Classical music has lost its way. It's hard to believe, but that stuffy, pretentious art form we know today used to be alive, used to be "popular" music. People whistled Mozart in the streets, women fainted when Lizst walked on stage, people cheered when Farinelli hit a high note, people rioted when Stravinsky introduced The Rite of Spring. It's too easy to say that the music hasn't changed, we've changed. The music, and even more importantly, its surroundings, has changed. New music used to be the lifeblood of concert-going. Showmanship was an integral part of music. The human voice was front and center. Hard as it is to believe today, improvisation was not only accepted, it was mandatory in "classical" music. Music was altered to fit the occasion, it was recomposed to fit the performers, it was not a mummified sacred cow. Most classical musicians, incredibly talented as they are, have no ability to improvise or even loosen up, musically or even physically. There's no need for tuxedos or evening gowns when the music speaks. There's no need for absolute perfection in everything, but there's a need for passion and communicative skills. Many of the greatest performers of the last 100 years could not even qualify for an average classical competition today, they would be considered technically deficient or interpretively too wayward. I would be willing to bet that if Mozart were transported to our present time and put on stage to perform one of his piano concertos he would be booed off the stage by the average classical-music audience, much the same way Jesus would be crucified by his present-day followers. Classical music cannot survive as a museum culture.

The fragmentation of the classical music scene is a problem. Not just the strict separation between instrumental and vocal music, but the separation of opera from the rest of classical music. Look at the comments: people want lyrics. Also, the separation of "Early Music" from the rest of Classical music. Young people respond to modal music and Chant, don't wall it off into a ghetto. I know this has to do with technical requirements, but that's as much of a problem with musicians and the musical culture as it is with audiences. There's nothing wrong with transcriptions, by the way; they were once an accepted, even a mandatory practice to bring music to concertgoers.