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Timothée Chalamet and Music Miseducation, Part 2

Let's segue what's behind the never-ending cultural debate about whether ancient art forms like opera and ballet are still relevant—or if they’re just kept on life support by rich patrons and guilty elitists who feel obligated to clap politely at things they don’t actually enjoy. Recall that it's the artistic equivalent of eating pinakbet because your Filipina lola insists mga gulay are good for you, even though everyone at the table would rather be inhaling Chickenjoy. 

It all came to a head in late February 2026, when Timothée Chalamet dropped a truth bomb at a town hall hosted by CNN and Variety. With the casual confidence of someone who has never had to pirouette for a paycheck, he mused aloud that maybe, just maybe, ballet and opera are only still kicking because of some collective sense of duty rather than genuine enthusiasm. 

"I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore,'" he said, blissfully unaware that he had just activated the rage of every balletomane and opera buff within earshot. Then, with the diplomatic finesse of a man who knows he’s about to be ratioed, he tacked on, "All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there."

Cue the outrage. Critics clutched their monocles, industry veterans huffed about "disrespect," classical vocalists clutched their "Baroque pearls," and social media and news sites briefly imploded under the weight of thinkpieces titled "Timothée Chalamet Just Canceled Culture" and "Why Youthful Arrogance Is Killing the Arts" (titles not completely accurate).

And it was partially why Chalamet – who himself has 3 relatives who’d danced ballet – got snubbed at the 98th Academy Awards. But here’s the thing: was he wrong? 

Let’s be honest—how many people under 40 genuinely wake up thinking, "You know what I need today? Three hours of countertenors ROFLing in Italian, with strings and basso continuo." (See timestamp 4:50 of video above.) Or, "Yes, I’d love to spend my evening watching people portraying ghosts of maidens who'd succumbed to St. Vitus's Dance kill a village gamekeeper en pointe."

Sure, ballet and opera have their devotees, but let’s not pretend they’re pulling stadium numbers. 

And then there’s the funding issue — oh, the funding issue. Ballet companies and opera houses survive on a precarious cocktail of wealthy donors, government grants, and the occasional desperate Nutcracker reconstruction to pay the bills.

Meanwhile, music education in schools has been gutted so thoroughly that many kids today think Rodelinda is a supporting NPC character of Super Mario Galaxy and Swan Lake is a fancy swimming pool.  

Enter Hellene Hiner, Ukrainian-American piano teacher and founder of the Soft Mozart piano pedagogy method, who saw the points of those who'd actually agreed with Chalamet. Not because she thinks opera is obsolete, but because she argues that classical arts suffer from an accessibility problem. And that problem mostly lies in how youths'd learn how to play the piano.

There - I said it. It mostly comes down to the curricula of youths' piano lessons.

"The root of (classical music's survival) is musical literacy," Hiner justly posited, "The masses are musically illiterate; they do not read or understand music notation. Roots rot, teeth hurt and fall out. With a drunken perseverance, we keep putting new and new  crowns on sick decaying teeth. At our own expense."

Now replace "teeth" with "opera houses" and "crowns" with "productions of Rinaldo for audiences comprising apiece of twelve retirees and a confused tourist." Voilà! You’ve got the state of classical arts funding.  Hiner’s not wrong — musical illiteracy is the root canal no one wants to sit through. If you can’t read sheet music, a Johann Sebastian Bach cantata might as well be a spreadsheet in Thai.  

And let’s be honest, if your idea of a good time isn’t deciphering polyphonic counterpoint, why would you subject yourself to Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245?

But here’s the kicker — instead of asking why the masses find these art forms dull (hint: it’s not just the lack of TikTok integration), the response is to double down on funding. It’s like propping up a crumbling palace with gold bars while ignoring the fact that nobody lives there anymore.

Hiner and Chalamet both take aim at the absurdity of pouring money into institutions that, for most people, might as well be museum exhibits.

Hiner, that brave soul shouting into the void, pointed out what we all know but pretend not to notice: clip culture hasn’t just nibbled at our attention spans; it’s taken a chainsaw to them, leaving us with the attention retention of a goldfish on espresso.

And what’s the casualty? Classical music, that poor, neglected art form, now sitting in the corner like a forgotten grandparent at a rave. 

The root of this apathy, Hiner argues (and she’s not wrong), is musical illiteracy—a condition so widespread it might as well be classified as a pandemic. Even worse, the relentless popularity of hip-hop, electronic, rap, and pop music isn’t just competing with classical; it’s actively bulldozing over it like a drunk toddler with a toy truck.

A 2015 study by SeatSmart — the UK’s premier classroom seating organization software — revealed that the lyrical complexity of the most popular songs of the 2000s and 2010s hovered around a third-grade Flesch-Kincaid reading level. That’s right. We’ve regressed from Shakespearean sonnets to lyrics that could’ve been written by a moderately literate eight-year-old with a thesaurus (but only if the thesaurus was replaced by emojis). 

This lyrical lobotomy has consequences. When your brain gets hooked on the linguistic equivalent of cotton candy — songs like Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars's "Uptown Funk," where the deepest philosophical musing is, "Don’t believe me, just watch!"— then the intricate, polyphonic layers of Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106, don’t just sound complex; they sound like pure, unfiltered noise.

It’s like trying to appreciate - as the music teacher of the West Monroe, LA, based classical Christian charter school Geneva Academy, Jarrod Richey, best analogized - a scratch-grilled steak after a lifetime of eating nothing but baby food. Your palate just can’t compute. 

Speaking of Bach, let’s talk about his St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, a masterpiece so dense it makes Tolstoy look like a Twitter thread.

Once translated into English (assuming you’re using the New American Bible to translate the Gospel recitatives), the text demands a reading level roughly four to six grades above your average Billboard chart-topper (about 9ish on the Flesch-Kincaid scale). That’s the difference between reading "See Spot run" and deciphering a doctoral thesis on medieval Gregorian chant.

A latter example is "APT.," the 2024 viral duet by Rosé and Mars — a song so lyrically sparse it makes Pinkfong's "Baby Shark" look like Dante’s Inferno.

With a Flesch-Kincaid reading level estimated at a staggering 1.1, it’s the musical equivalent of a participation trophy. And yet, it’s addictive. Why? Because the human brain, tragically, is a sucker for repetition. That hook isn’t just catchy; it’s a cognitive parasite, burrowing into your auditory cortex and refusing to leave, like a squatter who’s also really into karaoke. 

In South Korea, high school students preparing for the Suneung — a college admission test so stressful it makes the SAT look like a casual crossword puzzle — have reported legitimate fear that "APT." and its K-pop cousins would likely hijack their brains mid-exam, transforming their carefully memorized equations into an involuntary internal DJ set.

Imagine: you’re knee-deep in calculus, sweat dripping onto your Scantron, when suddenly — bam — your mental jukebox blasts the refrain of "APT." on loop.

Chaeyoung-iga joahaneun. Random game. Random game.

GAME OVER.

No "SKY" (Seoul National, Korea, or Yonsei) university diploma and a white-collar job for you.

But the pièce de résistance? A Malaysian student, presumably in a fit of either rebellion or sheer auditory possession, decided that her language arts exam was the perfect place to transcribe the lyrics to "APT." instead of actually responding to the essay prompt supporting her response with what she read in Yuzaini Rahya’s sci-fi novel Tawanan Komander Caucasus.

Her teacher, in a move that was equal parts exasperation and opportunistic content creation, zoomed in on the lyrical "essay" for a TikTok reel captioned with the kind of disappointment usually reserved for finding out your dog ate your term paper — and then barfed it up on your diploma.

Hiner posits, with the zeal of a revolutionary and the precision of a neuroscientist, that music is not some arcane secret whispered only to the initiated, but a visual, kinesthetic language that, when properly presented, should click into place with the satisfying simplicity of a binary system. You know, like turning a light switch on or off—except instead of illumination, you get Mozart.

Somewhere in the aftermath of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s era, the logic of music notation underwent a sort of intellectual mitosis, splitting into fragments designed to serve a newly professionalized elite. The result? A system that effectively locked the general public out of true musical comprehension like bouncers at an exclusive club, leaving generations of would-be musicians to fumble with sheet music as if it were encrypted by the CIA.

And here’s where Hiner really throws down the gauntlet: she declares traditional piano lessons to be, in her words, “sadistic.” Picture, if you will, the plight of a child staring at those horizontal hieroglyphics we call musical notation, desperately trying to translate them into vertical finger movements on the keyboard. It’s like asking someone to read a novel (say, as mentioned, Tanauan Komander Caucasus) while standing on their head—technically possible, but guaranteed to induce both dizziness and despair.

The real kicker? Hiner argues that the human brain, that impatient little miracle-worker, demands immediate answers to its persistent cognitive question: “Am I doing this right, or am I about to embarrass myself?” When traditional teaching methods respond with abstract theory and endless rote repetition, it’s no wonder students develop what Hiner dramatically terms a “disconnected musical soul”—a condition that sounds like it should be treatable with herbal tea and a good therapist.

The irony isn't lost on us that Chalamet's alma mater, the prestigious LaGuardia High School, likely subjected him to this very traditional model of musical education. Meaning that when he learned piano mainly for his role as Elio Perlman in Call Me By Your Name, he was probably wrestling with the same frustrating translation process that Hiner rails against.

According to her theory, this means Chalamet might never achieve true “music literacy” — not just in the sense of hitting the right notes, but in the deeper, more profound ability to perceive a symphony’s narrative structure as effortlessly as one absorbs the plot of a paperback novel.

Hiner’s solution to this centuries-old problem is nothing short of a pedagogical time machine. She’s essentially conducting an 11th-century restoration project, dusting off the innovations of Guido d’Arezzo—a medieval monk who, in a stroke of genius, created a system based on the beautifully binary distinction between notes on lines versus notes in spaces.

Hiner takes this ancient insight and gives it a modern makeover, color-coding the Grand Staff like a kindergartener’s dream: brown for the bass clef lines, green for the treble clef lines. This isn’t just decorative—it’s cognitive judo, allowing the brain to bypass the tedious “naming” phase of music and leap straight into the “doing” phase.

To Hiner, the Grand Staff isn’t just a collection of symbols; it’s an entire ecosystem. Notes and keys don’t just coexist — they’re entangled in a relationship more interdependent than a rom-com couple. The connection between them isn’t some abstract concept to be laboriously memorized; it’s right there in the physicality of lines and spaces, more obvious and intuitive than forcing students to associate arbitrary letter names with keys.

What if Hiner had packed up her life in Soviet Ukraine and immigrated to America before 1975. And suppose that by 1982, Soft Mozart had taken root in preschools across the nation, creating generations of toddlers who could identify a fugue before they could pronounce McDonald's?

6 years later, we might have been spared the earth-shaking cultural phenomenon that was L'Trimm's Miami bass masterpiece "Cars That Go Boom." Those poor, misguided souls who spent their paychecks on subwoofers capable of rattling fillings loose might instead had trained as early music scholars or - gasp - professional countertenors.

What a tragic loss for parking lot bass battles — but what a win for civilizational refinement and noise pollution mitigation!

Judge Paul Sacco's legendary music immersion program in Fort Lupton, CO — where noise ordinance offenders were subjected to endless loops of The Platters' "Only You" and Minnie Ripperton's "Loving You" — might never have been necessary back in 1998. The streets would have been silent but for the gentle strains of Antonio Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus, RV 608, drifting from rolled-down windows.

No need for judicial musical waterboarding when the populace voluntarily attends the Denver Early Music Festival.

This hypothetical scenario exposes our cultural schizophrenia about sound. When musical literacy atrophies, what remains is either tribal marking or pure annoyance. The boom car enthusiast isn't just sharing music — he's staking territorial claims through sonic deforestation.

Judge Sacco's genius was fighting fire with fire, or rather, fighting noise with greater psychological torment. It's the musical equivalent of feeding a picky eater nothing but plain oatmeal until they beg for broccoli. Hiner — bless her pitch-perfect heart — approaches music as cognitive calisthenics, treating the brain like a muscle that must flex through scales and arpeggios.

Meanwhile, over at Geneva Academy (and the Delta Youth Chorale as well as the annual Jubilate Deo Summer Music Camp), Richey is framing music education as affection-shaping soulcraft. His notion of "training our musical loves" sounds suspiciously like emotional indoctrination — but frankly, if the choice is between Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten!, BWV 172, and "Baby Shark," I'll take the indoctrination.

Richey's interview with Monroe Symphony Orchestra's John Mason Hodges drops this theological mic: classical music isn't just pleasing patterns — it's God's math made audible. When Chalamet dismisses it (including opera and ballet suites) as irrelevant, he's not being edgy; he's admitting he never learned to read the divine Rosetta Stone of quarter notes.

Let's talk about Richey's culinary metaphor, because nothing says "high culture" like comparing Bach to a well-made bistec Tagalog, if the main steaks were filets mignons and the mga sibuyas Tagalog were caramelized and braised in imported fine red wine. His warning about "musical junk food" explains why parents develop nervous tics upon hearing the opening bars of "Baby Beluga."

Dr. Jeff Lee's 2023 case study of the mom who yeeted a Raffi CD mid-road trip from Seattle to Winthrop after looping that said song by her toddler's demand isn't just humorous — it's Darwinian adaptation. The human brain recoils from endless repetitions of aquatic mammal songs like a body rejecting a poorly matched organ.

Victoria Greenan, of the Magical Music Method, lamented, "Many children today can instantly recognize celebrities, brand logos, or influencers, but cannon name a single composer, a famous painter, or a constellation in the sky." Simply put, many a youth back in 1988 could instantly recognize Lady Tigra or Bunny D but neither recognized George Friedric Handel nor Nicola Francesco Haym if they'd bitten him on, as Experience Unlimited posited, "’Da Butt."

In her worldview, beauty persists like cosmic background radiation — present even when no one's tuning in. Greenan's defiance against the "14 cents in viewership" mentality is the artistic equivalent of maintaining Latin: impractical, glorious, and quietly revolutionary. The throughline here is rebellion against what Dr. Lee calls the "childhood industrial complex" — that machinery pumping out sanitized, algorithm-approved "content" masquerading as culture.

Richey's vision of hymn-singing students isn't about creating choirbots; it's about restoring what Hiner calls the "doer" mentality. Because when music becomes purely consumptive—when we stop singing and only listen, stop playing and only watch—we become passive recipients of someone else's emotional agenda.

If you’ve stumbled upon this little post thinking it’s some thinly veiled takedown of Chalamet’s filmography or a manifesto against the entire pop-industrial complex, lemme cook.

Chalamet’s now-infamous quip about opera and ballet being relics for the museum crowd? That’s not just a hot take — it’s the molten core of what CS Lewis dubbed "chronological snobbery," a term so deliciously academic it makes you want to dust off your elbow patches.

The gist? Assuming anything older than your social media feed is irrelevant simply because it predates wireless earbuds. It’s the cultural equivalent of throwing out your nanay's heirloom china because it clashes with your IKEA flatware. 

Richey advises parents: "If your family playlists seem dry, decide that you’re going to water them with richer, deeper music." Translation: Your Spotify algorithm is a dystopian wasteland, and you’re the one holding the watering can.

Richey’s prescription? Think of it as musical crop rotation. For every three servings of Billie Eilish, toss in countertenor Alexander Chance's rendition of "Jesus ist ein guter Hirt" from Bach's Ich bin ein guter Hirt, BWV 85. Let Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga share airtime with the ilk of Susan Gritton, Deborah York, Nancy Argenta, Patrizia Kwella, or Dame Emma Kirkby. It’s not about ditching the new — it’s about refusing to let the old gather dust in the attic. 

But here’s where things get spicy. Hiner, meanwhile, drops the mic: "The Grand Staff is not a set of three elements, but rather it is a system that can and should be simultaneously taught as one." In layman’s terms? We’ve been teaching music like it’s a disassembled IKEA shelf — handing kids screws and planks one at a time without showing them the picture on the box.

Hiner’s method? Teach the whole dang language at once. Notes aren’t just dots on a page; they’re sounds, symbols, and rhythms holding hands in a conga line.  Imagine a world where school boards — those notorious penny-pinchers — treated music budgets like Amazon Prime subscriptions instead of dial-up internet by implementing Soft Mozart. Where parents raced to piano recitals with the same fervor as Little League playoffs.

Where "family jam sessions" weren’t a euphemism for a tito butchering "Even the Nights Are Better" on the Magic Sing after three bottles of Red Horse. (Look, I love me some Air Supply, but I would belt their ballads out while sober, maraming salamat.)

Soft Mozart, had it debuted in the neon glory of 1982 instead of the Y2K panic, might’ve rewritten Chalamet’s music literacy destiny. Picture it: tiny Timothée, age six, decoding Mozart sonatas between viewings of The NeverEnding Story.

Fast forward to the 98th Academy Awards. Chalamet’s acceptance speech would’ve been peppered with references to Rudolf Nureyev or high school concert bands crediting Richard Wagner for their existence through Lucien Cailliet's masterful transcription of the chorus that is sung as Elsa processes to the cathedral in the opera Lohengrin.

Or that he could’ve said that the same high school concert bands had credited Bach for inspiring audiences via Robert Leist and Richard Franko Goldman's arrangement of the second movement of Fantasia in G Major, BWV 572 – while he would’ve received his Oscars he could've won in the first place.

Alas, we live in the timeline where music programs are the first being chopped down in the budgetary jungle. But here’s the twist: the tools exist. The desert can be irrigated. (Salamat po, Ginong Lewis.)

"Exposure to the arts is not the same as true music literacy," Hiner concluded, as a response to a comment I made on a post in the Soft Mozart Facebook group, "One may grow up around performances, institutions, and artistic prestige, and still never be taught how music actually works as a language."

This is exactly why real musical education matters so much. Music literacy should not belong only to a narrow circle. It should be accessible to the wider public, so that people can not only admire music from afar, but truly read it, understand it, and make it part of their lives. The question is whether we’ll keep eating sonic "baby food" or ACTUALLY cook up the musical equivalent of bistec.

Or rather, seeing the Grand Staff as ANYTHING but an integrated system.

[tfblovesmusic]

Timothée Chalamet and Music Miseducation, Part 1

Timothée Chalamet dropped a truth bomb during a town hall with Matthew McConaughey back in late February 2026. He casually declared, "I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it’s like ‘hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore.”

Meant as commentary on cinema’s struggle for relevance, it instead ignited a firestorm — proving, ironically, that some people do care about those art forms that have been performed for centuries.

But let's dive deeper into the educational backgrounds of people who - like him - ACTUALLY DON'T.

With the help of music educator Jarrod Richey.

Jarrod Richey — along with a battalion of other music educators in classical Christian charter schools across the USA — operates under the radical notion that education isn’t just about stuffing facts into brains like Thanksgiving turkeys. It’s about formation, molding young minds like warm Play-Doh into something resembling musical humanity.

Now, while some educators are gleefully diving into the neon-lit trenches of pop, hip-hop, rap, and EDM — as well as those AI-generated trap remixes of the digital age — this isn’t some sad consolation prize for those who missed their big break at the Grammys.

This is the contemporary cinematic arts of sound, where short, musical equivalents of the "loud and proud" cultural titans like Barbie and Oppenheimer reign supreme, and where Chalamet’s crusade against bloated "act ones" finds its musical parallel.

But Richey? Oh, he’s over here playing 4D chess, whispering to Christian music educators via The Classical Music Thistle, "The Christian educator who wants to live big must die to self and take up a cross."

Because why follow the crowd when you can lead a hymn sing-along - or rather, teach the choral parts of a masterwork via the Kodaly Method (most effective when used alongside Soft Mozart) in a quiet rebellion of your own making?

Richey's vision of music literacy isn't just about deciphering those little black dots on a page. His definition ambitiously stretches to include the "formation" of students into fully-fledged "musical beings." Richey makes the case that music education should aim for nothing less than "cheerful music literacy for all God’s people."

And this, my friends, is where poor Chalamet stumbles into the conversation, guffawing on CNN about opera being a "dying art." The tragedy here isn’t so much the supposed death of opera, but rather the fact that he — and, let’s be fair, most of us — are tragically under-formed musical beings.

Blame the school boards and administrations who, in their infinite wisdom, had decided that school budgets were best spent on… well, not arts and music.

"We’ve lost sight of the big picture and how music is actually central to the flourishing of man as he seeks to be whole," Richey lamented, "Additionally, many of our schools are blind to the galvanizing effects that music making can have on our culture and growth of the school as a whole.

And even before our children could spell "metronome," their tiny eardrums had been being assaulted (lovingly, of course) by the autotuned warblings of pop stars, the bass-heavy thumps of hip-hop, and whatever unholy fusion of the two is currently trending on TikTok.

Richey once posited that most people are simply too content wallowing in the shallow end of the musical gene pool. Why strain your ears with the soaring crescendos of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida when you can bop along to lyrics about breakups, sparkly dresses, and the existential dread of being 22? (Looking at you, Messr. Swift.)

The masses, bless their rhythmically challenged hearts, have traded the intricate harmonies of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni for the primal satisfaction of a "drop." And let’s be honest, nothing gets the dopamine flowing like a bassline that sounds like it’s being played by a robot with a grudge.

The modern music star isn’t built on vocal acrobatics or compositional genius. Their empire is erected on relatability.

Did your boyfriend ghost you? There’s a song for that. Did you finally embrace your villain era? There’s an anthem for that. Are you questioning your place in the universe while simultaneously craving a blended coffee drink? Believe it or not, there’s a Spotify playlist for that. Emotional expression trumps technical excellence every time, because let’s face it: nuance is exhausting.

And thus, the "liturgy" of contemporary culture has become a never-ending loop of instant gratification. The slow, deliberate beauty of Jean-Baptiste Lully's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme? Too much commitment. The moral weight of a Francesco Cavalli's Giasone? Too heavy.

Give the people beats, give them drama, give them lyrics that rhyme "Karma" with "drama" (again, Messr. Swift, I see you), and watch as the beauty in slow art forms dissolve faster than a sugar cube in espresso.

C.S. Lewis nailed it in The Abolition of Man: “We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

And oh, how easily pleased we are!

Why subject yourself to the grandeur of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen when you can mainline the adrenaline rush of the soundtrack from Marty Supreme? Why ponder the existential depths of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes galantes when you can lose yourself in the cinematic chaos of Barbenheimer?

Chalamet, for all his brooding charm, is no exception. He’d rather make those mud pies in his glittering slum in Hollywood — where every plot skips Act I like it’s an unpaid bill and where storytelling is measured in decibels — than take that metaphorical holiday by the azure seas of high art.

But can you blame him? The sea is vast, it’s deep, and frankly, it requires swimming lessons. Meanwhile, mud pies are fun, messy, and—most importantly—immediately satisfying.

And Richey is neither wrong NOR alone.

Enter Veronica Greenan — harpist and the mad genius behind Magical Music Method — who, like some kind of musical anthropologist, has traced society's indifference toward opera back to the same roots of the opera (and classical music) indifference that Chalamet pointed out on CNN (and Richey lamented).

Greenan’s theory? Modern culture has been "slowly duped into thinking that popularity and wealth equals relevance and worth," a belief so pervasive it might as well be sold in vending machines next to the Diet Coke. It starts young, she argues, during the "critical window" for aural development — that magical time when children’s brains are sponges, eagerly soaking up whatever nonsense we throw at them.

Instead of filling that window with the rich, complex harmonies of Mozart or the soaring arias of Giacomo Puccini, we’ve crammed it full of the "liturgy" of brand logos, influencers hawking detox tea, and celebrity gossip so vapid it could float away on a light breeze. The result? What Greenan dramatically calls "neural neglect" — basically, brains so understimulated they might as well be binge-watching paint dry.

But here’s where Greenan parts ways with Chalamet’s defeatist logic — the idea that if "no one cares," the art form is effectively dead. Oh, please. That’s like saying a diamond loses its value because a toddler would rather play with a plastic spoon.

Greenan’s method boldly asserts that beauty "does not lose its value because it is overlooked," a statement so profound it deserves to be engraved on a plaque and hung in every middle school music room next to the dented xylophone.

Opera, ballet, jazz — these art forms, "will always be relevant… Even if not one person sits in the audience," because their worth is intrinsic, untouchable, and impervious to the whims of TikTok trends.

And Chalamet? According to Lewis, he is in ways a snob.

A "chronological snob."

In his essay "On Reading Old Books," Lewis delineated what Chalamet's comments revealed in the first place: every age is "specially liable to make certain mistakes," not because we’re dumber than our ancestors (though the existence of TikTok turn challenges might suggest otherwise), but because we’re all marinating in the same cultural Kool-Aid.

Call it the "contemporary diet" of ideas — a buffet where everyone’s reaching for the same intellectual (and musical) junk food, utterly convinced it’s haute cuisine.

The cure? A literary detox. Lewis prescribes "old books" like some kind of literary physician, arguing they’re the antidote to our era’s myopia. Why? Because the past’s mistakes are blessedly obvious to us now — like powdered wigs or the belief that leeches cured depression — while our own blunders remain invisible, hidden under the veneer of "progress."

The beauty of old art is that it doesn’t just whisper, "You might be wrong;" it affirms, "Let's see how we can make the present RIGHT." Which brings us to Chalamet’s unfortunate "12-second spot" comment — a confession that he, too, has chugged the zeitgeist’s energy drink.

Imagine, for a moment, a world where he’d traded his date at the movies for, say, a performance of George Frideric Handel's Rodelinda. With period instruments. With countertenors playing the roles of Bertarido and Unolfo. (Seriously, Michael Chance CBE did a MEAN ROFL in the Bavarian State Opera 2003 production!)

Not only would he have discovered that it lasts longer than some relationships, but he might’ve inhaled that "clean sea breeze" Lewis promises — the one that blows away careerist panic and replaces it with the humbling realization that art isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon run by snails with impeccable taste.

Lewis wasn't wrong when he wrote: "It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones."

This principle isn’t just bibliophilic gospel — it’s, for instance, practically encoded in the DNA of every decent wind ensemble conductor worth their salt.

Picture it: a sweaty high school auditorium, trumpet players fidgeting, the percussionist accidentally dropping a mallet mid-rehearsal… and yet, the programming philosophy remains steadfast. Three flashy new works balanced by one old warhorse like Alfred Reed’s Bach transcriptions.

Or Lucien Cailliet’s arrangement of Wagner’s chorus being sung as Elsa processes to the cathedral in Act II of Lohengrin into something a slightly inebriated euphonium section can manage after three energy drinks.

The ratio is sacred: three parts "look what we can do" to one part "remember where we came from." It’s the musical equivalent of eating kare-kare after mainlining Lucky Me! instant pancit.

Now, before my fellow Disney adults start lighting torches and storming my metaphorical castle, let me as an emeritus Walt Disney World Annual Passholder clarify: nobody’s suggesting they torch their MagicBands.

But imagine, if you will, a life where "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" isn’t the only sacred music you hear annually. Central Florida boasts wonders beyond animatronic presidents — like the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe, where its 2019 Schoenstein pipe organ (4 manuals of pure bliss) turns every Sunday Mass into a legit E-Ticket experience.

Richey posits that classical Christian charter schools cultivate students who don’t just recognize virtue when they see it, but actively crave it like a Bach cantata addict chasing their next fix. In an era where school boards slash arts budgets with the reckless abandon of a tone-deaf lumberjack attacking a Stradivarius, Richey’s educators toil away like tireless gardeners, irrigating the cultural deserts of young minds.

To borrow Lewis’s delightfully botanical metaphor, these teachers aren’t just sprinkling — they’re flooding the Sahara (and building stormwater permaculture catchments to capture said water "irrigating their students' deserts") with the musical equivalent of an Alpine spring.

Richey himself puts it rather elegantly: "If your family playlists seem dry, decide that you’re going to water them with richer, deeper music."

Dr. Jeff Lee similarly wrote on Seattle's Child, "I don’t think you need to fling all your Raffi CDs out the car window. I just think we should introduce our kids, right from the beginning, to music we really love. And that same principle applies to more than music. Just because they like McDonald’s, can’t they develop a taste for great gumbo, too?"

"Even though they love video games, does that mean they won’t love kick-the-can?  Our job is to do more than give them the stuff that the childhood industrial complex is marketing to their demographic. Our job is to introduce them to the wonderful things in the world."

Now, before anyone assumes I’m advocating for some kind of musical Jacobinism — where we storm the Spotify accounts of innocent parents and purge all traces of Pinkfong's "Baby Shark" like revolutionary censors — let me clarify: this isn’t about prohibition. No one’s suggesting you hit "delete" on "Opalite" from a playlist of a devoted Swiftie or force-feed a toddler Wagner's "Parsifal" before naptime.

This is about balance. A harmony, if you will.

Consider Lewis’s "old books" principle but applied to music. My modest proposal? For every three children's music tracks (or g-rated pop tunes if children are old enough), why not treat your children's and your eardrums to something from the classical repertoire?

After enduring "Baby Shark’s" relentless "doo-doo-doo-doo," wouldn’t "Aquarium from Camille Saint-Saëns's Le Carnaval des animaux — with its shimmering, otherworldly arpeggios — feel like plunging into a cool, celestial lagoon? Or follow up 3 tracks of Hap Palmer’s bouncy didacticism for the sweeping drama of Bizet’s L'Arlésienne Suite No. 2, and suddenly, snack time feels like a scene from a French period film.

And let’s not overlook the unspoken influence of classical music in the unlikeliest of places — video games. Would Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games carry the same grandeur without Princess Rosalina doing a perfect ring pivot with a hoop in her hands to "Farandole?" Unlikely. That piece turns rhythmic gymnastics into high art, proving that even Ninty's CGI athletes deserve a soundtrack worthy of the Vienna Philharmonic.

Speaking of unexpected venues, who could forget Konami’s slot machines? The moment you hit a mega win on Lotus Land, what greets you? Not some tinny electronic fanfare, but the fiery, triumphant overture from Carmen.

It’s as if Bizet himself is cheering you on from beyond the grave, shouting "Viva les richesses!" (Or at least, "Viva les quarters!") Ask any casino regular with a fondness for nickel slots — they’ll confirm that a payout feels infinitely more glamorous when underscored by operatic brass.

Richey makes an observation so profound it could shake the foundations of the Thomaskirche itself: Bach wasn’t composing for casual elevator music enthusiasts who just want something pleasant to drown out the sound of their existential dread.

No, dear reader, Bach was engaged in something far more subversive — crafting divine puzzles in D minor, hiding theological Easter eggs in fugal structures so dense they make Riemann’s head spin. This man didn’t just write music; he encoded the mysteries of the universe into partitas, like some baroque Dan Brown but with infinitely better wigs and zero questionable Latin.

Take St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, where Christ’s agony unfolds in a chromatic descent so wrenching it makes Wagner sound like Raffi.

Bach’s genius lies in his refusal to spoon-feed meaning. Like Jesus dropping parables that left even the disciples scratching their heads, Bach composes multilayered labyrinths where the more you listen, the more you’re haunted by the sneaking suspicion that there’s still another hidden canon in the bass line you missed.

It’s the musical equivalent of that moment in Inception when you realize the top was never the real totem — except Bach’s totem is a chorale tune buried under twelve invertible counterpoints, and Hans Zimmer wishes he could soundtrack half as intelligently.

Bach didn’t just read the Bible; he marinated in it like a theological sous-vide, extracting flavors of Lutheran doctrine so rich they’d make Calvin blush. His Clavier-Übung III isn’t just a collection of organ pieces — it’s a liturgical year in miniature, with fugues that unpack the Trinity more eloquently than any seminary textbook (and with better cadences).

This is why Richey’s students at Geneva Academy in Monroe, LA, don’t merely admire Bach because he wrote “SDG” ("Soli Deo gloria," because almost all his works signed with those initials were dedicated to God and nobody else).

No, they revere him as the ultimate overachiever: a man who could simultaneously write a six-part ricercar and raise twenty children without losing his peruke. As the Good Book posits: "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to fathom a matter." (Proverbs 25:2, NABRE.)

Similar things ring true for other classical music, opera included. Greenan chimes in: "If you teach your children about (classical music), expose them to the music, sing along, show them art, and read books, get excited about it, an make memories, then you are setting the stage."

"And one day when you can finally bring them to see The Magic Flute, it will be the most magical night of their life because they will know it, understand it, and love it already. And every child deserves to know great art and have the chance to be shaped by it, inspired by it, moved by it, and strengthened by it."

And she’s right. As Cherubino Ferrari gushed after seeing the premiere of Claudio Monteverdi's L’Orfeo in 1607, "Both poet and musician have depicted the inclinations of the heart so skillfully that it could not have been done better… The music, observing due propriety, serves the poetry so well that nothing more beautiful is to be heard anywhere."

So here’s the takeaway, served allegro con brio: classical music - opera included - isn’t a relic. It’s the secret sauce — the umami of sound. And if Richey’s vision holds, maybe, just maybe, the next generation won’t need a YouTuber to explain why "Forêts paisibles" from Rameau's Les Indes galantes slaps even 50 years later.

They’ll already know.

[tfblovesmusic]

In honor of Messr. Chalamet leaving the Oscars ceremony empty-handed last weekend, I gotta watch this gem of a docu!

[aro-narcissus]

Starting a collection

[charlesoberonn]

♫ It's fun to stay at the ♫

[vera-dauriac]

[tfblovesmusic]

Oooohhhhhh... I want the ghosts of Jacopo Peri and Claudio Monteverdi in it!

[tfblovesmusic]

How Timothee Chalamet Echoed Many Filipino Elders Regarding Dance and Music Careers

In early 2026, Timothee Chalamet - who starred in films like Wonka and Marty Supreme - dropped a bombshell in his Variety/CNN interview regarding music and dance:

I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it’s like ‘hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore — all respect to the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership.

As much as it enraged most creative team members, classical vocalists, ballet dancers, and even a French HIP ensemble, I as an arts lover in the Philippines see a few valid points here made.

And let me tell you - they are ugly.

Very ugly.

You see, Chalamet's remarks hearkened - whether he knows it or not - back to the Spanish colonial era in the Philippines. At the time, education had marked emphases on religious and vocational career paths.

The American colonial era further justified those emphases, which had been since conditioning many people that prestigious, financially secure careers had been ideal life paths.

Then along came Marcos Sr's lame duck dictatorship. His regime emphasized industries that provided economic stability and prosperity, of which the arts weren't one of them.

In the last 6 years of it, in the 1980s, the dire economic situation in the Philippines caused many of its people to emigrate to other countries, working as OFWs. And guess which career field most of them worked in?

That's right - medical.

Historical context aside, it wasn't any wonder Chalamet's comments gave power to what I affectionately call the "walang pera diyan rune cards."

And there are many reasons elders would often draw them whenever their children express interest in becoming the next Katherine Barkman or Kyle Tingzon. Psychologist Dr. Marinette Asuncion-Uy wrote, "Utang na loob reflects relational solidarity, not obligation or repayment. It’s about enduring bonds that connect us across time and generations."

However, colonialism contorted utang na loob, twisting it into obligatory transactional gratitude towards familial authority. It means - all too often - that children must pursue careers that provide financially for them, whichever the economic circumstances. And because most of those elders lack clear retirement plans or funds for them, most of those grown-up kids often allocate large amounts of their budgets to provide for them.

Nursing often is the career that fits such a category.

Which brings me to the "arts = sayang" dichotomy. Many elders see arts careers as signifiers of their children's wasted potential, with some of them regaling them with horror stories of relatives who became impoverished pursuing degrees in music and dance.

It isn't any wonder many Filipino youths wanting to land roles in Coppelia or Orfeo Ed Euridice live the scene from the 1992 movie Sister Act in real life.

Which brings us to another valid yet disturbing point Chalamet made: a 2022 study showed that between 7 to 8 of 10 Filipino youths lacked dreams.

Alex Alvarez of 8List PH wrote, "Young Filipinos often hear, “Mag-aral ka nang mabuti, para makahanap ka ng magandang trabaho at maging masarap ang buhay." (Robert Kiyosaki roughly translates it in English as: "Get good grades, get a safe job, and you'll become rich.")

"This mindset of the older generation that a well-paying job would be the key to a good life seems to have prevented many younger Filipinos from looking beyond," Alvarez continued, "Once they get a job, they don’t seem to know what to do next, because this is what they’ve observed and have been told by their elders."

While the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that the creative economy grew to PHP 1.94 trillion in 2024, contributing 7.3% to the Gross Domestic Product, much of it was allocated towards advertising.

That justifies another point Alvarez made: many youths' elders draw the "walang pera diyan rune cards" and redirect their career paths from creative industries to medical and engineering fields.

"'Hobby lang 'yan' or 'Walang pera diyan' could be some of the things you’ve heard as a youth. And repeatedly hearing this would most likely turn you away from pursuing your dream further," he wrote.

And the economic situation in the Philippines (corruption notwithstanding) does little to falsify the above beliefs colonialism has long conditioned in us.

"Most Pinoys are living day to day, paycheck to paycheck. There might not be any room for worrying about school bills or a business budget," Alvarez weote, "Because when daily life forces you to worry more about the food on the table than anything else, having a dream and fulfilling it may not even enter your mind at all."

"Your daily goal and purpose would be to provide for yourself and your family, and that’s a reality most Filipinos face every day." Actually - thanks to colonialism - many elders have indoctrinated youths to heed those sorts of daily goals and purposes.

Alvarez describes the root of dreams defeated: hiya - or rather, the colonialist ideology defining it.

"(Hiya) is about relational awareness," Dr. Asuncion-Uy remarked, "knowing context, attunement, and how we move within community."

On the other hand, colonialism indoctrinated us into thinking it's the root of fear of failure, namely the fear of besmirching karangalan, or familial honor.

"The younger generation is afraid to take chances more often than not. Most Filipinos worry about others’ opinions about them if they fail," Alvarez explained, "This fear hinders them from trying new things and tends to make them forget that beginners often fail before they find success."

Bad news is, Chalamet is partly right, but we - as the general public - can do something to support our classical vocalists; classical orchestra musicians (including HIP ones); opera and ballet companies' creative teams and so on after he said such misinformed comments.

First of all - if St. Augustine said that charity begins at home, support for our working dancers and vocalists starts in the community and schools. Attend an elementary school concert, even if the 5th grade band butchers "Hot Cross Buns" or if a 3rd grader does the choreography to his pop choir's song too well.

Attend a dance recital. Watch a high school show choir competition. Let’s stop pretending ballet is just "people in tights hopping around" and opera is "yodeling in a tux."

"We need to continue to educate non-dance literate audiences about what they are seeing on stage and how they can interpret it through program notes, interactive opportunities, and post-performance discussion," educator Shannon-Dooling Cain wrote,

"We need to continue to bring dance to lay people by offering site-specific concerts in public areas and performing in accessible but less than glamorous venues like community centers, school gyms, and town festivals. We need to share the sublime, understated performances of Margot Fonteyn on social media as much as we share the latest (music video) – and we need to explain to our non-dance friends why the former was so remarkable, 'bad feet' and all."

"We need to bring our friends to Fringe Festival performances and local dance showcases – those inexpensive, small but often artistically rich experiences where the good stuff HAS been happening... Most of all, we need to have more faith in our audiences."

"I truly believe, and have seen, that they are up for the challenge of appreciating artistic dance when presented in thoughtful, considerate ways.

In other words, local art forms - DANCE AND MUSIC - deserve love too. Especially for my kababayans here in the Philippines, it doesn't matter if it’s an elementary school concert where a group of third-graders nailing the national kundiman "Bayan Ko" or a school district streedance comp.

Talk about why art matters—not in a pretentious “hey, keep this thing alive even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore” way, but because it shapes who we are.

Jarrod Richey - music teacher of the classical Christian charter school Geneva Academy in West Monroe, LA - after all wrote, "Music does not have to replace something, and it can glorify most of our subjects. Jingles, chants, and the like are often used in the training of our children."

Share stories of artists who made it despite the odds (here's looking at you, my fave countertenors). Representation inspires—because nothing kills dreams faster than thinking, "People like me don’t do that."

Embrace failure. Like, Alexander Chance started studying more with his more famous tatay in 2020 because he learned from his failures. Support local arts like it’s the latest release at your local Star Cinemas.

Call out nonsense when public figures dunk on the arts. If Chalamet razzed Filipino folk dances and Lindy Hop tomorrow, we’d riot (with videos of us hopping over bamboo poles and doing a series of camel walks and Shorty Georges).

Use art to build empathy. Remember that our national kundiman had been sung many times during the People Power Revolution in 1986. Or that Jakub Józef Orliński made waves during the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremonies. Or that Bey used Tommaso Giordani's "Caro mio ben" as the bridge in her ballad "DAUGHTER."

Or that Angel Corella did a series of batterie with the ABCs as Zoe, Elmo, and Telly watch in awe.

Therefore, it's time to ditch colonial-era snobbery (and burn those fluting "walang pera diyan rune cards") and cheer for all creativity — from ballet to opera, whether Chalamet cares or not. The future’s inclusive, and honestly, way more fun.

[tfblovesmusic]

To Mr. Chalamet, please meet Michael Chance.

His journey began as a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied English before dedicating himself fully to vocal training under Rupert Bruce Lockhart. That early foundation blossomed into a remarkable operatic career, with his debut at the Buxton Festival in Ronald Eyre's production of Cavalli's Giasone marking just the beginning.

From those early performances in Lyon and Cologne to three formative seasons with Kent Opera, Chance's voice carried him to the world's greatest stages. The Sydney Opera House, Teatro Colón, La Scala, Florence - these became familiar territory for a singer whose artistry transcended borders. His portrayal of complex roles - even the Nurse in Alessandro Scarlatti's La Giuditta (IN DRAG!) - demonstrated both vocal mastery and dramatic depth.

Equally at home in concert halls from Carnegie Hall to the Berlin Philharmonie, Chance's recital programs revealed his intellectual curiosity. Spanning Elizabethan lute songs to contemporary commissions, these performances showcased a musician deeply engaged with music across centuries. His collaborations with period ensembles like Fretwork brought historical performance practice to new audiences during tours to Japan and America.

The recording studio captured another dimension of Chance's legacy. That Grammy Award for Handel's Semele in 1994 (evidence that people ACTUALLY DO CARE about opera) stands among numerous critically acclaimed recordings, particularly his Bach interpretations with John Eliot Gardiner. His Art of Counter-tenor album remains a touchstone for the voice type, while his advocacy expanded the repertoire through commissions from composers as diverse as Tan Dun and Elvis Costello.

Television appearances brought his artistry into homes worldwide, from Netherlands Opera's Monteverdi cycle to memorable performances of Messiah. The South Bank Show episode on countertenors in 1999 offered audiences a deeper look at the artist behind the voice. When Queen Elizabeth II appointed him CBE in 2009, it recognized not just a great singer, but a cultural ambassador who elevated his art form.

As Chance prepares to step down as Artistic Director of The Grange Festival, we're reminded that careers like his don't simply happen - they're built through relentless dedication to craft. For those of us fortunate enough to have witnessed his performances, whether live or through recordings, the memories remain vivid. His voice, that extraordinary instrument capable of both power and intimacy, leaves an indelible mark on all who've heard it.

May St. Cecilia pray Mr. Chalamet finds an appropriately grand gesture to honor such a remarkable career this coming summer.

And a PSA for you, Mr. Chalamet. If you're still in SoCal, please consider watching The English Concert's performance of Handel's Hercules this Sunday at UC Berkeley. If you're attending it, for the love of James Bowman's ghost, PLEASE, PLEASE be nice to Michael Chance's son, Alexander Chance! He is one of the emerging countertenors of this decade!

[tfblovesmusic]

Sometimes, revenge is a dish made up of gut strings, a theorbo, and a harpsichord. It's made with playing the bassline of Francesco Durante's Solfège No. 113 in C Minor and having the harpsichordist and theorbist realize the chords around it as a contralto-conductor sings Alessandro Parisotti's words.

May Sts. Cecilia and St. Vitus pray for M. Chalamet.

[tfblovesmusic]

Everybody's saying that 2026 is the new 2016.

How about we go back to 1996?

[tfblovesmusic]

Even as a Catholic, I'm TOTALLY OBSESSED with this choral octavo! I have heard the solo version of it for three consecutive days, and it was love at first listen! Glad to hear the choral version!

[tfblovesmusic]

It's Music In Our Schools Month in the 2025-2026 school year, and TFB is here to assuage music teachers' fears in the next school year!

Why? The students will INCESSANTLY REPEAT:

But never fear - if they'll enroll in private piano or guitar lessons, take AP Music Theory, and/or enroll in a music conservatory, they'll soon realize that "6-7" won't be just a thing youths would utter all day.

Hence this:

This canvas print is perfect for the band room or choir room! Or even a piano studio, enhancing the mood for chord progression lessons! And early music lovers, you'll get a knack out of this, too!

Check out my other swag at TFB LOVES Early Music!

[tfblovesmusic]

Wishing my compatriots down in the cities (municipalities in Metro Manila; nearby Tuguegarao, Cagayan; etc.) a peaceful and safe Trillion Peso March today. Am commemorating it (and the 40th anniversary of the People Power Movement) with Libera's wonderful rendition of the national kundiman.

[tfblovesmusic]

Everyone is posting about 2016. Can we go back to 2002 instead, by Jove? That was when my obsession with John Rutter's setting of "For the Beauty of the Earth" started when I was in 6th grade! First heard it in an in-school talent show, then during a school concert!

[tfblovesmusic]

Hey parents!

It's the final day to hear this song on repeat from your kids!

But I have bad news for music teachers who are resuming classes. They will be saying those two consecutive cardinal numbers ad nauseum for the rest of the semester.

Including Music In Our Schools Month.

Which is why I created new products on Zazzle - and no, you don't need to know about figured bass to understand this! Any teacher - regardless of subject - who has had it up to here with 6-7 will love those products!

Let the cute positive organ, Olivia Organ, reclaim your sanity - head to TFB LOVES Early Music as your anti-6-7 refuge!

[tfblovesmusic]

Thoughts and prayers today for the parents of students of Hillsborough County Schools (which I'm an alumnus myself) and countless others stateside having to endure...

THIS.

[tfblovesmusic]

I'm not crying - YOU'RE CRYING!!!

It's a touching picture of former countertenor Michael Chance training his son Alex - now an emerging countertenor - to sing in the mid-90s! This is fluting HEARTWARMING!