A common topic, and one that I follow quite a bit, is how to save classical msuic. There are blogs, such as Greg Sandow’s, that talk about nothing but this. What I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of these conversations contain language that directly demonstrate one of the largest problems that the genre has: elitism. I don’t mean to slam people who seem to be honestly trying to find solutions to things such as an aging audience and dwindling funding but perpetuating a rather large issue, even while trying to figure out solutions, really needs to be addressed. I recently read a post over at Seated Ovation that contrasts the German classical scene with the American scene; in particular, their ability to attract young audiences. The article contained this gem:
And, generally, young people turn out for the Berlin Philharmonic. There’s an especially large surplus of the 25-35 crowd who dress well and seem culturally refined, more like the breakdown of the Met Opera than the New York Phil (the Staatsoper audience, based on the two performances I attended in their main theater, seems to skew older).
We’ll ignore the anecdotal evidence, especially since the writer claims it’s anecdotal himself, and focus on the language he’s using. Namely, why would one feel the need to point out that this 25-35 crowd is culturally refined and well dressed? Maybe they are, but who cares? Statements like this imply that one is not cultured if they’re not attending symphony performances. I would argue that most orchestras are so far removed from modern culture that they can’t be used as a measure of how “refined” someone’s sense of culture is at all. At best, it’s a measure of how aware one is of the culture that our modern world sprang from, especially since the majority of what you will hear programmed is over 100 years old, even in Berlin (judging by the current season at the Philharmonic).
This simple sentence also implies that those who go to orchestral concerts have the desire and finances necessary to get all dazzled up. There’s something to be said for wearing your best clothes to a performance; it makes the show something special and allows you to escape your routine. That said, it also carries connotations of superiority, as if you would not be welcome if you couldn’t fit this mold. Maybe that’s not the case, maybe it is, maybe this is a very small implication anyway. Regardless, it helps to preserve the damaging image that classical music has of being elitist which can keep even adventurous listeners out of the concert halls.
I’ve come across this sort of thing reading posts at On An Overgrown Path as well. For instance, not in this post but in the author’s comments, he writes:
This path raises all sorts of interesting questions. Have the ears and brains of the young people – the MP3 generation – lost the ability, like their audio systems, to decode more complex musical sounds? Does this explain the increasing popularity of world music, the sound of which is largely percussive and light in complex overtones? Does it also explain the decline in popularity among young listeners of classical music? Do we need to spend more time thinking about the auditory capabilities of audiences and the limitations of audio reproduction systems? Do we need to think more about the lost art of listening?
The implication here being that young people simply can’t hear the greatness that is classical music. The music is simply too complex for their dumbed down ears. This sort of statement doesn’t seem to phase the classical audience that will likely be reading it but anyone who’s not already in that circle is probably going to feel, as I did, that this is a bit of a shot at those who listen to popular music.
The intentions in all of this are great. We need more people asking questions about why the classical audience is aging and trying to find out what will keep this tradition vibrant but it’s at least a little ironic to me that the very people doing this tend to perpetuate some really bad PR. It’s all seems to add up to people asking, “How can we get people to step up to our level?” As opposed to asking, “How can we make ourselves relevant to a world that doesn’t even know we’re here anymore?”
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Hi Josh,
Thought I would chime in to defend my comments. I pretty much meant the opposite of what you interpreted. As a 22-year-old music student who writes music criticism for fun, and as someone who dresses down as much as possible for concerts (generally jeans and a sweater or collared shirt), I wouldn’t consider myself too much of an elitist.
When I commented about culturally refined, I actually meant to imply that the audience seemed like people who went to art galleries, attended theater, and maybe checked out the occasional jazz club too—the kind of young people which the American classical scene should attract but usually doesn’t. The young people attending average classical concerts in America are almost always music students or people in the biz. I am very happy (as a music student myself) that these people are into classical music, but to renew an aging audience you need not just aficionados and industry folks but people who consider the attending the symphony and opera part of a larger set of cultural obligations that includes listening to Radiohead, going to the Museum of Modern Art, and reading a newspaper. So yes, it’s elitist in the sense that you want to attract intelligent intellectuals.
And what I meant by well-dressed was the same–that they didn’t look like music students (not to knock music students, but we tend to dress down when we go to concerts), but that they looked like young professionals—the people any orchestra needs to buy subscriptions and perhaps become patrons later in life. Orchestras need money; well dressed people tend to have it. It’s a match made in heaven. I don’t care what people wear at the orchestra, as long as it’s not distracting (giant hats that block people’s view).
So I’m not implying that people are not cultured if they’re not attending the symphony. I’m implying that I hope we can ATTRACT regular cultured people to attend the symphony–something which seems to happen in Berlin. There’s no one ingredient towards being cultured, but I can only hope that going to an orchestra concert or opera can be one of the ingredients towards being cultured.
And if you read the rest of my post, I agree with you. Orchestras need to reach out to the cultured populace, because the cultured populace is not coming to the orchestra.
Adorno frequently referred to the “Regression Of Hearing”, which he felt exposure to pop music engendered.
I don’t know if our hearing is regressing, but it’s probably changing. Regressing in some ways, progressing in others.
Here’s one way our hearing is changing, and maybe even progressing:
Exposure to a near-infinite supply of recorded music makes us incredibly sensitive to timbre and encoded timbal meaning. If you’re reasonably well-listened, you can hear just one note of a guitar, drum kit or synthesiser and extract an incredible amount of information from it. This kind of guitar sound instantly suggests surf music of the 1960s, that one Nu Metal of the early 2000s, and so on. It’s not just the ways of playing the instruments we log, but the varying ways they’ve been recorded and presented to us going all the way back to the 78 era.
All pop plays with such timbral associations. A modern listener hears a Lady Gaga song. She immediately notices: It’s got that fizzy “Euro” synthesiser sound that Usher brought across the Atlantic about ten years ago. But the drums don’t sound like Euro or R’n’B drum machine samples. They have Metallica-style splashy open hihats, and a stadium rock ambience. So what genre is this? Stadium Rock / R’n’B / Euro Disco?
(One modern artist who, for me, plays with those pop timbal signifiers on a very high artistic level is Burial. There’s a whole PhD thesis to write about his recordings. This blog post probably isn’t the place to start.)
For comparison let’s imagine a sensitive listener of Bach’s time, hearing the last movement of Brandenburg 5. She notices it’s a gigue – a dance movement (though it’s far too complicated to actually dance to). And it’s also a fugue. And a concerto grosso. And it’s also got the ABA form of a da capo operatic aria. Oh, and it’s also using the harpsichord as a solo instrument, which is rather unusual.
Music historians have discovered that Bach took possession of a brand new harpsichord around the time he wrote Brandenburg 5, and the desire to show it off may have inspired the concerto. So the new sound of that instrument was probably a factor. Even allowing for that, it seems to me that far more of modern musical meaning is carried purely by timbre than it was in Bach’s day, where formal, structural and harmonic elements did more of the communicating.
And that brings me on to one way our hearing might be regressing:
If we think of a great instrumental masterpiece from the western classical tradition – let’s say Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata – it requires a particularly detailed, intense concentration from the listener. There’s a complex, yet purely musical, narrative structure. You have to follow the way themes and motifs are created, broken down, recombined, reharmonised, and how they mark the progress of an unfolding tonal structure.
Today we have modern music that’s easy to listen to – like, say James Blunt. And we have music that’s difficult to listen to – like, say Merzbow. But the way Merzbow is difficult is completely different from the way late Beethoven is difficult. Merzbow is difficult because the timbres are harsh and abrasive, and it’s a kind of endurance test to get through the music. Beethoven’s difficulty is a result of intense narrative complexity. Merzbow just isn’t about that.
I can’t think of any modern music that’s difficult at all in the Beethoven sense. I don’t even think the post-Darmstadt music of Boulez or Stockhausen is complicated in the Beethoven sense, because the structural processes are largely inaudible. In practice, I can only listen to that music with a kind of naive wonderment. With Boulez I mostly notice his ear for timbre – lots of bright and brilliant sounds trilling away. The Beethovenian “structural hearing” isn’t needed. Not for me, anyway.
And this puzzles me. Because the narratives in plenty of TV miniseries – like “Lost” or “Battlestar Galactica” – require viewers to follow complex parallel plot lines. So have we lost something?
Just thinking aloud.
Will, your comment got caught in my spam filter, sorry ’bout that.
I apologize if it seemed like I was saying that you, or anyone else in the classical world, is elitist. My point was simply to draw attention to things that, viewed by those who aren’t involved, can inadvertently perpetuate a bad image. The fact that this is the opposite of what you intended to do is what makes it so unfortunate.
To quote from Denver Post
“With many audiences today knowing little about Beethoven and Mozart or major or minor keys, the idea of simply putting together a musically compatible program doesn’t always work anymore.”
(Read more: Classical music is going new places to lure new faces – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/music/ci_16820160?source=rss#ixzz18Iz2uSVx)
Similarly, one cannot expect a person who knows not a word in the English language to understand a Shakespeare Sonnet.