I s classical music dead? Or is...

I s classical music dead? Or is it merely in a coma? Did 20th-Century serialists, minimalists and 12-toners pull the plug once and for all on its life-support systems? Or can somebody like Christopher Caliendo, 32, a “classical jazz” composer-guitarist who writes music for both “Knot’s Landing” and the Vatican, resurrect it?

To find out, we time-traveled back to the north German states in the early 1700s to interview the father of classical music, Johann Sebastian Bach.

“I the father? What about Scarlatti and Vivaldi and Purcell? What about. . . .”

“But you did have 20 children, Herr Bach, and I guess one thinks of you in terms of fatherhood--especially since many of them grew up to be famous musicians themselves.”

Indeed, as we talked, the great man was surrounded by youngsters who were scribbling notes on discarded pages of his scores and banging, twanging, tootling and thumping on every instrument in sight.

“What’s this, Wilhelm Friedemann? You want to borrow the carriage? Did you finish the oratorio for your school play?”

“Not yet, Dad. But I have a hot date tonight.”

“You know the rule, my boy: Fugues first, fun later. . . . Teen-agers! What was I talking about?”

“The classics. Though to tell you the truth, Herr Bach, the spontaneity, the laid-backness, of this household reminds me more of a rock ‘n’ roll band jamming in somebody’s garage.”

“Rock ‘n’ roll?”

“That’s the music people do listen to in my day. Unfortunately, very few listen to classics written after, say, Mahler or Richard Strauss . . . certainly after Stravinsky and Schoenberg. They’ve just switched off.”

“Perhaps this rock ‘n’ roll has become the classics.”

“I don’t think so, Herr Bach. I don’t hear anything that’s likely to last 250 years, as your music has.”

*

“G ott im Himmel! So long? And the young fellows today say my music already is old-fashioned. But who can tell how posterity will judge us? All we can do is work and enjoy it. Let the classics take care of themselves. I must write a cantata a week to keep Frau Bach and all the little ones in sauerkraut. No time to worry. . . . What? Johann Christian, what have you done here? Hardly even toilet-trained, and such lovely counterpoint already! That’s my boy!”

“Amazing, Herr Bach. But what I really wanted to ask is: Should we attend Mr. Caliendo’s concert with members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., Los Angeles? Hornist Richard Todd, clarinetist Gary Gray, accordionist Frank Marocco and pianist Delores Stevens will perform. Ron Perlman will read poetry; Linda Hamilton will be the host. Tickets: $20 general admission, $15 for senior citizens and students, $30 for orchestra seats. Information: (213) 939-1128.”

“Of course you should. The classics, as I say, are where you find them. . . . Carl Philipp Emanuel! How many times do I have to tell you not to use cat gut for violin strings when it’s still inside the cat? Leave the poor animal alone. . . . Excuse me. I feel another Brandenburg concerto coming on.”