Episode 1: Starting Again

(This is the first episode of my second version of this book on the future
of classical music. It's the beginning of the introduction to the book. Like
the older episodes, it's an improvised first draft, and will very likely be
revised, maybe extensively revised. But I trust it's a draft of something
tighter and more focused than the last version -- a draft of a book that
starts by asking (much more directly than the first version ever did)
what's wrong with classical music, and then goes on to say how I think
the problems might be fixed. See the outline at the left for more details.)
This is a book about the future of classical music. It's a necessary book.
Not, maybe, necessary for me to write, though I've made a specialty of
this subject, and find myself getting hired to write, speak, teach, and
advise about it; certainly I've got a lot to get off my chest. But
someone, surely, has to write a book like this. Classical music is in crisis;
nobody knows whether it can survive. And there are burning questions to
be answered. Is the classical music audience getting older? Will it die off,
and not be replaced? Can we find a younger audience? And why, exactly,
should we be having a classical music crisis? Has our culture degenerated?
Is it now too shallow -- too noisy and dumb, too frenetic, too careless -to support cultivated musical art? Or has classical music just fallen behind
the rest of the world, and gotten out of date?
These are big questions, and I can imagine that four kinds of people might
get caught up in them. First, of course, would be people who work in the
classical music business, who have to care, because their careers depend
on it. Though its not just their careers. Anyone who knows them knows
that they love classical music many of them, especially the ones with
high-level jobs in classical music institutions, could make more money
doing something else and if the classical music world really does
collapse, theyll very likely be heartbroken. (The musicians, Id think,
would keep on playing, but not without any chance of ever making a
living.)
And then next on the list come the warm and often gentle people who go
to classical concerts, and of course to the opera. Theyre mostly in their
fifties, sixties, and seventies, and in everybodys worst-case scenario
theyll soon enough vanish, leaving concert halls empty. Many of them, I
suspect, love classical music even more than the professionals do;
certainly their love can be achingly pure. Not all of them see very deeply
into the quality of each performance they hear, and they might not care all
that much what happens behind the scenes; but they do love the music.
Theyre also, at least in my experience, the people in the classical music
world who worry most about the lack of any younger audience, maybe
because theyre the ones who most clearly see, at all the concerts they go

to, that they themselves are getting older, and that younger people just
arent showing up.
And third come people who like classical music well enough they might
listen to it on the radio, and maybe theyll buy classical CDs or downloads
but dont go to classical concerts. (Though they might bring a picnic
basket when the New York Philharmonic plays free concerts in Central
Park.) Theyre one big part of that elusive new and mostly younger
audience that the classical music world is looking for. Theres even a fancy
term for them: Culturally awarenonattenders. But why arent they
attending? If they like classical music, why dont they buy tickets to hear
it live? There are many answers to that (studies have been done), but
whats most stimulating is simply to ask these people why they dont go to
concerts, something thats easy to do because everybody in the classical
music world or certainly everyone 50 and under has friends like this.
Ive talked, just for instance, to one of my downstairs neighbors, an old
friend of my wifes, a woman in her 40s, who loves to listen to classical
music at home. And while her reasons for not going to concerts are
revealing, and even more so her thoughts about what might get her to
attend (concerts should be shorter, start later in the evening, and be more
informal), I was especially struck by how much these questions intrigued
her. She herself thinks that something not quite right is going on, if New
York is full of classical concerts and shes not drawn to any of them.
And so this book would be for her, just as much as for my colleagues in
the classical music business and the good and loyal people in the classical
music audience. Theres also one more constituency Id aim at, and thats
anyone interested in the current state of our culture, meaning especially
(but not at all exclusively) scholars and cultural theorists, along with
civilians who like to read about culture and cultural theory, everyone, in
short, who might care about the long-term meaning of everything Im
talking about. No matter why classical music might be
threatened whether its because culture is rotting away, or because
classical music has stagnated whats going on is an ongoing, largescale, long-term cultural shift.
Part of that shift, of course is the rise of popular culture. There's a lot
written about popular culture, about its meaning, worth, and ascendancy
(including, recently, Stephen Johnson's wry and important
book Everything Bad is Good for You, which insists right in the face of
everything many people in the classical world believe that popular
culture, far from being dumb, is smart, and getting smarter). But there's
much less written about where classical music fits in this ongoing shift,
and too much of what does exist is more or less worthless, because the
writers dont know much about popular culture, assume that its junk, and
then have a laughably easy time proving classical musics crucial cultural
worth by showing that, guess what, classical music isnt junk. (There

have, though, been some terrific critiques of the classical music worlds
exaggerated sense of its own importance, and, most important, its idea
that classical music has timeless value purely on abstract musical terms,
and stands aloof and alone, unaffected by the shifting winds of cultural
change.)
So Im writing this book for all of these people, all the four groups Ive
mentioned, plus anyone else who wants to come along for the ride, even if
they dont know anything about classical music. That, I know, is going to
be a tricky balancing act to address both the concerns of people inside
the classical music world and the curiosity of people outside it, to speak
equally to heartbroken (and sometimes angry) fans and to
skeptical nonattenders, to cultural theorists and to people who
passionately love classical music but might not care about cultural theory.
But I think I can manage that, and, best of all, I think that simply by
trying Ill give the book some extra verve.
I hope, too, that I can establish the value of classical music, in terms that
both insiders and outsiders can accept, and without needing to take down
popular culture in order to do it. To do this, I'll have to talk about the
position of all the traditional high arts in our current culture, another
contentious topic that needs to be better understood. And I'll also have to
talk about music itself, which will be a relief, after all the theoretical talk
about culture, not to mention everything Im going to have to write about
classical musics financial distress. What, in any case, would a book on
music be worth, if it didnt have any music in it? (Maybe I should even
write a piece of music Im a composer, after all and distribute it along
with the book, to demonstrate exactly what I think music should be.) I
trust, by the way, that I can write about classical music non-technically, so
I wont lose uninitiated readers, and maybe in doing this break down the
unfortunate notion that classical music is by nature complex, and cant be
understood without special study. Maybe, by the time the book is done, Ill
have given people who dont know classical music a better idea of what
its about and maybe Ill also give old-line classical music people a
better idea of what pop music is. Even if I just manage those two things,
Ill be happy.

But now, I think, Id better state my own beliefs (which in any case keep
sticking their heads out as this introduction unfolds). Id better give my
own answers to the big questions I posed at the start. So here goes.
Essentially, I think the game is over. The classical music business wont be
able to exist much longer in its present form. That doesnt mean that
classical music will disappear (though some of our classical music
institutions orchestras, opera companies, and the rest, including some
name-brand groups might well collapse). But I think classical music will

have to learn to understand itself in a new way. Itll have to transform

itself both externally, in the way it presents itself to the world, and
internally, in the way that its taught, played, analyzed, and composed.
And you'll just have to come back for the next episode -- due on March 6
-- to see why I think all this.
I promised to make all six episodes of the earlier version of the book
available online. I couldn't get to that until, with this episode, I'd launched
Book 2.0. Now that's done. So I can turn my attention to those six old
episodes, and build them a permanent home. Note added February 28:
This effort is now underway, and you should see the results shortly.
I've also decided to keep these new episodes online longer than the old
ones. In Book 1.0, each episode stayed online for just two weeks. I'm not
yet sure exactly how long I'm going to keep the new ones available, but
at the very least I'll keep two episodes up at a time. That way you'll have
four weeks to read each episode I post, and at all times you'll be able to
read the episode that came before the present one.
If youd like to write a comment, may I ask you to put it at the end of
the current episode, instead of here? More people will see it that way. And
it will contribute to the always lively new discussion that emerges
whenever I post a new episode. If you put your comment here, it will
appear only at the end of this episode, the one youve just been reading.
And that will isolate it from the current conversation. Thanks!
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anyone else who reads them.
Posted by gsandow on February 20, 2006 3:55 AM

COMMENTS
Hi Greg.
Looking forward to reading your ongoing contributions to this perplexing
question. Don't know what you've got in store, but I wonder if, amongst
the many questions to resolve, you've considered what I consider to be a
diminishing ability to listen to acoustic music. I've written a blog-lenght
start on the subject (here - Classical Music Unplugged

), should you feel inclined to delve into this sort of area. {please excuse
the first glib reference to your blog - it was intended to sound provative but not necessarily to provoke you)
Thanks for the comment, and you raise an Interesting point. But then on
the other hand, there's been a great upsurge of acoustic music in pop
during the past couple of decades, marked most notably by the popularity
of "MTV Unplugged" in the '90s. I remember Mariah Carey doing that
show in the early '90s, with really complex acoustic arrangements of
some of her songs, involving more than 20 instruments, if I remember
correctly, including a harmonium. (I know I'm remembering that one
right.)
Though of course the ultimate pop acoustic sound is just one singer, with
an acoustic guitar. We could get into complicated discussions of live vs.
amplified live vs. recorded sound, but the current pop audience, or large
niches within it, are completely comfortable with this version of an
acoustic aesthetic.
Posted by: guthrytrojan at February 20, 2006 12:44 PM

Mmm. I realise that acoustic instruments haven't disappeared entirely that's partly why I chose the title I did for my blog article. But my point is
that people only hear these so called, 'acoustic concerts' via an
amplification system - so they are not hearing acoustic sound, but
amplified acoustic sound, which as I explained is idealised and stylised
and quite another thing from the actual acoustic experience. To the many
people these days,[unamplified] acoustic music is alien, demanding and
unappealing.
Well, maybe. But it's worth asking whether what you say is really true. Is
it based on real experience with the people we're talking about, or is it a
hypothesis? A reasonable one, I'd add, but still a hypothesis. I think a lot
of people play the guitar at home, for instance, or have friends who do, or
play the piano, or hear marching bands. And I'm not sure that for me, at
least, the experience of hearing (lightly) amplified acoustic music in a club
has quite the effect you describe. I haven't noticed that it seems amplified
or stylized, any more than classical music does on a good recording. If the
miking is done well, you just get a more audible version of the original
acoustic sound, complete, very likely, with the sound of fingers moving on
the nylon strings of a guitar. An example from a record might be "You Had
Time," an Ani DiFranco song, which starts with a lot of apparently
improvised solo acoustic piano. I don't know what the difference would be
between hearing this on a record and hearing a Beethoven piano piece.
And if she plays this part when she does the song live, I'd think it would
be even less idealized, because you'd see her playing it.
Posted by: guthrytrojan at February 22, 2006 3:47 PM

Greg,
I have a different starting point. Classical music is not in crisis. Its
actually thriving and ubiquitous. It is everywhere, including telephone hold
lines, childrens cartoons, movies, subway musicians. Classical CD sales
are holding their own and internet downloads of classical music are
booming.
Look more deeply and the signs are even more positive. When was the
contemporary music scene more vibrant and exciting than right now?
When was the last time a young composer (Osvaldo Golijov) was given a
festival at Lincoln Center to which tickets were practically unattainable?
When was more new music performed at Carnegie Hall than in the past
two years - and to good audiences? What was comparable in some
imagined Good Old Days to not one but two Ligeti festivals this season at
major venues?
Orpheus and St. Lukes are both orchestras which grew up and flowered in
the past twenty-five years. Did they replace some larger number of similar
orchestras that died out? I know, this is New York. But there are
numerous chamber music series around the country that have similarly
grown up and flowered in the same time frame in San Francisco, Chicago,
Harrisburg, La Jolla and elsewhere.
And conservatories! Have they waned in recent decades? No, there are
more first-class conservatories now than when you and I were students.
So I dont think classical music is in crisis. The way classical music is
presented may be in crisis, and I agree with you that many of our major
classical music institutions are under major strain. Whether they
collapse or not remains to be seen, and I think will depend on how well
they adapt.
But this is not unique to classical music. There has been a
technological/informational revolution in the past decade that has posed
challenges to traditional ways of doing things in every field you can
imagine. So I think you have to see the challenge to classical music
presentation as part of this larger context.
This doesnt make the challenges less daunting, but it places them in
perspective. It also leads me to a more optimistic and less cataclysmic
frame of mind than in your new introduction. But I wait eagerly for later
chapters.
Thanks for all of this, Richard, and for your optimism! I should add that
Richard Weinert, who sent this comment, runs the Concert Artists Guild,
and has done a lot to move that organization into classical music's future,
by helping the organization to choose very youth-friendly winners in its

annual competition, and then presenting them in performances at clubs.

Richard is definitely part of the solution to classical music's problems.
But I'll stick to my guns. My bratty answer to Richard might be, yeah,
sure, we've all gone to classical concerts that seemed to be thriving. And
probably the Tsar in Russia gave fabulous parties in 1916. Nobody could
tell that the revolution was coming just a year later.
But a more serious answer might go like this. Yes, conservatories are
thriving, and so are youth orchestras, for that matter. Orchestras are now
younger than their audience. There's no shortage of young classical
musicians, in other words, and that's a source both of hope and wonder in
our present situation. Still, I teach at Juilliard (and at Eastman, too, this
spring), and for years I've noticed that these young musicians worry
about whether there will be jobs for them (a different thing, please note,
from the traditional worry about whether they'll beat the competition to
get the available jobs). They also tend to say that none of their friends
like classical music, and often they feel isolated.
As for Golijov, and other exciting events, these might be easier to find in
New York than elsewhere. And even here, we're having problems. Golijov
is sold out? At the Met, there were acres of empty seats, I'm told, for
Falstaff and Romeo et Juiliette. The Romeo opening was barely more than
60% sold, I hear. And it was a new production!
What happens to classical music if the major institutions fall apart? I'm
not so hopeful. Of course there will be musicians and smaller institutions
who'll keep on going, but it'll be much harder for the musicians to make a
living. Which then might finally put a dent in conservatory attendance. If
there's no way you can support yourself once you get out.....I think a lot
of classical music employment depends not just on mainstream
institutions, but on the presence of mainstream classical music in all its
forms. Those Golijov events -- I bet that most of the classical musicians
involved in those make most of their living playing standard rep. If the
institutions that do things the old way disappear, I don't know that there's
anything around -- anything with money, anyway -- that can pick up the
slack.
Posted by: Richard Weinert at February 23, 2006 1:04 PM

Hi Greg.
Obviously my views must necessarily be an hypothesis to some extent,
but it's one which I've gleaned from direct experience of working with
others. For example, at the moment I'm engineering a classical music solo
piano recording. At the start of the sessions, the producer {who one might
expect to know better] asked if I could make the sound 'a bit more stereo'

- by which he meant that he wanted to hear the high notes on the left and
the low notes on the right. Anyone whose ever listened to a real piano in a
real acoustic - without having their head glued to the sound board - will
know that such expectations in no way reflect a real acoustic experience.
To your second point {"I'm not sure that for me, at least, the experience
of hearing (lightly) amplified acoustic music in a club has quite the effect
you describe"} - I would say that the fact that you've not noticed any
change in sound indicates that the engineer has done a good job rather
than that the sound is not idealised. 'The Sound' is always idealised to the
extent that it represents one single perspective from among an infinite
variety of different perspectives. The sound of any acoustic instrument
changes as one moves around it in the same way as something looks
slightly different depending on the angle and the light in which it is
viewed. The differences are subtle, but they are nevertheless different.
Once it's amplified - even a little bit - the sound is immutable. And yes, I
agree, it is so on recordings too. That's the craft of audio engineering and
that's just the point!
best
GT
Posted by: guthrytrojan at February 23, 2006 2:56 PM

I think a good place to start looking for positive changes is with Rob
Kalikow and his "What Makes It Great" series. He offers serious musical
learning in a way that welcomes and informs both experienced and novice
listeners and is -- wonder of wonders -- fun to hear. His sessions are
informal, interactive and instructive. After he talked about Bartok, I found
myself listening to other 20th century music and enjoying it more. He
makes me feel a little more hopeful about building -- or keeping -audiences for music.
Isobel, I agree that we need to talk about classical music more effectively.
It's something I've addressed a lot in my blog. To see what I've said, go
to the link to my blog above and on the right, and search for entries using
the keyword "press release." I've found Rob Kapilow to be very effective,
but I worry some that he addresses largely the structure of classical
music. I suspect that he's most effective for an audience that already
knows the music, and that a new audience might require a different
approach. I could easiliy be wrong, though!
Posted by: Isobel Osius at February 23, 2006 5:06 PM

Greg,

This is a great subject and I'm looking forward to seeing where you go
with it all. As a fan of classical music, both recorded and in concert, and as
someone who works in the marketing side of the industry, I have a vested
interest in classical's future. Here are a few questions that I've thought
about, although admittedly not in great depth:

(1) Classical music audiences may be betting older, but were they ever
really young? Ive heard it argued that overall, most people to come to
classical music until well into adulthood.

(2) Was classical music ever meant to be popular? How many regular
people got to hear a Beethoven symphony when it was first performed?
Before Beethovens time, I think that most composers were in the employ
of the nobility or perhaps the church. With the rise of the recording
industry in the mid 20th century, not to mention the amount of per capita
leisure time, classical music grew, but to compare the industry to pop
culture might be a bit of a stretch. Did classical ever really compare in
sales with the likes of Glenn Miller, Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna,
etc.? Although Im not 100% sure, I doubt it, despite the occasional
breakthrough album (maybe things like Van Cliburn doing Rachmaninov,
Glenn Gould doing Bachs Goldberg Variations, or Goreckis 3rd Symphony
a few years back). A friend of mine just suggested to me that opera at
one time was perhaps popular enough to draw comparisons with today,
but I'm not sure. I sometimes think that one might try plotting the sales
of classical music (in recordings especially, but also in concerts) alongside
the recorded music industry in general. I wonder if there would be a
parallel: growth in the middle of the last century, particularly with the LP
(and radio), then a plateau, then a revival with the arrival of the compact
disk, and now a decline with uncertainty about the future (this is just a
quick sketch, I know, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone has already
done this). Although classical music is declining, I wonder if it's still bigger
than it ever was prior to the middle of the 20th C. Some would argue that
it reached an unforeseen level of popularity and, perhaps, got too big for
its own good. I mean, how many recordings of Beethovens 5th symphony
do we really need and how often does one need to hear it in the concert
hall? Some might argue that classical music, at least in terms of the
warhorses, has gone well beyond its saturation point. Segue into

(3) A serious problem, it seems to me is with new classical music in

particular. Despite controversy over particular pieces at the time, there
was a lot of music written in the 20th century, moreso in the early half to
be sure, that still gets regular play in the conert hall and on recordings
--- Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bernstein, and others
come to mind. Who are the big names writing now? Even the ones who
are somewhat known --- Ligeti, Glass, maybe Gorecki, and a few others
come to mind --- are hardly household names. Classical may imply "old"
but I think that up until the last half of the 20th century, it tended to
renew itself with new works. I don't think that's really happening
anymore. I say this, by the way, as a fan of much modern/contemporary
classical music, while simply recognizing its almost complete lack (or
sometimes even antagonism toward) popular appeal.

I welcome any thoughts you might have. Thanks for exploring a subject
near and dear to my heart!
Sam,
Thanks so much. You raise very thoughtful questions, which Ill try to
answer briefly. Longer answers, I trust, will come in later parts of the
book.
(1) Age of the audience. An older audience isnt a problem, as long as its
big enough to sustain the field. And, as you suggest, it would always be
replenished by younger people who reach what we might call classical
music age. But an aging audience, unfortunately, really could be a
problem, because that would mean that the audience wasnt being
replenished, and at the very least was shrinking. And in fact statistics
from the NEA do seem to show that this is happening. That said, Ive
never been able to find any evidence for the common belief that the
classical music audience has always been old. This seems to be
conventional wisdom, and possibly not much more. What evidence there
is, in fact, may go the other way. In a 1937 study of American orchestras,
the composition of the audience wasnt a focus. Still, surveys were taken
at two orchestras, and they showed an average audience age of 28 in one
of the places, and 33 at another. Theres no record in any detail of how
these surveys were taken, so much more work needs to be done. Its
significant, though (or at least I think so), that the authors of a book
about this study express no surprise at these findings.
(2) Was classical music ever popular? Obviously a question with
comforting implications. If we agree that classical music never was
popular, then it shouldnt matter if it now has a small audience. But I
think the question is something of a red herring. It really doesnt matter

whether anything have a small audience. Ferrari doesnt sell many cars;
acerbic pop music genres like grindcore dont sell many records (at least
by the standards of the pop charts). What matters is whether the
audience, of whatever size, is large enough to sustain whatever enterprise
were talking about. And theres every indication that the classical music
audience is shrinking. Ticket sales to the core subscription concerts of the
10 largest American orchestras, for instance, have been declining
enough to bring gasps to some people whove seen the figures since at
least 1990. (These figures have never been published.) Funding has
gotten harder to get, too. This said, the question of classical musics
popularity is complicated, not least by the difficulty in comparing a
popular audience in 1815 or 1715 to the much different mass audience
of today. Still, the concept of classical music (as an art set apart from
anything popular) dates only from the first third of the 19th century, and
what at that time was considered popular music (a term that actually
was used) included Liszt, Paganini, and anything that happened in an
opera house. And a lot of music we now call classical (Handel operas,
Rossini operas, Mozart symphonies) was composed and performed in
circumstances that seem closer to pop music than to the classical concert
halls of our present era. That is, the music was performed for profit, and
the audiences reacted noisily, talking during performances and applauding
whenever they felt like it, right in the middle of the music.
Note also the change in the position of cutting-edge art in classical music,
which doesnt have to be popular to make an impression. When Wagner
was the leader of the avant-garde, anyone with an interest in music took
a position on him. Eventually (by 1900 or so) he became wildly popular.
Then, a generation down the road, when Schoenberg was the avant-garde
leader, he mingled with artists in other fields, and every artistic person
took an interest in what he did. By the 1940s, Virgil Thomson could talk
about an intellectual audience that showed up at concerts in New York
when important new works (or at least 20th century works) were being
done. And now nothing like any of this exists. With very few exceptions
(Philip Glass and Steve Reich in the 70s), theres no new classical music
that draws any audience outside the field. Maybe thats turning around
with composers like Golijov, but its been a very long drought.
(3) The record industry. Id love to have the figures you wonder about,
Sam. And many people would agree with you about the sales bump
caused the introduction of new formats. But one big factor in the
evolution of the classical record industry has been the increasing distance
of classical music from the center of our culture. Whatever sales of
classical records might have been in the 1950s, just about every major
record company had a classical division, and while these classical divisions
were expected to be profitable, they didnt have to make a very large
profit. And (something very important) profits were measured by sales of
the entire classical catalogue, taken as a whole; individual projects were

allowed to lose money, as long as the whole endeavor was profitable. This
was a matter of prestige, among other things. It would have been
unthinkable not to record classical music. But now classical music has
much less prestige, and classical recording has retreated to a very tiny
niche. (Pop sales, moreover, are much larger since around 1970 than they
ever were before, which makes classical music comparatively less
important to a record company, even if the number of records sold might
not have changed.)
(4) New music. One of the most important things we can talk about, in
my view. The disappearance of new music as a central classical music
activity is an artistic scandal, I think, and a sign that the field has grown
stagnant. Things are probably improving now, but my gut feeling is that
not until at least half (and maybe more) of all classical performances are
works by living composers, classical music wont be healthy. Certainly that
was the situation when most of the masterworks of the repertoire were
written.
Posted by: Sam at February 24, 2006 1:41 PM

Hi Greg,
Good to see you reworking this material. I had an impression that too
many ideas were asking for too much prominence at the same time in
Book 1.0. It's easy for me to state after the fact, so forgive me.
This dynamic of our culture is irrevocably changed. "Things are never
going to be the way they used to be" is the reality many of us art types
still are not comfortable with. Culture, being an entity of the living, by
necessity must endure redefinition. That we can discuss and muse over
different possibilities will help in that process.
Thanks! And of course I agree about the first version....
Posted by: Bruce Jackson at February 25, 2006 8:12 AM

Greg, thank you for identifying these four categories in the world of
classical music. I had not seen this taxonomy until your book2 blog
appeared. Instead, Ive observed over a long period just three types of
classical musical audiences: (a) insiders who are performers of various
genres in classical music, (b) their audiences who can recognize and
applaud the traditional elements along with compeling innovations, as long
as they are within accepted cultural mores, and, (c) outsiders who, for
example, might attend a music festival picnic and buy similar
performances on a CD.
The dynamics of performer and audience do integrate the hold on tradition

even while making changes, within certain limits of taste. However, in

case of the outsider, vitality might come from the pleasure of displaying a
CD from the event.
I enjoy each rehearing of Glenn Goulds Goldberg Variations. Another
favorite right now is Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5, Mstislav Rostropovich
cond., London Symphony Orchestra. What I value is the unique selfexpression of traditional materials, adapted by these brilliant individuals.
My core concept here is that the aesthetics of global classical musical
culture consists of performers and their audiences dynamically sharing
that which is holistic, evolutionary and balanced by community taste.
Musical consumers who are on the periphery may not be participating as
directly in the aliveness of the music so much as by the possessing
artifacts of the cultural event.
Again, thank you for your analytics. I expect to learn more from your
work.

Warm regards,
Jim
Posted by: jimmybbb at February 27, 2006 2:25 AM

Hi Greg,
Thank you for the important work you are doing. Her are some thoughts
and sources tp look at.
Somewhere on the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition website
the assertion is made that the modern/contemporary music of the 50s
-70s turned audiences away in droves. I think there is some truth there in
part. In any event many composers have woken up to this reality.
Film music - a bridge between classical and pop culture???
My website, wesleyfishwick.com lists some articles that explore
theological/philisophical aspects of the role of the artist in society.
As a classical pianist ( did it - left it- have come back to it) I know I was
trained to shoot for the big carreer. Now I realize there has only ever been
so much room at the top. However, there are tons of opportunities to
perform and medium to large audiences to listen. Classical music also con

serve as treatment for the physically & mentally/emotionally ill and the
dying.
Claudia Arrau also discuss the spirituality of the concert venue.
One would also need to look at the decline of classical music in Russia
after state sponsorship was removed. Then, again, a look at Canada
where the art form is promoted with great vigor is a good idea as well in
Canada the media focuses on classical music rather than ignoring it as it
does in America.
I'm sure you know that Bernstein, before his death, predicted the current
decline and the reorganization of regional orchestras.
The removal of music programs from public education has also had its role
in this demise.
I have many musical friends in the Detroit area that gather to play
chamber music and/or listen to others. This core group will continue to
exist and perhaps the art form will flourish and wane in a cyclical manner
for many centuries.
Looking forward to reading more of your excellent prose!
Thanks for all this, Wes. I tend to think the decline is more than cyclical.
There's been quite a large-scale diminishing of classical music's role in our
culture ever since the '60s, or even before, measurable in many tangible
ways. (Media attention might be the most obvious.)
Atonal music has definitely turned audiences off. The mistakes made
about it are legion -- not communicating enough to audiences about why
the music was written and is being played, but maybe most of all, not
realizing that the music may never be popular, and shouldn't be forced on
large audiences.
I tend to think that music education, or rather its delcine, is a result of the
larger decline of classical music, not a cause of it. But this is something I'll
take up in the book.
Posted by: Wes Fishwick at February 27, 2006 6:35 AM

Hi Greg, I am a 6th grade band teacher and have made a stunning

discovery. I was thinking of a new theme for our band program for our
Spring Concert and came up with the idea of "Legends of Music". I
thought it would be cool to present a concert of classical themes by the
masterwork composers. I pulled together several pieces which included
excerpts of famous melodies from Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Dvorak's
New World Symphony, and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I also gave them

a watered down version of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance. I also, let them

pick out classical melodies to present as solos duets and trios. I have to
say, it is one of my most successful ideas because the kids absolutely
loved the tunes! It really showed me that there is something timeless
about the great classical compositions even if they are presented in small
excerpts. Who knows? This exposure to the great themes in music may
blossom in the minds of these young students. This is why I don't think
that classical music will ever die out. These great themes are
unforgettable.
Rhonda, thanks for this. It's marvelous that classical music has such
appeal. Studies show that many people who never go to classical concerts
do actually listen to it. In any case, I think what stops people from taking
a more active interest is the way we present the music, not the music
itself. If we were more personal and less formal, I think more people
would show up. In any case, congratulations on having such success with
these kids!
Posted by: Rhonda Martin at March 2, 2006 12:22 AM

Los invito a examinar la posibilidad de hacer su pgina en varios idiomas o

por lo menos en espaol.
Gracias
"We invite you to consider the possibility of making your page available in
various languages, or at least in Spanish."
I'm very flattered to receive this suggestion from Orlando Barbosa, who's
the General Director of the Orquestra Filarmonica Bogota, in Colombia.
Unfortunately, my own command of Spanish allows me only to understand
his e-mail, and nothing more; I'm not even able to respond to him in his
own language. Nor do either I or ArtsJournal have the resources, at this
point, to hire translators.
But I do want to note that the Orquestra Filarmonica does link to
ArtsJournal from its website. And of course I like the idea of my book
appearing in other languages. So, just on the offchance that anyone out
there can translate my work, and would like to do it, especially if you can
translate the book into Spanish, please contact me! I'd be happy to post a
Spanish version of my episodes. I can't offer any pay, unfortunately, but
then I'm not getting paid myself for writing this
Posted by: Orlando Barbosa at March 3, 2006 1:10 PM

Greg, I think you're doing a great service to ask the questions you do
without coming down in favor of a simplistic answer or solution.

You've got a great knack for laying out the situation and making it
interesting and compelling. Good job!

As for the information revolution and concert (non)attendance. As a highly

trained classical musician myself, I am continually appalled that I can't
take my 5-year-old son to orchestra concerts because they cost so much.
One concert last month cost me over $200 for tickets and babysitting (for
my 2-year-old) while my wife and I took my son to the concert). Our
seats? Stratospheric. The orchestra? The Hartford Symphony.

It was a great concert (Bugs Bunny on Broadway), that was the perfect
introduction for a 5-year-old kid ... because it linked great music (and the
spectacle of the event) to something he already knew: Warner Brothers
cartoons.

When I was a kid it cost me $8 to go to an orchestra concert. I went to

every concert there was when I was in junior high.

Could a kid do that today? Not at these prices.

And, that brings in the info-revolution angle, too. This revolution does not
play by different economic rules than the rest of society. In other words, if
you want to drive away customers, raise prices. Simple.

Meanwhile, with $0.99 songs (including entire movements of classical

repertoire) on iTunes, how can expenseive orchestral (or even chamber
music) concerts compete? Listeners (customers) make a complex,
somewhat unconscious, cost-benefit analysis: iTunes = cheap, easy access
to music any time. Concert going = expensive, one-shot listening
experience requiring trek to and from hall.

As many have already pointed out on this page, the music we're talking
about is never going to go away. It's so intrinsically moving and powerful,

it will continue to be rediscovered for eons.

However, giving people barrier-free access to the optimal experience of

this music (for the first time perhaps) is something that current classical
performing institutions don't do as well as pop-music juggernauts. And,
through no fault of theirs, are squeezed out of the options list for most
non-classical-loving listeners.

Yet, even attempts to exploit technology like Podcasts on iTunes show a

certain naivetee on the part of classical institutions. For example, I was
happy to see that the Boston Symphony had begun offering podcasts on
iTunes.

Only after subscribing to their podcast promsing to deliver Beethoven's

9th and having it instead deliver a boring, badly produced reading of liner
notes by a musicology professor from B.U. did I discover that the BSO has
no clue that people want immediate un-fettered access to the music

What the BSO offered instead was mediated, administrative, well,

stuffiness that makes it seem that the music itself is not worth putting
before our ears (or that it's too good for that).

Every orchestra and chamber group in the country ought to put free
podcasts of their performances on iTunes right now. It's virtually cost-free
to do so. That act alone would do more to boost classical music in the
culture than any grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Alas, timidity, unfamiliarity, mistrust and an unfortunate attitude that the

music is "the product" and should not be given away, will probably keep
this from happening.
- Paul Smith

Paul, thanks so much for your thoughtful -- and passionate! -- comments.

I agree with all of it. I've heard the BSO podcasts, too, and was struck
just as you were with how academic they are. For a taste of something
different, you might want to look at Geoff Edgers' audio piece on
Schoenberg , on the Boston Globe website (gohere and scroll down to the
Schoenberg graphic). Even better, listen to "The Ring and I," an
introduction to Wagner's Ring cycle broadcast on WNYC, New York's public
radio station. That might be the best presentation of classical music to a
modern audience that I've ever run into.
Posted by: Paul Smith at March 3, 2006 1:52 PM

Greg, you write

I tend to think that music education, or rather its delcine, is a result of the
larger decline of classical music, not a cause of it. But this is something I'll
take up in the book.
Clearly, it's a chicken and egg situation Nevertheless, the declining
audiences (and increasing average age of those audiences) for traditional
classical music presentations may well be more a result of cutbacks,
resulting from financial pressures, than you are acknowledging. Many arts
programs were cut--with much remorse-- over the last 35 years as the
result of financial exigency, rather than as the result of declining interest
in classical music. A school system near where I live in central Indiana has
just announced enormous cutbacks in arts instruction, sports, and physical
education, all as a result of financial problems. Don't you think it's
reasonable to expect that the generation of kids in that district who won't
have an instrumental music experience will be less likely to develop an
interest in non-pop music?
Virtually every adult I know who is deeply involved with classical music
also plays or sings as an amateur, or used to. It's an analogous situation
to professional sports. What's more boring, for example, than golf on
television? That's what I always thought, until I took up golf. Then it
became fascinating. When I stopped golf due to back problems (and being
horrible at it), it didn't take long before it was boring again. Now I know
there are a lot of people who occasionally watch football, etc., who didn't
play it growing up, but I imagine it's a safe bet that the vast majority of
regular viewers, and especially of holders and users of season tickets,
played football at least occasionally as kids.
Do you know if there are studies that show the correlation between

having played classical music at one point in life and attendance at

classical concerts? I bet it's pretty high.
That said, great project, to which I will be offering comments regularly.
--Eric
Eric, thanks for this. You're right about the funding cutbacks, and I need
to take those into account. That said, I'm still suspicious of drawing too
close a cause and effect relationship between the decline in (classical)
music education and the decline of the classical music audience. I don't
know of studies about the correlation, or possible correlation, you
mention. I wish there were some. I do know, anecdotally, that when I've
led conversations with loyal audience members at major orchestras, a
recurrent motif is people saying very emphatically that they don't know
anything about music. It's then delightful to see them going on,
sometimes, to make very cogent comments. But I take their disclaimers
seriously. Maybe some of them, even many of them, took music lessons
on some instrument when they were young, but that hasn't left them
feeling that they know very much.
And as I e-mailed Eric, I'd be wary of establishing a cause and effect
relationship in any case. Both music lessons (or some other experience
playing classical music) and attendance at classical concerts could be
caused by the same thing. We could theorize that there's some
demographic background that inclines people toward going to classical
concerts, and that music lessons come with that background, rather than
causing the concertgoing, or being necessary for it.
In any case, there are younger people now starting to listen to classical
music online (12% of all iTunes sales are classical, many, according to
someone who used to be in charge of classical music on iTunes, to
younger people). Most of them, we can guess, have never played classical
music.
And then we have other musical genres, some of them pretty thorny,
which found audeinces without anyone needing any special training or
background. Bebop, when it started in the 1940s -- when all the beats
started listening to it, of course they didn't have any jazz education.
Likewise the vogue lately for world music, or the development of punk, or
alternative rock. People don't listen to Radiohead's very substantial music
because they'd played anything like it in their garage bands.
So at the very least, there's some other factor at work, which I'd guess is
cultural resonance. You react to a style of music because it says
something to you about who you are, and what's going on in the world

around you. Whatever messages like that classical music may have,
they're muted, and also very rarely discussed.
Which isn't to say that music education of some kind wouldn't help. Of
course familiarity helps people get used to anything new. It just can't be
guaranteed, in my view, to reverse long-term cultural trends.
Posted by: Eric Edberg at March 29, 2006 8:29 PM

This comment caught my eye:

"Who are the big names writing now? Even the ones who are somewhat
known --- Ligeti, Glass, maybe Gorecki, and a few others come to mind
--- are hardly household names. Classical may imply "old" but I think that
up until the last half of the 20th century, it tended to renew itself with new
works. I don't think that's really happening anymore. I say this, by the
way, as a fan of much modern/contemporary classical music, while simply
recognizing its almost complete lack (or sometimes even antagonism
toward) popular appeal."
I beg to differ. I find there to be a simply overwhelming amount of music
being composed and recorded (not as frequently performed,
unfortunately). It is actually hard to keep up with. No, the composers are
not "household names," but it seems downright ridiculous to me to claim
that the art form is not "renewing" itself. Like this writer, I am "a fan of
much modern/contemporary classical music", and there are a handful of
"young" (by composers' standards) living composers that I keep an eye
on.
And to Greg, kudos for getting the ball rolling on this topic. My question
for you: have you studied in depth the inner working of college/university
music departments? I'm currently completing a study where I will argue
that public schools' resources have been appropriated so heavily to their
degree seeking students as to preclude widespread participation in music
by the general student body. It was certainly the case where I went to
school, but it's difficult to get a feeling for what goes on
nationally/internationally. Any ideas?
My take: the art form is being renewed, yes, because new music is being
written. But the renewal might not be taking root, because even terrific
new pieces that both musicians and the audience like don't become part
of any stable repertoire. And composers aren't treated as first-class
citizens of the classical music world.
As for universities -- I don't know about this. I think, though, that I'd
qualify the statement about widespread participation in music. Shouldn't
that be widespread participation in classical music? Surely college kids are

forming bands and making dance music on their computers. I might also
wonder whether college kids in any great numbers really want to
participate in classical music, which might explain in part why there might
not be many opportunities
For what it's worth, one of my Juilliard students this year got her
undergradujate degree at Harvard. She says there were many students
performing classical music, but that the student body as a whole wasn't
interested in these performances.
Posted by: Stefan Kac at April 2, 2006 11:22 AM

Greg,
Thanks for your reply. I should clarify: yes, I'm talking about participation
in classical music, presumably among kids who played in band in high
school and want to stay involved somehow (not necessarily performing
publicly). Where I did my undergraduate work, the practice rooms were
closed to anyone who was not registered for a music department course. I
occasionally met students from other departments who were frustrated by
this. As Eric Edberg wrote, a large chunk of our audience is going to be
people who are not just passive listeners but active participants in music
making. But when schools like mine close off their vast resources to the
rest of the school, this can only be harmful to the situation. I've also seen
a more desirable situation at another school I attended where the practice
rooms were unlocked and unmonitored. The general student body was
more involved and music majors were looked at with admiration rather
than contempt. I'll leave it at that as my entire spiel would take up too
much space (hence the study-in-progress). Thanks.
Stefan, thanks so much for the clarification. I can see both points of view.
Practice rooms are scarce. Even in conservatories. Serious music students
need them badly. Juilliard students just about fight over them.
But then just as you say, music departments shouldn't close themselves
off from the rest of the university. I'll be very curious to see your study.
Please let me know when it's finished!