Exile on Classical St." Forget historical understanding, and just market novelty items -- then even classical music might sell. In his conclusion to the liner notes, Alan writes: "Mozart is said to have remarked 'Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.' Funny, but that sounds a lot like something four lads from Liverpool sang 200 years later, doesn't it? So, just for the record, let it be known that the masters agree." As if Mozart needs that stamp of approval. Is marketing classical music to the masses a lost cause? Speak your piece in Table Talk.

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