There has been a lot of classical music activity here in recent months, but we can trace an important springboard moment back to the #ClassicalMusic challenge on TikTok that began in 2021. It was based around TikTok users posting short video clips to “share what #ClassicalMusic means to you” as the genre is “much more than just Bach and Beethoven”.

TikTok created its own classical playlist to run in parallel with the challenge and the videos uploaded with the associated hashtag have been collectively viewed over 1.1bn times to date. The videos themselves cover a bewildering number of bases, such as giving existing pop songs a classical reworking, skits like “what goes through a conductor’s mind” at a performance and explaining why certain chord progressions are exceptional.