A few years ago, a Brit violinist named Nigel Kennedy made a small splash by showing up for concerts in grungy clothes and spiked hair. He never deviated from the mainstream classical repertoire, but his personal image was late-punk, early Gen-X. Nobody cared. Why did classical music become so marginalized? What would it take to bring it back into the mainstream? My own opinion is that classical music is perceived as dull and boring by most people. You'll hear some people theorizing that it's "elitist" too, but I don't think that would be a problem even if it were true, which it isn't. Classical music, in fact, is much more democratic and less elitist than some of the more cultish forms of pop music, where if you don't join completely you're completely excluded. At least if it were cultish and elitist, people would have something to aspire to -- membership in the group. Instead, it's open to one and all, and no one seems to be showing up anymore. What's the problem?65 responses total.
Cultural Education. The common belief among the teen set is that classical is for squares and doesn't speak to them. I'd agree if I weren't cultured enough to know how beautiful and meaningful Mozart, Bach and Beethovan really are. The problem will only get worse with public and private schools gutting thier music and arts programs in the name of costs and the bottom line. We will probably see more of this backlash as the X generation comes into power.
I think people usually progress through a variety of forms in developing their interest and tastes in music. I certainly did - starting with the "big bands", which was mostly what was played in my home during my childhood. But as I was exposed to more forms, I became interested in classical music...Tschaikovsky, you know, and all that. It took time to gravitate to the Baroque, and then modern genres. Apropos of cultural education - I once *created* a Bach (and baroque) fanatic. He was into light classics and asked me what I saw (heard) in Bach. So I led him through the tutti-riponello form and fugue structure of one of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos. Thereafter he could not get enough! (It probably helped that he was a physics major and could appreciate form and structure - it was just he could not perceive it himself until it was pointed out.) Our daughter has grown up in our home where our radio tuners have gotten stuck on classical music stations (until WUOM changed their format - when I have essentially stopped listening to them), and she attends chamber music and operatic performances with us. She is now exploring more popular forms - especially show music - but I think she has to "fill in" those simpler musical forms in her education, before she returns to what she grew up with.
Maybe the question to answer first is, does it matter? Is classical music "better" than, say, world music or alternative rock? If it is, shouldn't it just be a matter of exposing people to it a couple of times? But that obviously doesn't work. It isn't like the "Aha!" effect most people experience when tasting good food after a lifetime of Burger King, and that makes most people *always* go for the better food when they can afford it. Anyone who can afford to build a big collection of world music just as easily could've built a big collection of classical music. So, is classical music really better than world music, and if so, sez who? And are there any possible "bad" consequences from the vast majority of people thinking classical music sucks? If not, what's the fuss about over WQRS? That is, what does it matter that only this one, out of the many possible kinds of equally good music, is no longer available on the radio?
It's just ignorance. "You just don't know the power of the dark side, er, I mean, classical music." :-) It's not a matter of classical music being "better" than any other kind of music. In my mind, there's only 2 kinds of music, regardless of genre: Good & bad. It's certainly true that classical music is more sophisticated than the average 1-4-5 rock tune, and so requires more knowledge to understand the subtleties, to appreciate it, etc. But most classical music is not *popular* music. And it's not going to be a substitute for popular music (this ain't the 1700's in Vienna :-). Nobody said that an art museum was a substitute for cartoons, either.
Your horns are showing, Michael. :) Personally, I got tired of the repetitive nature of almost all popular forms. Some new idea is repeated endlessly. For me, classical music is always exploratory. Two beethoven quartets are enormously different in meter, harmonics, themes, etc. Popular "forms" are immediately identifiable as such. Even the whole "jazz" genre is based on a simple musical idea, endlessly repeated in short phrases. So I find the variety and complexity of classical forms much more interesting than the repetitiveness of "pop". Others, of course, just want to stamp their feet.
Well, folks, alow me to speek as a member of "The Teen Set" and as an ardent classicall music lover. I think that what many teens like in thier popular music happens to be the sheer emotional _omph_ that many artists manage to put into their work. Classical music simply is not *percived* as having that, eh? So why the h-ll not? My best guess is a lack of exposure. I know that many of these kids parents don't play classical, or a wide variety there-of in their homes; they prefer oldies, 'classic' rock or perhaps country. Coming from that background, the only places that they are very likely to hear it is on the radio, in the supermarket, etc. Lets face it folks, a lot if that can be pretty boring. The reason I listen to so little classical that is played on the radio is because all too often I would tune in to hear some violins sawing away, and while that can be nice, it's not _captivating_. I think that what really needs to happen is for kids to get the chance to hear classicall that (a)has words and lyrics, (b)is in a language they understand, and (c) has a degree of drama to it. Now I know that disquallifies a WHOLE lot of good music, but get kids listening to it, and then they can work into the rest of it on their own! Well, that's my advise... re 4: Ken, feel free to argue with me, but I see a degree of "musical snobbary here. One does _not_ need "more knowledge to understand the subtleties" to appreciate classicall. Frankly (my dear, I don't give a sh-t), I don't know what a tutti-riponello form is or what a fugue structure is. Does that prevent me from appreciating Bach? I think not. Knowing this stuff might give me a _greater_ appreciation for it, but I don't need to know it. Many teens don't appreciate classical because of ignerance, yes, but I think it stems more from an ignorence of what is *out* there, than all the subtelties. We are not simply a bunch of blockheads with no appreciation for good music, blindly going from "New Kids on the Block" to "Spice Girls". Each of us has our own reasons for liking or disliking what we do. You might consider asking us about our choices before you term it dumb. You could learn something, maybe as much as we could learn by asking you why you like a particular peice of classical. <All Done!>
I knew what a fugue was long before I learned what a fugue was. And when I finally did learn, none of it was news to me; it was just the technical names for things I'd been feeling in my bones all along. I could've *written* a fugue without ever knowing about tonic, dominant, counterpoint, etc. It's a little like learning the rules of grammar after years of reading well-written prose and imitating it in your own writing, which is how most of us learned. You just learn the names of things you already know. So, in that sense I agree that music education isn't really necessary to appreciate music. If you start learning about the sonata-allegro form before you've worn out your CDs of Haydn and Mozart, in fact, you be turned off to classical music forever. I've seen it happen. So much education of all kinds nowadays seems almost calculated to make kids hate the subject being taught. Anyway... So, Cricket, you haven't been going blindly from "New Kids on the Block" to "Spice Girls," eh? Does that mean you don't think the music of those two groups is as good as the pop music you *have* been listening to?
Actually, I don't know, I've never really heard any that I can remember.
Just for the record, my name is Kevin, and nowhere did I refer to any music or anyone as "dumb". Ignorance is not meant to express a value judgment, it's meant to express a fact of amount of knowledge. E.g. my ignorance of the key elements that make punk music what it is and what it is not doesn't dismay me, it's just my ignorance. Yep, appreciation at at least some level doesn't necessarily require knowledge. But knowledge may end up giving insight into why certain musical passages have impact, things that one missed, etc.
[I don't think anyone called you anything. Rane was calling me
the devil's advocate somewhere up there (the "horns" and all).]
Sometimes on Grex, there will be pop music fans complaining about
what they perceive as the "elitism" or "snobbery" of classical music
lovers. People that love classical music (they say or imply) think
classical music is "better" than pop music in some objective sense,
when it's all just a matter of personal taste and all kinds of music
are equally valid. Then, often in the same sentence, these good
relativists sneer at the pop music other people listen to, such as
the Spice Girls and Hanson, thus implying that there *are* standards
of good and bad that can be applied to music and to the taste of
people that listen to music.
Speaking as a lover of almost every kind of music you can think
of, including the Spice Girls, I think it's obvious that most
people mistake their own inclinations for absolute categories of
value. In my experience, the *vast* majority of people that claim
to be indifferent to the Spice Girls and Hanson are people who (I
can't stand it anymore, Rane, I have to go back to saying "who")
want to be seen as deep and serious and who show their deepness and
seriousness by listening to music with gloomy or cryptic lyrics and
tunes that make no effort to be catchy or toe-tapping. There are
other people who try and match their music to their non-musical
interests, such as the skateboarders who think the only music to
listen to is ska. (Or used to, anyway -- that seems to be changing
now, as such enthusiasms will do.) There is music that catches on
with a particular set (Hanson, young girls) and *must* be despised
by everyone who doesn't want to be associated with that set
("Teenyboppers!" [sneer]) whether the music actually has any good
qualities or not.
These prejudices run deep and can be hard to shake off. Nobody is
to blame for being infected with them -- we're all infected, to one
degree or another. All I can say is, if you point to the people who
think the music they like is better than the music you like and say
to them, "How dare you? It's all just a matter of taste, you
elitist snob," then you'd better not even *think* that the music my
11-year-old daughter loves is any worse than what you listen to.
If there are no objective standards of quality, then there are no
objective standards of quality, period. You're entitled not to enjoy
the Spice Girls, for whatever *personal* reasons, but you can't say
there's anything about the *music* that makes it intrinsically
inferior to the music you do enjoy.
Okay, in *this* environment -- which I think is stupid but which I
don't realistically expect to change -- what would it take to get
people listening to classical music?
A sense of ownership. I wish more modern tonal and atonal music was available, both on recordings and in concert, performed on mostly classical instruments, in a chamber or symphonic forum, but without the content needing to be palatable for the nursing home set. If I were 17 and wide open to new things and excited about possibilities no way would I be drawn to old music by dead white guys - music that had been done to death and loved by generations.
Then what would it take to draw you to that kind of music? That's my question. What would it take to get a 17-year-old to start raving about Brahms' Violin Concerto?
A miracle. ;)
<We should all head-bang to Bach more often!> Anyway... first of all, I do agree that having more specific knowledge of a piece can yeild to greater appreaciation. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear (I was kind-of ranting...). As for unconcious, or concious predudaces against certain music, I agree, they are out thier, and _very_ difficult to shake off. I'm influenced by them too, though I try to stay objective (can one be objective about an art that is mostly subjective?). As for drawing kids to rave about a piece of classical, I think that much of it lies in the performance. I think that it would help if artists had an intamate understanding of the peice that they were playing, perhaps on a personal level. Whatever the genra, I think that half of the "rave quotient" if you will, lies in the performance, and that the performance is always improved if the peice _means_ something to the artist. Am I making any relevant sences her, or am I just raving again?
I am wondering why Michael even raised this question if he believes, as stated above, that "there are no objective standards of quality". On the other hand, he also does seem to think there are objective standards of quality by saying classical music is "much more democratic and less elitist". If all music is "good music", why try to draw anyone into any particular genre? But I don't think he thinks all music is "equal" - in quality or goodness or some other measure, or the question would not be raised. I perceive the thought that it would be "good" to have more people appreciate classical music. I'm much less ambivalent. Rock stinks and jazz is boring (!), and I fervently hope that there are ways to elevate musical tastes among the public, and have them experience the delight and excitement provided by all forms of the classics and the avant-garde. What it would take to get a 17 year old to start raving about Brahms is exactly what Mary said: "a sense of ownership". The music should be readily available and valued by society - and the 17 year olds would "get it". I asked my daughter the question, and she said almost the same thing (before I gave any hints!). She then acknowledged that she had grown up in a home where the only music she heard was classical, and therefore did not think it unusual, or difficult to listen to. In a way, her shoe is on the other foot, and she is in the position of having to explore popular music on her own!
I don't think md said that there were no standards; he said that much criticism of classical music as elitist is by people who make that claim on grounds of relativism & then turn around & make judgments incompatible with their claimed relativism. (Am I wrong, Michael?) Personally, if by "elitist" one means believing that some music is better than others or that some is good & some is bad, I'll enthusiastically plead guilty. (Same for some other areas than music.) It's also true, however, that taste influences judgments; there's plenty of stuff out there that's fine but which I don't happen to like, & in many given cases it's hard for me to distinguish whether I'm judging honestly.
davel got it right. I don't think every kind of music is a good as every other kind, and neither does anyone else. But people who listen to pop music and who won't give classical music a chance will often *say* that's the case when talking about classical music -- and then claim the high ground they were just saying doesn't exist when they talk about Hanson, the Spice Girls, et al. I do appreciate cricket's comments about performers having an intimate understanding of the music they're performing. You can usually tell when a performer's heart and head and soul aren't all in it, and the really committed performances knock you off your feet -- Ian Bostridge singing Die Schone Mullerin, Pierre Boulez conducting La Mer, Mitsuko Uchida playing a Mozart concerto. How can anyone not rave about such things? I think the "sense of ownership" Mary is talking about is all the way on the other end of the scale from what we have now. Most 17-year-old Americans must believe that Brahms' Violin Concerto belongs to someone else, and that whether or not they listen is a matter of complete indifference to the owners. How did we let it get this bad, and how do we fix it? (I guess we now agree it's worth fixing.)
We didn't exactly "let" it get this bad. There are enormous forces - commerical especially - to promote the "most popular", and the "most popular" before there is any education, is loud and simple, or saccharine. Music education is not exactly a priority in the home, in business, or in schools. People are left to adopt their own interests in music - or rather that of their peers - long before any effort appears at all to introduce "good" (since that term is now permmissible :)) music. I don't think it was ever otherwise.
I, like Rane's daughter grew up in a house filled with classical, but also rock and country and rock. I grew to appreciate the form of the music and the similarities between Bach and Barry Manilow, who used some themes from Chopin and other composers. But not only that, I learned that all music, whether it be rap or a fugue has it's place. Classical is not all roses and sunshine, because there are some dreadful pieces by Mahler, and Wagner to only mention two, just like there are some pretty foul rap songs, but I am not ready to throw out the entire genre based on just 1 bad track. On the other hand you have my mother, who is a classical pianist. She hates rock and roll, and everything else I have, well, except the classical stuff. I think she is someone who took classical too far, shutting out anything but classical, and she is poorer for it. Another case is my sister, who is not a headbanger, but is the exact opposite of my mom. She hates all classical, and loves anything that is rock, but refuses to listen to rap and country. I think that is pure rebellion against my mother's adhesion to classical and hatred of pop music. I saw this early on and swore to myself that I would at least listen once to the music, then base my opinion on what I heard. As I said before, I like most anything and my CD collection reflects it. I have Eric Clapton right next to LeAnn Rimes and she is next to the HMS Pinafore, which I adore, as well as I do The Mikado, and that is next to my Boyz 2 Men, and Barry White CD's. and that is next to my beloved, and Rane can understand this one, Beethovan's 6th Symphony which is my all time favorite piece of music. No other symphony can express the joy that is spring when all things are new again. I bought that one for $9, and it's the best money I ever spent.
You learn this early as a child. That's where you form your opinions. You cannot take a 17 year old headbanger and make him into a classical afficianado. It aint gonna happen.
I bet it could. In any case, the headbangers are the ones I worry about most. Kids who grow up in houses where classical music is played, or who somehow connect with a group of friends who are into classical music, aren't the problem. It's the ones who've been exposed to classical music only briefly and by happenstance (commercials, certain movies like 2001 and Platoon), and whose home environments are limited to pop music of one kind or another. I can't accept that their minds are lost to classical music by age 17, and that they will go through life missing out on the kind of pleasure you get from Beethoven's 6th Symphony. The kind of rush you get -- the audiogasm -- at the climax of the last movement; pop music has nothing to offer like it. Isn't it sad to think that there are people who will never experience that in their whole lives?
(I can identify Beethoven's 6th from a couple of measures from anywhere in the work, I played it so much after I 'discovered' it - but I did not grow up much exposed to classical music.)
I don't think I get what you guys are saying when you say "A sence of ownership" could you elaborate further? I don't think that there is any one way to just up and get a kid raving about classical. I think that gaining apreciation for music- any music- is a slow prossess, but I kind of disagree with omni who thinks it is impossable. I suppose that if you were talking about 17yr old who never had any expereince with classical you might be slightly right... But I don't think that they will _never_ start raving about it, just that they might take untill they are 20!
I agree with teflon. The home I grew up in never, *never* played classical music. I didn't get exposed to a classical instrument or learn to read music until I was well into adulthood, and it was my choice. I purchased my first classical recording in 1984, the Bach Double Violin Concerto, on a whim, and I fell in love with the genre. I was tired of folk, and the Beetles, and Ronstadt, and Joni Mitchell, and so on. So I was ready. What I mean by a sense of ownership is a sense of finding something that relates to you on a personal level. The more universally known and loved something is the harder it is to see it as personally relevant. And you know what, as incredible as Bach and Mozart and Beethoven are, they are dead white men who already have a whole lot of fans, and have been recorded to death. It's not new ground. Young people, really creative and intelligent young people, usually aren't satisfied which past adventures. They are into cutting new ground. I tend to think of their "finding" classical music as a sign that their energy and enthusiasm has peaked. Unless they're into some funky stuff, like Morton Feldman or Kronos. ;-) Too, I give young people a whole lot of credit when it comes to seeing through the cultural hype surrounding classical music. I seldom go to a classical concert and find folks dressed in casual clothes and asking questions about the genre. It's part of the deal that you dress up and act ultra-civilized and knowledgeable. And if you don't think that's true just consider *your* thoughts when some newbie applauds at the end of a movement. Kids see through this stuff and avoid it like the plague. I tend to think part of why they avoid classical performances is out of a sense of honesty, not ignorance. And Michael, don't feel too sorry for young people who haven't experienced a Brahms climax. Kids are doing just fine. They are into their own journeys. As it should be.
I have no problem with someone sampling Mozart and then rejecting it
in favor of Morton Feldman. I did the same sort of thing when I was
a teenager, everyone goes through phases like that. My concern is
with people who reject *all* classical music out of hand. That's the
vast majority of teenagers, even in places like AA that fancy themselves
cultural centers, even among educated kids. They grow up to be adults
who reject classical music out of hand, and they spend they're whole
lives not even knowing what they're missing. ("their" -- Katie's right,
I have a real problem with that.)
The people who reject Mozart and Beethoven because they're dead white
males are mostly doctrinaire multiculturalists, feminists, Afrocentrists
and others who would (and do in a few cases) reject sex if it doesn't
fit whatever arbitrary template they have to place over reality. I
suppose it's possible that's filtered down to a few headbangers who
might in turn use it as an excuse, but I doubt it. Also, I don't
believe I've ever heard anyone say, "Gee, that Mozart already has lots
of fans and he's been recorded to death -- I think I'll listen to
Fiona Apple instead." Maybe I wasn't there when they said it, who knows?
Now, if you wrote "people that..." you would be sampling new experience in language, and by becoming familiar with it, you would learn how much more interesting and resonant it is. So, try some new language forms, instead of just staying stuck on pop usage. :) There is a problem with the venues for classical music. I don't really like the pressure to conform in clothing and behavior. I also don't see the necessity for the performers to dress as they do. Isn't it the *music* that is what it's all about? I don't get dressed up to listen to classical music at home. The clothing at least male muscicians wear for classical music looks like it would interfer with playing their instruments. I'm not the only one that thinks this way, judging my the standards of dress at chamber performances in Ann Arbor - everything from "student" dress (though I've never seen them leave their baseball caps on - backwards) to formal wear (like to musicians). Women musicians at least have a lot more freedom in dress (as well as they do as part of the audience). Perhaps if both musicians and audiences dropped these semi-formal to formal standards, more young people would attend?
Michael, I don't think young people reject classical music without having had some degree of exposure. You'd have to live somewhere high in Nepal to not have an impression of Bach or Mozart. They simply aren't buying it at this point in their lives. They may later. It's not a done deal if they aren't lining up for the latest re-release of DuPre's classic performance of Elgar's greatest hits. That music isn't going anywhere. There is time. You're not going to like this but you've bought into classical music like some people have bought religion. It ain't so for everyone like it is for you. Share your enthusiasm, sure, but don't make it some test of enlightenment and see it as a tragedy if some decide to invest their imagination elsewhere. Meanwhile, I would work at making classical music more casual and available and less "safe" if you're going to try to get young people interested. If your audience isn't into classical music for the status and culture thing then you're going to have to find another hook. It would be a Good Thing for the entire audience, actually.
I don't think it's just classical music concerts, it's "the theater experience." The last time I felt seriously underdressed was at a performance of "Cats." You'd think we would've moved way beyond that. It can't possibly make young music lovers feel welcome, and has probably put more than a few of them off it forever. But, as you say, you can listen to CDs dressed any way you like, so at least there's that. And I tried to write "people that," I really did. You saw. It just didn't work for me. I guess I don't have a sense of ownership over the "that." Re "sense of ownership," it's one of those vogue-terms that started, as so many of them do, with management consultants. It's used to describe what a company is supposed to instill in its employees with regard to their work so they'll work harder and you can lay people off. Most people see through it, alas. The term has spread, as so many of these management vogue-terms do, into the general population, where it has the same effect on my nervous system as fingernails screeching down a chalkboard, even when used by well-meaning folks like Mary. As a right-sizing re-engineer from way back, I could make the case that Mary hasn't bought in and therefore isn't empowered to use the term. ;-) In the context of this item, Mary says she was using it to mean "something that relates to you on a personal level." If I know something intimately, it relates to me on a personal level. But I can know any piece of music intimately, even Mozart, so that can't be what Mary means. *I* took it simply to mean "something I feel as if I own." Brahms' Violin Concerto is (literally) public property. I "own" it as much as anyone else. What bothers me is the thought that most kids don't realize this, and believe it's "owned" by others, maybe by those formally dressed swells they see at classical music concerts. One nice thing about any work of art -- I mean the work of art itself, not its reputation -- is its imperviousness to fads and fashions. You can call Mozart dead, white, European, male, old-fashioned, over-played, over-recorded, anything you like. K. 491 will just sit there infuriatingly, with not a single note changed, waiting to be discovered by people who aren't buying the bullshit. So, I repeat, (no matter whether, like me, you think it would be a good thing, or, like Mary, you don't think it would be a good thing): How do we get 17-year-olds hooked on classical music?
[Btw, Mary, if you'd said I've bought into *music* the way other people buy into religion, you'd've scored a bullseye. And no, I don't mind your saying it.]
I know nada what business means by "sense of ownership". I'm not a business person. I'm into saving lives. ;-) It was *my* term for meaning relevance on a person level. Mahler's Ninth is, for me, an understanding of death. Bob Dylan is (was) relevant to me in understanding my disgust over the Vietam War. The Bach Suites are an incredible view of what can happen when you master simplicity. And at this point in my life I'm finding the concept of mastering simplicity intriguing. I didn't at sixteen. So, when I say kids needs to have a sense of ownership before they invest, maybe the content of classical music isn't yet relevant to their world. Beats me, I'm too old to remember sixteen with any accuracy. Now I'll bugger out of the discussion as I'm not making much progress toward answering your (much asked) question. ;-)
Does the Ann Arbor Symphony - and its audience - dress up like the majors? I've never attended one of their concerts. Do they perform in informal wear for an informal audience? Who attends?
The conductor wears a conductor's tux. The orchestra wears non-matching black dress with white accents, little if any jewelry, plain shoes, and always all black below the waist. The audience tends to moderately dress-up. Men wear suits or turtlenecks and sport jackets. Women dress for a business office or better. Little kids are often the best dressed of the lot. Students tend to come in jeans but there aren't a lot of them. There will be a few who come really dressed to dazzle and a few who look like they wore what they had on all day while working around the house. There is a slightly higher dress code standard for classical concerts at either the Museum of Art or Kerrytown Concert Hall, evening weekend concerts.
Maybe they should try a "you come as you are - we'll come as we are" concert, and advertise it heavily among schools. It doesn't seem to me that a dress code is *necessary* for the performance or enjoyment of classical music, and more than it is necessary for performance/enjoyment of 'pop' music. How has it come to be so rigid? Would society fall apart if the custom got set aside? Would classical music become more popular if everyone relaxed?
Idle question: what would happen if you showed up at a rock concert in a buiness suit? "Business casual"? Full highschool nerd regalia? Does anyone imagine the dress code at rock concerts (which I realize varies with the type of music) is any less rigid than that at a classical music concert? What's off-putting about the dress code at classical music concerts isn't that it's there, but that it looks so much like your parents, or worse, like that annoying brother of your mom's and his snobby wife. It's not really a code, of course. Anybody can get in. We're just talking about whether what you see when you get there makes you want to come back again.
If you showed up at a rock concert (remember, I have never gone to one) in a business suit, they would think you are an agent. Yes, I did assume the "dress code" for a rock concert was casual - that is, what you have hanging around your closet for cleaning the garage. But you make the point - are you comfortable. Dress codes should be what you'd wear to visit any mall (not necessarily any shop in the mall). I don't mind if some 'dress up', and others 'slum' - it is just that everyone should be confortable in themselves and no one should notice. Until the musicians join in, however, it can't happen.
speaking for myself, I like to dress up for concerts and suchlik, but if I choose not to, I don;t feel like I'm particullarly out of place... It's like "I'm the way I am, and if you don't like it, too bad...." Nobody says anything anyway...
That's true....but all that black on the stage - makes one wonder who died.
Somehow I've always had the feeling the musicians were dressing up for *us*. It's as if they're our servants. There may be some historic truth in that. Anyway, all the more reason not to do it.
Also, it is often apparent that those blacks rags are pretty old and worn. Time to discard them...
Being an ameture concert musician myself, I can tell you that the reason we dress up for formal concerts is that it renders a sense of formalism and respect and attention to the music that is due. If you dress sloppily, you'll play sloppily. Of course, if you *can't* play period, dressing you up won't help your music! :-) This is a similar argument as to why many companies require their [male] employees to wear ties at work, which I don't care for but I do. You can reject this idea or not.
More companies are. I understand the historical and current mores of business dress, etc., but it is all custom, which means it is a state of mind, which means it can change. The tie, for example, is one of the *weirdest* conventions. No one knows what it *means*, and yet it is de rigeur in many circumstances - but only for males. Weird.
I guess most of us agree formal dress is unnecessary. How the audience and the musicians dress probably isn't the only reason classical music is in eclipse, maybe not even the main reason. (The Stark Naked Philharmonic might be a big hit, though.) Imagine a performance of the Brahm's Violin Concerto at which the hall is filled with people in their 20s and 30s who burst into screams and other noisy kinds of approval when the soloist and conductor appear, who applaud and cheer between movements, who weep openly during the emotional parts, who hold up cigarette lighters during the slow movement, and who deliver a deafening ovation at the end and won't stop until the performers encore the entire last movement. I believe that could happen.
[Make that teens 20s and 30s.]
I think we were arriving at the opinion that formal dress is an impediment, not a main reason. So, who has the ear of the AA Symphony, and wants to suggest to them they give a concert like Michael envisages?
As a performer, I feel better on stage in concert blacks. To start with, it
gives a certin uniformity to the orchestra-- everyone looks alike, thinks
alike.... or maybe I'm going too far. But I personally wouldn't enjoy
perfroming in a concert like Michael describes-- I would get distracted,
clapping and cheering between movements would seriously distrub the continuity
of a peice.... tho' I wouldn't mind the ovation.
How much of these opinions are simply the traditions that have been
rammed down my throat by music teachers since I was nine, however, is up in
the air.
I would like to see more young people at concerts. I play in a college
orchestra, and almost none of the students outside of the school of music even
pay attention to when we have concerts.... I made an announcement at a meeting
of our theater organization, and a grand total of 1 person showed up to the
concert....it really is kind of sad
Also, they would burst into cheers at the long-awaited violin entrance in the first movement, and cheer at other peak moments. Plus, they would sometimes clap in rhythm to the music and sing along with the familiar parts. The orchestra, conductor and soloist would just have to get over it. I imagine the concerts would have to be held in Cobo Arena or the SIlverdome, or maybe Pine Knob in the summer.
When this discussion has wound down I'm going to mail it to Maestro Samuel Wong c/o the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra. He may get a kick out of it.
The annual Halloween Concert in Hill Auditorium has an informality and, even though it is *just* the UM symphony, they always have a full house. And they play good classical music, albeit the "sinister". No one is in formal clothes - many are in costume! Is there something unfitting about this? If so, what?
Re #42: I believe that Michael's description of audience behavior is not that far from the way it actually was during the Baroque era, at least for performances of secular music.
Actually, durrning the better part of most performances durring the Baroque era and particularly teh classical, the audinece didn't pay attention much at all-- concerts were a social event. It took something really spectacular to get the audience to pay attentnion. 90% of the reason one went to a concert was to see and be seen. (Particularly for the upper strata of society.) People did get pretty excited when a really great soloist was performing, it was a composer they knew well, or it was a hum-dinger of an aria or whatever. (Did I just use the word "hum-dinger" in a sentence? Eep!)
That sounds somewhat like modern audiences. "Famous" artists, even if well past their musical zenith, sell out. Other performances of lesser "known" artists are not so well attended.
Yes, but it isn't acceptable to play cards durring performances anymore. I'd say that's a step up.
Re #46 & earlier: <dave contemplates PDQ Bach's "New Horizons in Music Appreciation">
I love that track. There's actually a lot of information about the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony in there if you listen. I forgot to mention that dancing would be encouraged. I suppose the conductor and soloist could stage-dive if they wanted to, but their insurance companies might not like that.
I like it a lot myself, but I'd be even less likely to attend concerts (or listen to them) in that environment. Actually, I'm aware of one attempt relevant to the subject of this item which might be worth mentioning. It's small-scale & conventional, & I don't really know whether it's doing any real good, but I'll mention it anyway. The Ann Arbor Cantata Singers have for a couple of years now been doing annual "Outreach Concerts". What they do is to hold a concert in conjunction with the choral music departments of local high schools. The AACS basically manage the concert & absorb the costs, if I understand, and turn the gate receipts & program advertising revenues over to the school music programs. Then they put on a concert the first half of which features the high-school choirs (separately & together), the second half of which features the AACS with the high-school choirs, including something moderately ambitious, with soloists from the high schools. As part of this they also award several scholarships to Interlochen (summer music camp, not the year-round academy program) to students. These things could be better publicized, I think, but we heard about the first one because it was in the Milan paper - we live in Milan, & that one featured Milan & Saline high schools. The second one, last year, featured Ann Arbor (Pioneer & Huron) and Ypsilanti, with one soloist (who was absolutely stunningly good) from Greenhills (a private school in Ann Arbor). We heard about that because a girl we know was one of the soloists from Pioneer (& took one of the scholarships, deservedly in my somewhat biased opinion). But the audience it gets is *not* mostly a choral-music audience, but families and a *lot* of kids from the schools who are there because this is a big thing for their friends. (I should add that the material includes lots of newer stuff, but is definitely not pop-oriented. For the most part, accompaniment has been limited to a pianist. For the relatively large combined numbers, they had a chamber orchestra. Hmm. Wonder what else I should mention.) Part of the AACS's express reason for doing this is concern for the future of choral music, given current trends. (That was more clearly stated (at the concert) in the first one than at the second one.) Anyway, I do think a really important part of changing the status of classical music is going to have to be simply creating places where people listen to it, by choice & not because they have to - though not necessarily because they're passionately interested or anything. As I said, I think most of those at these things were family & friends there to listen because someone they knew was doing it & it was a big thing for that person - but I know some people who came away with a somewhat different attitude.
Sometimes a little exposure *is* all it takes. Another approach that has limited success is the "pop" classical concert and CD, with stuff like Peter and the Wolf and the Nutcracker Suite, along with pieces that might already be familiar to the audience, such as Pachelbel's Canon, the opening of Thus Spake Zarathustra, Barber's Adagio, etc. There are all kinds of "Classics Go To The Movies" CDs that sell fairly well. These are all great (I have a few such CDs in my collection and trot them out every once in a while). But I keep coming back to the big-ticket pieces like the Brahms Violin Concerto because those pieces might seem like the most forbidding ones at first but they're the very heart of the matter.
Pops concerts ect. can be great-- silly sometimes, but for drawing people in, especially kids, they can be fantastic. Last year, we did an outreach concert at a school in Kentucky, and we made the mistake of playing a movement of Tchaik's second piano concerto, a big violin concerto (not sure which one), and the Bottisinni bass concerto. (I know we played some other stuff, but I'm not entirely sure what... it was all fairly heavy) We tried to liven it up, but... we lost most of our audience about twenty minutes into it. If we'd done some light pops stuff, we might have been able to keep their attention. Its funny, but I actually find that young people get more out of concerts than older people. Here in Nashville, I went to a performance of Phillip Glass' _Les Enfants Terribles_ (its a dance opera event... it rocks), and the young ppl in the audience were really into it, opinionated about it afterwards, the whole nine yards. A lot of the older people in the audience, however, judged it in the first five minites (it isn't like a traditional opera or dance performance... it is a tad odd), and were simply disgusted throughout. (The two men sitting behind me actually started talking aabout football ... ) The same goes when I go to the symphony here-- a lot of the young people go to the concerts that other people in town won't, and we always have more intelligent discussions afterwards. Of course, looking at my friends is a bad example... I'm a music major, and most of my friends are, as well. I was lucky... I was exposed young. (I'm not sure how much of a point I've got there, so I'll shut up now.)
Today I'm mailing off a copy of this discussion to Samuel Wong, conductor of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.
I hope Maestro Wong has fun reading our little discussion. What do you hope, Mary? I'd be curious to know how other performers feel about this subject. The critic David Hurwitz recently advised some young people on AOL not to stifle their feelings at classical music concerts -- i.e., applaud between movements, etc., if you love what you're hearing. He himself sounds contemptuous of the "decorous" manners expected of concertgoers, and with the snobs who frown at any display, however heartfelt, that's more enthusastic than clapping at the very end of each piece. Hurwitz is a sometime musician as well as a critic. I'd love to know how performers like Andre Previn, Zubin Mehta, et al., feel about it. If you had sold-out seasons and had to add extra concert dates and build bigger halls to accomodate the audiences, and if your CDs kept going platinum, would it be worth it?
Of course, *clapping* is a preculiar custom unrelated to the concept of enthusiasm. It is making a semi-repetitive noise - rather atonal and inharmonius - after a highly structured sound sequence (music). I always consider it jarring and wonder what the origin of such a rude interruption could be. If any emotional outburst was encouraged during any musical performance, matters could get rather frenetic, but perhaps disturbing to the performers: dancing in the aisles; singing along with the tune; OLE!s; etc. There is no limit to the possible expressions of enthusiasm and appreciation (although there is a fine line between that and exhibitionism).
I hope Mr. Wong has enough interest and time to simply look beyond my short cover letter. ;-) I somehow doubt this will interest him in any serious way but, that's okay. I like sending stuff like this off.
Sorry I've been out of the conference for a while. Some one should have sent me a note to let me know it had come back to life. :) I hope you won't mind the general incoherence of my response. There's a lot of stuff going on. The drastic cutbacks in arts education are probably the most immediate cause of the listener shortage. There's also the collapse of the concept of the Middlebrow Intellectual -- the midcentury idea that the broad middle section of society should find it worthwhile to pursue serious intellectual and artistic activities, even if they can't do it at the most rarified level. Instead we've grown a culture which says that if you can't be in the elite, here, have MARRIED WITH CHILDREN and BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD. I subscribe to the argument that Classical Music, as we know and understand it, began when Mendellsohn excavated the music of Bach and presented it as a rediscovery to the 19th Century audience. Prior to Mendellsohn, the music of the past was not generally available; Mozart, for example, had to visit the Bach family in order to experience the works of JS Bach, because they were no longer in wide circulation by Mozart's time. So the 19th Century began to give music, for the first time, a past, and what followed was the development of a canon. The canon, and our belief in it, was formed as part of the zenith of Western European Culture in the 19th century: the Industrial Revolution, Colonialism, the White Man's Burden, all that. But the zenith of Western European Culture comes to an end with the two World Wars, and it's probably no coincidence that Classical Music grinds to a halt around the same time. Beginning around World War I, Classical Music starts to lose its relevance to American Culture. Oh, it hangs on for a while, largely because American Culture of the early part of the 20th Century is largely an extension of the 19th cent. Western European Culture. (The Middlebrow Intellectual might have been one of the last gasp efforts of that Western European Culture to exert some control.) But sometime around the end of World War I, Classical Music loses the ability to create new works which will put fannies in the seats. In opera, the field I know best, Puccini's TURANDOT (written 1924) is the last work which can be regularly staged at a profit. So Classical Music becomes a museum stretching from Bach to Stravinsky, maybe with Bartok as a little late appendage; and that music recedes from us in time, and becomes less important to us. (Perhaps the Early Music craze beginning in the 60s was a desperate gasp for some fresh new-to-our-ears tonal music?) Serious music may actually be breathing some life. It has shaken free of its awful stay in University music departments and its fling with movements like serialism, and it has started to pay attention to the need to keep putting those fannies in seats. Glass, Adams, the Kronos Quartet all show signs of developing a loyal audience which finds them relevant. But this is serious music breaking free of the tyranny of the museum, and of the standards dictated by 19th Century Europe.
I thought Glass and Adams represent one way of *returning* to the standards of 19th century Europe. Serialism certainly killed whatever taste audiences might've had for new music, but serialism is as European as a raspberry linzer. The reason composers who rejected serialism and continued to embrace 19th c. European tonality had so much trouble making their way after WWII is that, until the minimalists, there was no coherent theory or movement to justify tonal music. There was just a bunch of stubborn individual composers. "Neo-classical" worked for a while, but "neo-Romantic" never had a chance. "Minimalism" was a term borrowed from a school in the visual arts, and it gave its practitioners credibility. Suddenly it was okay to write listener-friendly music. But if you ask John Adams who really influences him, he'll say Sibelius! In other words, the fuss over "minimalism" takes place outside the concert hall, beyond the hearing of most of the audience. It has nothing to do with the music or the composers. (As with any such fuss involving critics and academic theorists, it will put the stamp of genius on mediocrities as well as geniuses, alas. Glass might be the main beneficiary of this. But time will sort things out, as it always does.)
Don't ignore 20th century American "classical" music composers such as Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, whose works encompassed popular themes, the theatre, etc.
I don't ignore them. I love their music, in fact, and always have loved it. But they weren't taken very seriously by academia or by the trendiest critics. "Populism" was another -ism that didn't wash with them, however much the audiences loved it. I read a book about American classical music recently that made the point that Glass, Reich, Adams and Riley never called themselves minimalists and don't like it when others call them that. Glass and Adams, in particular, have ended up producing operas in the tradition of Britten, Menotti and Barber -- i.e., the 19th century European tradition.
You have several choices: