Thirty years ago, President Bill Clinton and his Congressional opponents, Sen. Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, came to an agreement. Congress approved House Joint Resolution 239 and forwarded it to the president, authorizing him to concur.
Clinton agreed and on Aug. 22, 1994, issued Proclamation 6716, designating September as Classical Music Month. No money, you understand, but it’s nice to be reminded that our leaders once formally acknowledged that classical music is worth public notice.
Not that the public really noticed. As one who has long been in thrall to the art form, I used this space to spread the news about it immediately and am at it again. Some news bears repeating.
I am sure that neither Clinton nor Congressional leaders authored the text, but they signed off on the idea that classical music “is a unifying force in our world, bringing people together across vast cultural and geographical divisions,” speaking “both to the mind and to the heart, giving us something to think about as well as to experience.” Not a bad function to serve in these divisive, deeply polarized days. I grew up in a world where classical music was accepted as the standard.
We listened to music of the moment, but the classics were part of the common experience, primarily through piano scores, but also a fixture in radio broadcasting, even in early television. In the 23 years of Ed Sullivan’s pioneer TV variety show, opera stars were featured over 1,000 times. The first .