Man Just Doesn’t Like Classical Music

John Man, rider of trains and sometimes also buses, told reporters that he just doesn’t like classical music.

“I just don’t like classical music,” he told reporters. “I have friends who like it, and that’s great for them, I guess. But I don’t like it.”

Classical musicians responded quickly, with many pointing out that something was obviously wrong with Man. “What he needs is a better education,” said Classical Joe. “If only the government did more to educate people about classical music, Man would quickly find that he does like it, but naturally, with his education.”

Man shrugged off this suggestion. “No, I just don’t like it,” he said. “Actually, it is sort of offensive to tell me that I’m uneducated. How good can your music be if you have to teach people that it is good?”

A young and dynamic marketing consultant was on hand to explain that there wasn’t something wrong with Man, there was something wrong with every single person in the music industry. “We simply aren’t marketing to Man effectively, and that’s the fault of all musicians and the marketers and everyone else,” she said. “If only we could get Man to come to concerts, then we would know we are doing the right thing.”

“Hmmm… No, I don’t think so,” said Man, bemused. “I just really don’t like it. Why don’t you market it to people who have some sort of interest in it? They might want to go. I don’t.”

Thankfully, a popular online commentator was able to offer another point of view, one which has not received enough attention in classical music circles. “I think what Man is really trying to say is that he finds the obscure and elitist etiquette expected of classical audiences quite off-putting. If he was able to use his phone during the concert and clap whenever he wanted and maybe see the orchestras dressed in more casual clothes, then surely he would come to concerts more regularly.”

“No, I really don’t care about any of that crap,” said Man, getting exasperated. “I think I have been quite clear on this- I really just don’t like the music.”

For some reason, a young child decided to ask Man why he didn’t enjoy the music, as if that mattered or was even possible. “Thanks for asking, Little Jim. It just sort of goes on a bit, doesn’t it? It’s like the musicians just spend a lot of time faffing around trying to get to the end.”

We asked Ripping Babushkin, famous musicologist and bomb-maker, for a response. “Well, I probably would have said that classical music develops the latent thematic potentialities of melodic material amidst a distinctive yet organically related harmonic language, resulting in a rhetorically captivating sense of musical narrative borne of the interplay between a preternatural sense of tension and release leading inexorably, via a sustained musical argument, to a capitulatory flourish that affirms the cogent numinousness of what are essentially abstract processes,” he said. “But I think ‘faffing around trying to get to the end’ would also be quite apt.”

Man was non-plussed by this and hoped that he could get back to whatever it was he wanted to do. “You know, I also don’t like spinach,” he said. “But no one gives me grief about that. Except my mum. She is always going on about the spinach. It’s like, Mum, give it a rest with the spinach. I just don’t like it.”