The death of the classical music recording industry

Apr 24 15:24 UTC 2007

Last night I attended a book signing/event at the Strand bookstore 
here for the author/BBC music critic Norman Lebrecht, who has written 
a new book called "The Life and Death of Classical Music"  In this 
book, LeBrecht chronicles the history of the classical music recording 
during the last hundred years.  His thesis is that the classical music 
recording industry has now collapsed and died.  

LeBrecht told stories of how most people used to know who the great 
conductors and orchestras were, but no longer do.  When Arturo 
Toscanini came to the U.S., three in five people knew who he was.  
Enrico Caruso was the biggest recording star in the world. 

Now, as he points out, the great classical recording labels Duetsche 
Grammophon, Decca, EMI, CBS, RCA, and Philips used to put out hundreds 
and thousands of recordings.  New releases used to be great events.  
Now all of the great labels have either collapsed or are collapsing. 
The ones that remain are but a mere shell of what they once were.

LeBrecht blames a culture where people no longer concentrate on music 
and give it their full attention.  Now people have to be doing five 
things once and have no patience for the complexity of fine music.  
Younger generations, he points out, now only like to sample music.  
Download a few minutes of this, a few minutes of that.  He also is 
highly critical of schools these days, particularly in the U.S., where 
music programs and music study are no longer valued.  Students, he 
complains, are no longer taught how to write music, no longer study 
music, so there is no basis for them to learn a true appreciation of 
the art form.  He points to the high academic standards of the few 
countries where music theory is still taught in the lower grades, 
places like Finland.  

Classical music, he points out, had a great renaissance in the 
twentieth century with the advent of recording technology.  The music 
was made more readily accessible to more of the world than ever 
before.  But now, LeBrecht says, the renaissance is over, the 
classical music libraries have been recorded, and classical music is 
now no longer seen as the relevant art form it once was.  Classical 
music, he claims, is now going the way of Latin and Greek.  Languages 
scholars will study, and which will always have great historical 
value, but which are dead languages in modern times.  There is a 
generation gap in classical music listeners.  Of the fifty or so 
people at this event last night, maybe there was one under forty.  
LeBrecht pointed this out, and also that today the audience at 
symphony performances is considerably older than the members of the 
symphonies themselves.  There are great younger musicians.  The new 
conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony is going to be a twenty six year 
old wunderkid from Venezuela.  But the audience isn't young.

LeBrecht also talked about the decline of record stores and what it 
means for classical music.  He laments the loss of the community of 
listeners that existed around those stores. There are some music forms 
that don't lend themselves to internet downloads.  Who is going to 
download a four hour wagner opera?  These recordings were always sold 
by neighborhood record stores who had catalogs and knowledgeable 
clerks.  All that is gone now.  With the closing of Tower Records last 
year, there are few or no retailers with large stand alone classical 
music stores or sections.  

Intrestingly, in the Q&A session, one man got up and said he sells 
classical music over the internet and has started his own small label, 
and he argued that LeBrecht is entirely too pessimistic, that the 
future of the industry is simply not large labels and productions.  
This brought up a discussion of how the major labels, DG, London, 
Philips .etc all caused many of their own problems with gross 
mismanagement, overpaying of artists, and failure to maintain exacting 
quality recording standards.  

I am reading Norman LeBrecht's new book now and I highly recommend 
it.  "The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best 
and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made"  It is not an entirely depressing 
read at all, as he would rather talk of the glory of what once was in 
classical music recording than focus entirely on the doom and gloom of 
current times.  

response 2 of 77:

Apr 24 15:35 UTC 2007

 Link to an interesting and somewhat appropriate article in the Washington
 Post:

  http://tinyurl.com/2273gm

response 4 of 77:

Apr 24 16:33 UTC 2007

I thought it was hokey.  A)The average subway patron simply can't tell
the difference between a virtuoso violin player and a merely above
average one, particularly when the music itself is unfamiliar, and
B)people in the subway at rush hour are in too much of a hurry to stop
and listen for long.  Even if they were told that the musician is a
super-famous classical musician, most wouldn't care much.

response 6 of 77:

May 1 02:24 UTC 2007

apparently joshua bell doesn't practice enough these days and isn't quite as
good as he should be.

art music (i don't like to call it "classical" because that refers to a
specific period in art music: before the romantic period and after the baroque
period) has been a fossilized form for a while now.  our orchestras should
be considered as a sort of acoustic museum: the style is overly formal, they
require heavy subsidies, and all the great composers and conductors are from
another era.  modern professional orchestras touch a very small part of the
whole art music repertoire, and what little "new" music gets played is written
by academics.  it seems the purpose of their concerts, at least in north
america, is geared towards an almost gentrified audience:  tickets are
expensive, and people are supposed to dress nice to show off their culture.
it's hardy an avril lavigne night out.  

let's also remember that back in beethoven's time, people would applaud anytime
 during the concert, at a point they liked.  the audience at the premiere of
his ninth symphony clapped wildly after they heard the kettledrums tuned in
octaves, an unusual move at that time.  concerts sometimes went on for five
hours at a time.  all this is a far cry from the strict protocol today.  i
think the overly formal code is what makes concert halls less accessible to
today's public.  it's different in europe, though.  art music is part of their
history and culture, like a language.

i believe that only chamber music (small ensembles) and amateur orchestras
offer a way out of this fossilization: they make the music alive again.  alive
meaning that you don't have to wear a tuxedo and dress overly formally to
express what should be just listened to.  when the Canadian Brass put on a
concert, they make a point of wearing white running shoes and doing some silly
antics to make the audience involved.  this is what live music should be
about: getting the listeners into the music.  too many performers who lack
experience will sadly not take the time to introduce the music to their 
audience in an appropriate way.

it's interesting to note that it shouldn't be all that unusual to see someone
like joshua bell busking.  musicians will always be a part of the
entertainment class, and we shouldn't forget that.  as a musician, i'm
prepared to realise that what is entirely important for me may be completely
ignored by someone else.  but that's true for many areas in life.

so what about the recording industry?  well, you can only record so many times
beethoven's greatest hits.  but it's a fact that a very tiny part of the art 
music repertoire constitutes a huge part of a recording industry's revenue.  
people tend to forget this fact, but it's true.  people will always support
classical recording industries, just as companies bail out orchestras on the
verge of bankruptcy.  i don't think we should get worked up about it.  but 
i'm glad that it's helping keep music live.

response 8 of 77:

May 2 03:28 UTC 2007

for sure.  i love orchestral music, but i realise that it's hard to get the
public interested in it, since most people seem predisposed to thinking that
it's "boring".  an unfortunate position !

response 10 of 77:

May 2 13:44 UTC 2007

From my own experience I find that once I have one good recording of a 
piece of classical music I hardly, if ever, seek out a newer version. 
That's a huge hurdle facing the classical recording industry.  It's the 
same music, to a large extent, being done over and over and over.