Greg Stepanich

How about Oprah's 'Summer of Debussy'?

"Oprah's Classical Music Club."

It has a nice ring to it. After all, the durable Ms. Winfrey is our only major media apostle of the midcult educational impulse that was embodied by Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s, by the Chatauquans before that, and the lyceum movement in the antebellum years before that.

There's an audience for classical music out there, but it could be much bigger. I've written often that music itself — of every genre — has an appeal that transcends any old marketing techniques, any odd associations and pecuilarities of its creation. Let the music speak for itself, and if it's good enough, it will find the ears it needs.

But to get the music to a place where it can speak for itself, to get it past all that societal noise, requires an interlocutor. Oprah's shown she's unafraid to confront big, demanding works of literature and admit that it's a worthwhile thing to do.

Classical music could use that same kind of approach. I've blatantly stolen this idea from Greg Sandow's blog, but an interesting idea is an interesting idea, and it deserves a little exploration.

This summer, Oprah is discussing Faulkner, including my favorite of that writer's books, Light in August. To this day, I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to say "Keep your muck," like Joe Christmas does, to someone who offers an unattractive treatette ("Care for a celery stick?" "Nah. Keep your muck."), but it's very rude, in and out of context, and you can't count on anyone getting the reference.

Light in August presents all kinds of difficulties, but they're well worth tackling in order to absorb this powerful, multilayered story. (Here's one of several notes-style guides out there on the Web.)

The same basic idea applies to all sorts of musical pieces. Many surface difficulties can be smoothed away by repeated listening and encounters with the music, which at its heart is a liquid sort of communication, one that is able to flow over the walls you encounter in challenging concepts erected by texts. It's harder to ignore music coming at you, but it's easier to shut out, and what needs to be done here is to encourage people to listen more carefully, to listen a different way.

If Oprah or someone like her were so inclined, we could get a whole summer of programs about what makes some of the great music of our common Western heritage so wonderful, so nourishing, so sustaining, so good a companion for a lifelong intellectual journey. And the best thing about so much of this music is that it doesn't even need to do that: Huge swatches of music from the past are so immediately attractive they need not do anything but wet your whistle with an engaging tune.

But in the long run, there's more to it than that, and maybe what's needed to reach people with music they'd love but don't know exists is Oprah's "Summer of Debussy."

Although I'd bet she'd start with Beethoven.