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Welcome to the New Classical Society! #

We are an international society of amateur Classical musicians who practice a new model of Classical music composition, playing, and pedagogy, collectively known as New Classical. We believe our model is a necessary evolution (but not replacement) of the contemporary paradigm of Classical music. The following paragraphs will be an attempt to convince the amateur Classical musician of the necessity of this change.

Note that New Classical is named so in large part because we focus on playing new, purpose-written Classical music - that is, we define “Classical music” in terms of the theoretical elements that tend to be present in what most Classical musicians would consider Classical music, not in terms of the Classical canon, which we largely ignore. This is a paradigm that will understandably not appeal to all Classical musicians.

  • For a list of groups actively practicing the New Classical school of music, please see our Local Chapters.
  • For a list of frequently asked questions, please refer to our FAQ.
  • To join our public Discord group, please see our Social Media page.

What is New Classical? #

New Classical is a philosophy of Classical music composition, playing, and pedagogy that advocates for the following five points:

  1. The establishment of local New Classical chapters, for networking and studying music

  2. The creation of local ensembles within those chapters that produce their own repertoire

  3. The adoption of a new type of Classical music pedagogy that, notably, focuses much less on mastering well-known pieces and much more on acquiring generic musical, instrumental, and vocal skills, especially the skills of sightreading, improvisation, and composition

  4. The creation of music with the view that our music is for the enjoyment of the musicians playing it first and for anyone else second

  5. The creation of ephemeral music

The Problem #

The contemporary paradigm of Classical music that emphasizes the study and mastery of common practice music has a critical flaw: It does not provide sufficient avenues for musicians playing in an amateur capacity (a category that includes all amateur musicians, but also the vast majority of professional musicians who make their money by teaching) to sit down and play music with one another - something that we consider to be the primary purpose of studying music. In fact, the entire contemporary paradigm of Classical music pedagogy and playing is built around the deeply flawed assumption that it is possible for more than a handful of us to have a full-time career playing Classical music.

This paradigm makes a tradeoff: The listener can enjoy all sorts of fantastic music, but at the expense of increased demands upon musicians in terms of time, technique, and ensemble viability; demands that are simply not reasonable for anyone who does not make a career playing music. Consider, for example, the difficulty of forming an amateur ensemble if all the repertoire you’d like to play is written for a string quartet or string trio playing at the professional level, but you’ve spoken to all the musicians you know and have only managed to find a violist, an oboist, a saxophonist, and a bass recorder player, all of whom play at an intermediate amateur level.

Here is what will tend to happen if you try to form an amateur Classical ensemble today: There’s an above average chance you won’t ever go through with forming the ensemble, because there’s no repertoire for your particular type of ensemble, or at least none that’s mutually agreeable. If you do manage to form an ensemble, it will be hard to get everyone together time and time again for the intensely time and energy-consuming practice sessions. You won’t be sightreading, because the repertoire you went with was written for musicians who play at a higher level than you ever will, and most of them can’t sightread it. And even once you do manage to get everyone together for a practice session, the technical demands of a 32nd note run in one of the fast movements will prove to be too much for someone, who decides to call it quits. You’re back at square one.

…You wake up the next day and decide to quit playing Classical and start studying Jazz improvisation because playing Jazz with other musicians is significantly more practical than trying to work your way around Classical repertoire.

The Solution #

In order to avoid the above conundrum, the New Classical Society advocates for going back to doing something that used to be a fixture of Classical, in the age of Bach and earlier: Musicians writing new music, fine-tuned to the strengths and weaknesses of themselves and the other musicians in their ensembles. If Classical music follows this path, amateur musicians will have greatly increased opportunities to enjoy playing Classical music, and Classical music will grow in popularity amongst amateur musicians. It is high time for Classical to become a genre for all musicians - not just professionals.