The idea for this substack blossomed in my lounge-room one cold cosy Melbourne morning. I had just made myself a coffee and pressed play on an album called Chopin Orbit by Hayato Sumino (your recommended listening, below). I remember looking around and thinking, “this would be so much better if I could share it”. Not in a ‘I’m lonely’ way, but a … ‘come over for a cuppa’ way.
Chopin Orbit by Hayato Sumino
Listen on Apple Music, Spotify or YouTube
So, this substack has become an extension of my space; a way of inviting you here, to share these sounds, to open the door to a sound world that might be new to you. I’ve written each substack at my table, and always with music. But NOT TODAY! Today my little apartment is full of men with jackhammers, ripping out the old and putting in the new.
I bought my apartment in 2022 after a relationship that deserves no oxygen here, ended. I was so proud of myself for doing this alone. It became my haven, and I knew it would be my healing. I also knew the kitchen needed some love and money ;)
My home is nestled on the top floor of a set of brick apartments in inner Melbourne. It was built in 1959; a chef’s-kiss year for architecture. Light streams in all the windows, cloaking the entire apartment in yellow light, which shifts gently across the day.
I get a kick out of thinking of all the music that was being created in the same year the bricks of my home were being laid in 1959. The sound of Miles Davis’ delicately pushing the notes of Kind of Blue into a microphone, Shostakovich bearing his heart and soul in his Cello Concerto, written for the greatest cellist of our time, Rostropovich. Just down the road, Johnny O’Keefe was singing Shout! to thousands of screaming women, and our girl Joan Sutherland was receiving a 19-minute curtain call after her portrayal of Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia de Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House in London.
I had big conversations with the builder who came to demolish the kitchen. “I want all of this untouched” I said pointing to the top cupboards and shelving. He looked at me puzzled like “ew why... It’s old”. I argued that I loved the kitchen for what she was and if you removed all of that history, what would be left? He shrugged like, okay whatever, it’s your house. I found the lack of care he had about what I wanted to preserve, disconcerting.
We have this profound obsession with the new don’t we? Or is it an obsession with ‘upgrading’? Sometimes it makes me so sad; dying languages, trades and crafts of the past not handed to the next generation, a cityscape devoid of architectural diversity, wrinkles vanishing from the faces of our screen talent. But then I open TikTok and the whimsy trend hits me in the face. I see Gen Alpha at Ren Fairs, the woman with the long blonde ponytail crafting period plaster cornices by hand, and a clothes darning tutorial delivered straight to my feed. I get lost on the page of the dude who says “new music’s cool but have you ever heard old music?”
A few years ago a friend of mine once made a throwaway comment at a party that went something like this: “Yeah but Megsy, you spend your time listening to music from the past, you love the dead stuff”. It made me laugh because I was like, wait babe, aren’t you wearing vintage cowboy boots? And didn’t you binge Outlander last weekend?
My builder, my friend. They made me realise something. It’s classical music that gets this “old, dead” narrative. And opera. And sometimes ballet. But rarely other art forms. It’s so funny isn’t it, because imagine looking at a Rembrandt and being like, ‘urgh, that’s so DEAD’. I often encourage others to think of Beethoven’s 5th like they would the Notre Dame. Or Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto like vintage Chanel. Or Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto like a Kandinsky.
There was a very interesting study out of the UK last year that explored how our generations consumed and pursued their love of classical music and I found it SO FASCINATING! It just went dead-against this ‘young people aren’t interested in classical music’ narrative. In fact it proved that these days it’s the younger generations who are the HUNGRIEST for classical music. The coolest stat for me from this study is that 65% of Z and Alpha (current under 35s) listen to classical music regularly. FRICKEN EPIC! They listen to it while cooking and studying, they go on date nights to the opera, they blast soundtracks in their cars and pursue listening and engaging far more regularly than older generations. Have a read of the study if you are interested in more stats because it’s PACKED full of them. It really does blow apart that tired old narrative that classical music has been saddled with for so long.
There’s momentum here; a shift. We are moving away from the shame that has cloaked our industry, and returning to how it feels to embrace our classical music industry for exactly what it is built on; great art. Great, old, art that has survived our compulsion to rip it out and forget about it.
The kitchen is still work in progress, but by gosh it feels good to see the original 60s nestled alongside the new cabinets. The space still …makes sense, y’know? Just like classical music does with her old and her new; perfect for what they are and just as they are.
megan x
P.S. You can subscribe to De-Classified for $5 a month or sign up for free. I love your support either way and feel immensely grateful for each and every one of you who has made it this far.