Kate Wagner: “Classical music is cruel not because there are winners and losers, first chairs and second chairs, but because it lies about the fact that these winners and losers are chosen long before the first moment a young child picks up an instrument. … And if you bow out of this gladiatorial arena, where only the affluent and well-connected are armed, like I did, like many of my friends did, you are understood to be a failure who didn’t try hard enough.” – The Baffler