ABC Classic 100 charts how film, social media and video games have changed classical music’s audience

Over the last two decades, something has happened to classical music.

It has become deeply popular with a brand new audience.

Classical music — with roots in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a repertoire spanning centuries — never went anywhere, of course. 

But today a younger and wider audience is connecting with classical music through very contemporary means: movies, TV, video games and social media.

That’s brought with it profound implications.

From string quartets being asked to bring a touch of Bridgerton to a wedding ceremony, an orchestra putting on a concert of video game music, Studio Ghibli inspiring a love of composer Joe Hisaishi, or discoveries of Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony via TikTok, new and passionate audiences for classical music have emerged in the most unlikely of places.

A changing audience

Classical music’s modern renaissance shines through the results for the ABC Classic 100, the nation’s annual poll of Australia’s favourite classical music, which kicks off for 2024 this weekend.

Over 23 years, the Classic 100 has slowly but surely captured not just a change in taste and audience, but also the bolt of energy and popularity that the screen has brought to classical music.

While the first generation of Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars and Jaws made powerful use of orchestral music in the 1970s, pieces of music from soundtracks were still completely absent from the Classic 100 for its first ten years of voting.

Going off results of the early Classic 100’s, the ABC Classic audience saw the worlds of the concert hall and the cinema as firmly separate.