Posted on 03/04/2005 6:19:20 AM PST by jalisco555
Whenever someone predicts the demise of symphony concerts, reassurances come fluttering from every obvious quarter. The Association of British Orchestras (ABO) produces a wireless device that allows concertgoers to follow the music interactively. A record label pays a million pounds to a schoolgirl violinist. A big-name soloist announces that more people than ever are tuning into classics.
As in any death foretold, these final rites will not affect the sad outcome. The Co-Co (for Concert Companion) that the ABO will show this weekend at its annual conference enables listeners to zoom in on the conductor’s sweaty brow or the deep cleavage in the second desk of cellists, while receiving snippets of text information. It has novelty value but that will soon wear off once the menu options are exhausted.
Deutsche Grammophon's huge deal with Nicola Benedetti, winner of BBC’s 2004 Young Musician of the Year, is equally flimsy. DG is in the market for physical assets. Benedetti, 17, an Ayrshire blonde of Italian blood, has been trailed in The Sun as ‘Scotland’s sexiest star’. Declining modelling jobs, Benedetti is keen to proselytise classical music among her own age group. But when her CDs are counted a year from now, DG will find that Nicola has sold overwhelmingly to middle-aged men in country towns and to grannies looking for an educative birthday gift – just as every other teenaged wonder has done over the past two decades.
New audience? What new audience? Classical managers clutch at straws when they look to Classic FM, with six million UK listeners, for hope of renewal. Classic’s audience is chiefly passive: they may tune in, but they seldom buy concert tickets or extend their taste for Mozart to encompass a complete work. During the 12-year lifespan of Classic FM, concert attendances in Britain have steadily declined. Meanwhile, educational investments by many orchestras have failed to yield more than a smattering of children to whom classical music becomes a lifelong passion.
Why the world has gone off classical concerts is a conundrum in which almost every reasonable assertion is disputable. Take the attention-span thesis. Many in the concert world believe that its decline stems from the public’s flickering tolerance for prolonged concentration. If politicians speak in soundbites, how can we expect voters to sit through a Bruckner symphony?
It is a persuasive argument but one that I have come to find both fatuous and patronising. Around me I see people of all ages who sit gripped through four hours of King Lear, Lord of the Rings or a grand-slam tennis final but who, ten minutes into a classical concert, are squirming in their seats and wondering what crime they had committed to be held captive, silent and legroom-restrained, in such Guantanamo conditions.
Their ennui will not be relieved for long by an electronic gizmo which gives them an illusion of mechanical control, nor for that matter by a kid soloist who has yet to grow a musical personality. These are gimmicks bred of desperation, not a coherent approach to cultural crisis.
If the shrunken attention span is not to blame for the classical turn-off, nor is price. Most concert tickets now cost less than cinema stubs. The London Symphony Orchestra last year adopted an impulse price of four or five pounds but failed to attract first-timers. Let's face it: in a busy metropolis with multiple counterattractions, most people won’t be dragged to a symphony concert at any price. As the New York impresario Sol Hurok used to say: ‘When people don’t want to come, nutting will stop them.’
So what, precisely, scares them off? In a word, the atmosphere. The symphony concert has stultified for half a century. It starts in mid-evening and last two hours. The ritual cannot be altered without inconveniencing the musicians and alarming the subscription audience; so nothing changes.
A Chinese businessman, David Tang, believes busy people want shorter concerts. He is launching one-hour concerts at Cadogan Hall, Chelsea, next week, but his revolution has been disabled from the outset by a standard seven p.m. start.
The only concerts that attract twenty-somethings are those which play to their rhythms. In Madrid and Barcelona, concerts begin at ten p.m. and are thronged by youngsters. In Vienna, the standing room at the rear of the opera house and the Musikverein is a singles-scene enclosure, walled off from the stuffy interior and giving the standees a sense of ownership and empowerment.
Elsewhere, the concert hall is a gerontocracy, its decorum enforced more rigidly than in places of worship, its exclusiveness innate. Thirty years ago, in my mid-20s, I used to sit in the backless choir seats behind the orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, studying conductors’ expressions. At the time, I was one of the older kids on the row. Today, at my present age, I'd be practically the youngest.
The greying of the audience is an admitted fact of concert life. Less acknowledged is the aging of everyone else. One expects conductors to be in their seventies, but most soloists have been at it too long and there is barely an orchestral manager of any consequence under 50.
Small wonder that the concert hall atmosphere is about as lively as a cruise liner, its intellectual magnetism as potent as a pension plan. Why would any redblooded postmodern person want to spend an evening in God’s waiting room, even with a Co-co to sex up the da capo?
Other arts, too, have rigid traditions. Theatre, you might argue, has also failed to alter its timing or rituals since Olivier was in full cry. But theatre has continuously overhauled its repertoire, making Shakespeare and Schiller fight for stage time against Pinter and Osborne, Stoppard and Hare, and Jerry Springer: The Opera. Theatre has sharpened its capacity to surprise, while classical concerts rely on stupefying familiarity.
There are ways to change the atmosphere. Design 40-minute concerts for under-40s. Provide a free crèche at weekends. Introduce standing room. Try the late-night route. If there was a genuine will to refresh the concert experience, it could be done.
But, as any good shrink will confirm, the classical business music must first want to change - and I detect no such desire. The old gang won't give up its hegemony and the last one to leave will politely turn out the lights.
You're nuts.
I could not imagine a world without Stravinsky, Bartok or Charles Ives.
The violin kids who play the NYC subway, and appeared on Live at the Apollo, like the classical. It just depends on what music is played. The modern stuff is typical of much 20th century art - ugly art, anti-art. But some good music has come along. And the old classics can't be beat, if one is in the mood. All music competes, however. You would think that as the boomers age, classical will again revive. Orrrr . . . the geezers might just stop listening to music entirely (some, but a lot will have classical on - constantly). Fear not.
.....or Gilbert and Sullivan!
I love classical music too, but like others have said, it is great 'background' music for other things...
Reading, napping, eating, those bi-annual forays into housekeeping,etc.
Interesting. My kids like classical music, including symphonies, but it would be difficult for them to sit quietly and watch a performance for hours. It's nice to have the CD's in the car, so we can listen to a piece, and then talk about the parts we liked (or didn't) and what images the music brought to mind. "It was birds!" "No, it was butterflies!" "No, it was jellyfish!" "Jellyfish? You're WEIRD, Tom!"
I'm not sure about start times, rock and roll shows have similar starts. I think the two big problems are the tuxedos and the incredible lack of something to look at. The whole dress up atmosphere of the classical concert is anathema to modern entertainment, we're now deep into our 2nd (and fast approaching 3rd) generation that wears jeans and t-shirts to see their favorite musicians perform, there's really no reason to dress up in the audience area it's dark anyway, but classical music maintains the tradition of dressing up, and that tradition begins with the tuxedo clad performers. Even most magicians have ditched the tux, time for classical to move on, not saying they should come out dressed like Judas Priest, but something a little less associated with getting married would be nice.
Then there's the incredible lack of visual presentation. Lets face it, unless you know how to play one of the instruments, and have good enough seats to actually watch the technique of the players in that section, there really is NOTHING to look at during an orchestral or symphonic show. If you're going to go to an event in person you need something for multiple senses, if you're just going to listen you can stay home and put on a CD. Now I'm not really sure what the solution to this is, maybe Walt was onto something with Fantasia and hiring an animator to give a visual interpretation playing behind the orchestra would do it, maybe go totally rock and roll and bring in the pyrotechics, or go pop and bring in a dance troupe, but give them something to look at besides a bunch of people sitting in uncomfortable clothes.
Bingo. I'd rather buy multiple versions of a piece and enjoy it while listening at home on a killer sound system.
For the kids, why waste money on more concert tickets when you can buy a complete set of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concert videos and enjoy them at home? There's more education in the Berstein series than going to 100 concerts.
I have lots of classical music on mine.
I suppose you're right. But, good classical music is great background for reading (or Freeping).
And now I have to get the image of the oboe and sex ed out of my head!
Strathmore? I was looking forward to going there (I loathe the Kennedy Center) ... $100/tix is kinda high.
> ...there really is NOTHING to look at during an orchestral or symphonic show.
Come to Boston on July 4th and you can look at the fireworks.
I think the bigger problem for the Classical music world is the comparative lack of quality of the current crop of musicians.The Classical music industry has been trying so hard to work the sex angle in recent years that they've effectively rewarded mediocrity in the interest of attracting a younger audience. Watch the Van Cliburn competition when it comes on PBS and I think you'll agree: the talent pool is shrinking . I was once being groomed to play the international competition circuit when I was at Juillliard and I'm pretty certain that most of the performances I've heard from Van Cliburn finalists in recent years wouldn't have gotten me past the preliminaries in the 80s.
The most recently recorded classical CD I've purchased was Murray Perahia's Goldberg variations (from 2000I believe). He was peaking when I was a student but has continued to evolve, and his Goldberg variations might very well be better than Gould's. Otherwise, few musicians have impressed me in recent yearsI haven't heard any pianist in the current crop that can touch Perahia or the rest of those great pianists of 15-20 years ago. The violin pool is in an equaly sad state if you ask me. Gil Shaham looked to be the next great hope but Josh Bell and his sexy coiffeur seems to have eclipsed him (in spite ofthe fact Bell can't reallly hold a candle to Gil)
While the classical world is failing in their attempt to sex-up the industry, they are also driving more discriminating fans away. It matterrs little to me that concerts don't fit into my schedule. What matters is that the music has suffered. I'd rather listen to my old CDs and LPs in the comfort of my own home.
And I bet those shows are better attended that most, which puts it line with my idea of "go rock and roll and add pyrotechnics". Unfortunately I bet your hardliners that make up the majority of the classical audience hate those shows as sellouts that lack purity.
You've got me on Gilbert and Sullivan. Of the others, I find Ives sometimes interesting, but could do without Stravinsky and Bartok without a moment's hesitation.
But then again, I'm a nut.
Times were slower, people were more patient, and things were just plain different. To dump an ordinary citizen of the period in today's environment would put him or her into sensory overload inside a day.
Classical music was originally played on festive occasions: as liturgy in churches, at royal banquets, at garden parties, on barges along the river, and so forth.
It began to change around the time of Beethoven, when orchestras got larger and larger and then huge, and when it moved from ducal banquet chambers to public concert halls.
One of the few great developments in the classical music scene over the past thirty or forty years has been the return to ancient instruments and the return to chamber orchestras, instead of everying being done on the scale of the Boston or Philadelophia symphony orchestras.
I had a seat at the Friday afternoon concerts of the Boston Symphony for about eight years, and it was a real pleasure, but one I would not want to return to.
That's why Tanglewood is so pleasant, or the operas at Glyndebourne, because venues like these are more like the way music ought to be heard--at a festive occasion, during dinner, at Mass (although regretably the liturgists who presently control the music are idiots, so the real experience is now very rare), where the music honors God, or the King, or a family or village festivity.
I have always had the belief that music is one of the most uplifting forces invented by man. I love attending concerts which keep the audiences interested and engaged in the art as it happens on stage. You simply cannot lose with the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahams, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, and Copland. I am skipping some, I know.
Want to mix things up? Have a chamber music night. Do a vocal work -- The Brahams German Requiem for example -- Have talented soloists lined up for performances, play more pops concerts and lighter music of the Strauss family, for example. Perform a suite from a ballet (there are a lot of wonderful works out there that go without being performed, but I think are accessible to an audience. Occasionally do a Mahler symphony.
There are many ways to keep an orchestra's season interesting, exciting, and uplifting. But a focus on challenging audiences with music the orchestra itself struggles to comprehend loses every time.
Hardly anyone gets excited about a concert in which the most accessible piece is the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.
I've ranted enough. I realize tastes in music vary greatly, but I really believe a great performance of the classics never loses. There will always be an audience for Beethoven symphonies as well as lighter fare.
Beethoven is among my very favorites, and his piano concertos and violin concerto are monumental works, IMHO.
I agree that once Beethoven came along, music changed dramatically, but the musical shot heard round the world was the "Eroica" Symphony. Once that came around, nothing was quite the same.
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