There was some debate at the time as to whether 2000 or 2001 was the proper start of the new millennium. And in 2000, there was a scramble for generators, as anxiety mounted over whether shortsighted computer programming would cause elevators to plummet and airplanes to drop from the skies for Y2K. Whether or not you felt a touch of annoyance at all the knuckleheads in their New Year’s Eve “2000” novelty glasses who believed they really were welcoming in a new millennium (a year early, in fact), in the end it proved to be as immaterial as a lover’s quarrel. Because the 21st century really began on September 11, 2001.
22 years on, we live in the world 9/11 made, or at any rate embodied. We continue to grapple with uncertainty, and anxiety, and hopelessness, as humankind gives in to its baser instincts and lessons seemingly are never learned. War, terrorism, nuclear weapons, disease, heedless technology, and shady politics had been with us already in the 20th century, of course; but with the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the horror of the attacks, brought to us live, in real time, it really did seem as if everything was running off the rails.
In a society where the arts and education are marginalized and brutishness and nihilism are celebrated and exploited as means to power and economic gain, injustice and aggression are on the rise, and we all pay the price.
This is not to diminish the horror and suffering of those who perished in the attacks or their survivors. Nothing I could write could ever do honor to those who died or convey enough sympathy or solace to their families. But none of us who lived through 9/11 emerged unscathed.
In response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Leonard Bernstein famously declared, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
But you know the old philosophical thought experiment: if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
If beautiful music is made intensely and devotedly, will it still reach those for whom it might prove transformative in a world where it has been dismissed and even denigrated?
In Bernstein’s day, classical music was still on television. It was on the radio. It was not chopped up and presented as a string of pretty tunes to be promoted as “relaxing.” Beethoven, Mahler, and Shostakovich did not write elevator music. These were soulful outpourings of people with their own struggles. Now, outside the concert hall, lamentably, they are mostly silent.
Would classical music have prevented 9/11? Of course not. But anything that promotes reflection and beauty and solace and empathy can only help. Our artistic monuments are what connect us to one another and reassure us and encourage us in how we relate to our fellow human beings. And you don’t have to be a dead white European male to benefit.
The years pass quickly and it doesn’t take long for people to forget. A generation has already reached adulthood that has no firsthand memory of 9/11. Nor of Leonard Bernstein for that matter.
Horror and human tragedy can always be found in abundance, whether the cause be natural, as in the recent earthquake in Morocco, or the wildfires in Maui, or manmade, as in the misery of the war in Ukraine, or any number of mass shootings in public places. At home, in the United States, there are dangerous undercurrents of social and political unrest.
Classical music is not simply the means to a lofty escape. There is a difference between elitism and elevation. The arts are not all ivory tower, after all; they also have a practical application. With the ever-present threat of injustice, oppression, and violence, they are evidence of our shared humanity at its most transcendent.
Also, I expect they make you feel a hell of a lot better about everything than would an empty diet of soul-crushing noise, vapid flash, and glorified violence.
