Why classical music gets a bad name

We went to a concert last night with a small singing ensemble and some classical guitarists. We took the kids. The boys fidgeted some, but did really well for the first hour. They even did well for the second hour once we had found the children's activity bulletins for them (the concert was in a church).

I didn't get to stay in the sanctuary for the whole thing due to DD not wanting to fall asleep (I even spent about 1/4 of the time outside so the sound wouldn't carry from the lobby, then DH spent the last 1/4 outside with her so I could listen some more), but I was expecting that.

My biggest problem was that most of the music was slow and calm, not much to get people awake and smiling or laughing. Basically, I was hoping for a grown-up concert that the kids would enjoy some of. They didn't.

Let me backtrack - they sang some Renaissance music, some modern choral works, some madrigals, interspersed with classical guitarist played by himself and later with 2 other guitarists and after that with yet another guitarist as accompaniment to the madrigals. The music was wonderful.

It's just that if you want to bring people in and bring them back, the concert needs to be fun, not soothing for all but maybe 2 pieces. It needs to have more things that are exciting in some way - pathos, excitement, humor, even familiarity (so one acoustic guitar playing some songs from West Side Story was a good touch, but really quiet).

I sound like a plebeian, completely low-class poorly bred heathen and probably juvenile to boot, I know, but there are fun, fast works for small chorus and classical guitar. I love Faure's Pavane, but right after some quiet, calm Debussy and before something else equally tranquil, it just doesn't pop and sizzle and tends to fade into the woodwork. There have to be guitar adaptations of well-known classical pieces that really dance and amuse and get peoples' attention. There are fun, fast, exciting madrigal songs out there. You can even go inauthentic and sing some PDQ Bach madrigals - "My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth" is a classic in its own right. But mix it up a bit. And make the whole thing shorter. More than 2 hours is way long.

Other than our friend's kids (the friends are the director of the chorus and one of the singers), ours were the only kids there. It wasn't a children's concert (which I will strike out on a tangent to say are sometimes condescendingly dumbed down and even eye-rolling in their own right), so I wasn't expecting them to sing pop songs or winnie the pooh or something, but i daresay that the serious music-loving adults in the audience would have liked more wit and sparkle and maybe 1/2 an hour less. We finally left during the next to last song because the boys were starting to lose it - it was 9:30 and they had finished the activity sheets.

My boys have some exposure to classical music. Not as much as I would like, but it's up to me to do something about that. They've listened to the William Tell Overture on YouTube, they've seen the Nutcracker, and sometimes Dh puts on something while he's working in his office. But now they've been to a concert where they didn't really listen and got pretty bored. We shouldn't have stayed the whole time because they weren't really paying attention right from the start, but the madrigals were last on the program and I have a soft spot for madrigals.

Then DD screamed for the first 20 minutes in the car (me gritting my teeth and reaching back to pet her head, the boys with their fingers in their ears looking more and more stressed, Dh claiming it didn't bother him) until I got DH to stop in a parking lot and I soothed her for a bit (though she didn't want to eat, she was just completely worn out and therefore strung out). She then screamed for 5 more minutes and fell asleep. We got home after 10:30 and she proceeded to feed and fuss and fidget until at least 11:30. This morning, she fed at 5 and at 8 and then slept until noon. She's down for another nap and has been down for a couple of hours.