IT’S BEETHOVEN’S FAULT!

I did an interview with a reporter from Minnesota Public Radio recently exploring the difficulties being faced by the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.  After a thorough dissection of the mistakes that led up to this current mess with both orchestras, and much of the classical music industry thereto, I have come to one undeniable conclusion – it’s Beethoven’s fault.

Here’s the awful truth – from a layperson’s point of view the music of the Classicists is just plain beautiful. Here’s the first corollary to that truth – that particular conclusion, on the part of the lay public, has not changed in the past 200 years!!!

No matter how you slice it when it comes to our paying public the vast majority of them simply love the music of the First Viennese School.  Frankly, I can’t blame them.  Now before you all start baying at the moon about how I don’t understand this music I’d like to mention that I voluntarily took graduate level classes in 18th/Early 19th Century music history.  I’m a nerd.  Back in the day I could do a formal analysis of a Mozart piano concerto faster than most people could do simple addition.  I knocked off a structural analysis of Beethoven’s 4th symphony in under 2 hours.  As I said, I’m a nerd.  And I find this music to be completely soulful and, yes, beautiful.  And I’m someone who has an understanding of it.  Imagine how Josephine Average feels.

From the perspective of Ms. Average, this music does seem to speak to most people’s souls.  Whether that’s the fault of the people or the music I shall leave to a different discussion.   But take Le Sacre du Printemps – it’s old hat now and people are excited to hear it.  Bartok?  Do a cycle of the 6 quartets, or program the Concerto for Orchestra,  and many audiences will jump to their feet.  Ives? Despite still being a 100 years ahead of his time there’s something…….. enticing…. about his music that people can latch on to.

There are dozens of composers from the last 100 years who started off being viewed as avant garde that today are part of the accepted canon.  Not played as much as Beethoven, certainly, but played and appreciated to the point that their music won’t send audiences screaming to the car park.  But announce that your next season will have a heavy focus on the First Viennese School and watch your subscription renewals go through the roof.

There is much room for argument here, but I posit that the concept of elitism in classical music really took hold in the late 1940s through 1970s, despite the best efforts of egalitarians like Bernstein. Prior to that time the middle class had firmly embraced classical music.  A large portion of American households had a piano and it was considered de rigueur for everyone who aspired to be middle class (or higher) to have some music education.

Then the postwar era hit, and suddenly classical music was…… elitist.  And very, very unhip, Bernstein & company excepted.  Along came jazz, bebop, rock’n’roll, and the accessibility of these musical forms left classical music in the dust.  In order for classical music to rebound the industry hit upon what was considered a fool-proof idea: Push the Classicists.  Next thing you know you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting another Mozart Festival.  You could populate half your season with Papa Haydn because he was inoffensive to your audience.  Want to record?  Why not a Beethoven Symphony cycle!  Hey, that hasn’t been done before!  That will really separate us from the pack!

So for at least two full generations those few Joe and Josephine Averages who actually were interested in classical music for the music, as opposed to sitting through a boring date night, were constantly forcefed the most unchallenging music imaginable, the Classicists.  The rationale of the industry was that this is what it would take to survive, and instead of nurturing and promoting interesting new composers we relied on the Classicists to soothe the ruffled feathers of our patrons, a sort of panacea for the ills of our business. When it comes to most modern/atonal music we just told them: “Well, you obviously just wouldn’t understand!  (Sniff!!!)  This requires a higher intelligence.” Too bad, since great art presupposes the alert mind of the educated listener. And we wonder why the public views classical music as elitist?

The irony is that while the classical music industry has trumpeted the Classicists as great individualists who broke free of the restrictions of their day, the reality of their situation was the exact opposite.  Haydn was a toady, and all it took for him to shy away from writing symphonies in a minor key for most of his life was the backhanded disapproval of his employer.  Mozart showed his true colors in his famous letter to his father about the Paris Symphony –

Raff stood near me, and in the midst of the first allegro came a passage I had known would please. The audience was quite carried away-there was a great outburst of applause. But, since I knew when I wrote it that it would make a sensation, I had brought it in again in the last—and then it came again, da capo!

No less of a giant than Beethoven spent reams of paper sucking up to potential sponsors and worrying about how patrons and publishers would accept his latest work.  Just one of his many letters to Archduke Rudolph will gild that lily –

When you were recently in town, the enclosed Chorus occurred to me. I hurried home to write it down, but was detained longer in doing so than I at first expected, and thus, to my great sorrow, I missed Y.R.H. The bad custom I have followed from childhood, instantly to write down my first thoughts, otherwise they not unfrequently go astray, has been an injury to me on this occasion. I therefore send Y.R.H. my impeachment and my justification, and trust I may find grace in your eyes. I hope soon to present myself before Y.R.H., and to inquire after a health so precious to us all.

This is straight out pandering, the style of the day, and it was expected of Beethoven that he would frame his letters this way.  Considering the heavenly glow that we have assigned to the “Everyman Beethoven Myth” Joe Average would be shocked by reading most of Beethoven’s missives.  But our industry continues to forge on –  the very first concert ever held at Tanglewood was all Beethoven.  75 years later Tanglewood opened this season with a repeat of that same program!  Freude!

Second corollary to the truth mentioned at the beginning of this post – Mr. and Mrs. Joe and Josephine Average are the people who pay our bills, and if we are intent on seducing them by programming the First Viennese School without providing good historical context, then sooner or later that is going to come home to roost.  Or, more likely, that time is right now, in the form of the continuing paralyzing disaster that seems to have encompased a good chunk of the orchestral industry, characterized by the distinct ambivalence of the middle class to the fate of orchestras throughout this country.

Me, I’m going to go listen to some King Crimson.  Much less pandering to the masses than the Classicists ….. and better lyrics.