Classically
Sexy?
When a colleague of mine recently went shopping for CDs,
he was greeted at the store by a life-sized cutout of a beautiful young singer
wearing a tight-fitting, low-cut dress.
The
size and placement of the cutout made it hard not to look at it. Since he
knew that the singer was all of 16, he left without buying anything.
Sadly,
this kind of marketing is all too common in the pop music field. But my colleague
was not shopping for popular music. He was in the classical section of the
record store.
Here,
too, artists, instead of baring their souls for the sake of music, have taken
to baring their skin for the sake of sales. Plunging necklines and even partial
nudity have become common on classical CD covers.
Patrick
Kavanaugh, the artistic director of the Masterworks Festival, wonders “why
so many brilliant classical musicians have stooped to disrobing in order to
sell Bach partitas . . . “ Case in point: violinist Lara St. John. The
cover of her 1996 recording, BACH: WORKS FOR SOLO VIOLIN, featured St. John
naked, with only “her strategically placed violin to cover her.”
While
the cover created a ruckus, the CD sold “phenomenally well for a classical
recording” and set a precedent that other record companies were prepared
to follow.
Some
people may dismiss concerns about low necklines on CD covers as prudery, but
as Kavanaugh says, the real issue here may be “the future of classical
music.”
This
“sex sells” approach diminishes and demeans the music. As John
Kasica of the St. Louis Symphony told Kavanaugh, this approach “draws
all your attention to the performers rather than to the music.” It takes
“away from the depth of the music itself” and turns artistry into,
at best, a secondary concern.
As
Kavanaugh points out, artists have been “practicing six to eight hours
a day from the [age] of five.” As if that weren’t enough, now
they have to look like centerfolds as well.
There
is another way this marketing diminishes the music. Violinist Lisa-Beth Lambert
of the Philadelphia Orchestra says that selling a “spiritually uplifting
product” through such “degrading means” is “incongruent.”
It’s
more than incongruent; it’s disrespectful. Names like Bach, Beethoven,
and Mozart are rightly regarded as synonymous with “genius.” Their
output represents high-water marks of Western civilization.
What
Lambert calls the music’s “spiritual uplift” is a function
of how, in the creation of great art, man reflects his own creation in the
image of God. It was through great music that C. S. Lewis first glimpsed that
“joy” that led him to Christ.
Great
music provides us with a glimpse of transcendence. It is a gift from God,
which is why the Bach violin works that St. John played were signed SDG —
soli Deo gloria — by their composer.
And
it is why Christians should be outraged by this crass marketing approach —
not only because it is another example of our culture’s obsession with
sex, but also because it is another example of our culture’s inability
to recognize what’s worthwhile, trading the exhilaration of great music
for the titillation of plunging necklines.