Art & Creativity Quote by Steve Hackett

“Obviously” does a lot of work here: it’s a small word that pretends the argument is settled before anyone’s had a chance to disagree. Hackett’s line sounds like a throwaway clarification, but it quietly exposes how elastic and weird the category of “classical music” really is. We treat it less like a genre than a museum wing, where age functions as a stamp of seriousness. The “at least a hundred years old” benchmark isn’t a musicological rule; it’s a cultural comfort blanket, a way of pretending taste is objective because time has already voted.

The specific intent reads as practical scene-setting: he’s sketching what most audiences mean when they say “classical.” Yet the subtext is that the definition is largely social, not sonic. A century-old piece is presumed vetted, safe from trendiness, buffered by institutions that teach it, fund it, and put it on pedestals. That’s why the word “tends” matters: it admits exceptions while acknowledging the default posture - classical as heritage.

Contextually, Hackett comes from a rock-progressive world that spent decades negotiating with “high culture,” borrowing its grandeur while being denied its legitimacy. So the line also hints at a gatekeeping dynamic: new music has to wait out a long probation before it’s allowed into the canon. Classical isn’t just music; it’s a time-based credentialing system, and Hackett is wryly pointing to the clock.