In case no one has been paying attention the last couple of years I’m here to give you the final score: we lost.
In the battle of improving the lives of musicians, supporting the health and welfare of classical music in this country, and generally looking out for the good things in society – we lost.
Does anyone need to go through the roll call of orchestras who have taken a massive hit, or who are about to? Indianapolis, Atlanta, St. Paul Chamber, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Louisville, etc., etc. It’s an impressive list, and unfortunately it outweighs the list of those who have turned it around – Buffalo, Dallas, Colorado….. hopefully I’m missing one or two, but the good news has been few, and very far between.
But the pièce de résistance came not from an orchestra, but from that venerable old lady of the news – the New York Times. In a move that has struck to the very heart of classical music relevancy, the NYT has shifted their long-tenured and highly regarded critic, Allan Kozinn, to the general culture desk.
Translation – even to the New York Times, the flagship newspaper on this continent, the newspaper that covers the most vibrant arts scene in this entire hemisphere, new classical music is no longer important enough to warrant a couple paragraphs of copy space every few days.
Now what? No number of “like the page of the *********** Symphony Musicians!” will make a difference. No number of free concerts by the aforementioned musicians desperately trying to reach out to a perplexed audience will make a difference either. It’s like that kid with his finger in the leaking dike. Too little, WAY too late. Donors in many places are tired of giving to orchestras when it seems there’s precious little that they get in return, there are too many people with no true love of music imprinting their brand of “The Corporation” onto how orchestras should do business, and for 3 decades we forgot to feed the wellspring of music – education and community outreach.
Here’s the crazy thing – maybe this is good. Maybe this will finally force everyone involved with classical music to think outside the box. Why rely on the flagship orchestra? It’s too expensive, it’s too impersonal, and it’s too rigid. It will never go away – some of these are like banks in that they’re too big to fail – but why don’t we pour our resources into small business? Small music. Chamber music. Solo artists. Flexible ensembles. If we nurture that side of classical music, and really, really concentrate on music education, perhaps 2 decades from now we’ll be out of this mess, and there will be enough support throughout society to support these orchestras again at a level that makes artistic and fiscal sense.
Or we can continue thinking and acting the way we have for the past 3 decades and wait for the trickle down effect to kick in. Personally, I’ve decided to not hold my breath.
Here I go again. I am absolutely convinced that the downward spiral of classical music is due to (1) a lack of great NEW music and (2) the extremely high fees paid to guest artists. The quality of new music has for many years been extremely low, to the point that audiences really don’t want to hear new works even a second time. People simply won’t come to a concert out of curiosity to hear new works that are not worth hearing and, at the same time, it seems that the saturation point with the standard repertoire has finally been reached. If you want to be persuaded about my first point, simply do a little research into how many times new works are played. Then, compare that to the number of “plays” that old music still gets in a single year. We are still making a living off of the music of Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Paganini, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bruch, Wagner, Verdi, Mascagni, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Sibelius, Mahler, Borodin, Strauss, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Barber, and other composers who died decades ago. Music schools have taught atonalism, minimalism, percussiveness, extreme complexity, and incoherency for a long while now and we have paid the price. As for point number 2, how much longer can orchestra budgets afford to pay artist fees of $25,000 per night and still survive? Why are these fees not being discussed? The orchestral musician is being asked to bear the brunt of the belt-tightening and THAT is unreasonable and illogical.
Actually, there’s tons of new music being composed and beloved — mostly film scores. Which the orchestras whine and bitch about playing because it’s pops, and so automatically too uncool for them to go near it.
The NYT thing is unfathomable, but sadly common (still annoyed at the STrib for dumping their critic years ago). Outrage doesn’t seem to bring staff critics back either, meaning you may be right that not enough people care or are taught to care. Media may still give lip service to the arts with part-time, freelance, or even volunteer critics, but clearly, “where your heart is, there is your treasure also.” Somehow newspapers find ways to cover sports events with three or four columnists worth of daily previews leading up to games, followed by a couple days and pages of post-mortems, but can’t cover major, once-in-a-lifetime artistic events with more than a chance nod in a weekly highlights calendar blurb.
We need to demand more of our media, our arts organizations, our schools and communities, but ultimately more of our selves. This stuff matters, and “forward thinking” can’t be confused with current “recto-cranial inversions.” Pogo was right in identifying the enemy. We have to have faith in the power and importance of the arts, coupled with courage of convictions, and not be apologetic about fighting for them. Tragic that so many wonderful musicians, orchestras, and audiences are getting burned in the leadership-vacuum, phoenix-into-the-fire period the arts seem to be going through now.
Even music education may not be enough. The only real answer is to make more music fans the old fashioned way; make babies, then show them from early in life that music is entwined with their well being. My mom used to put me to sleep at night to Mozart. Classical music was frequently on the record player (yes, I know this dates me) in our house. Of course, you have to follow it up with education, but education without parental nurturing is pouring water on barren soil.
If it’s too late to have more babies, there’s always grandchildren and other relatives you can corrupt under the guise of free babysitting.
I have to admit, I think it’s problematic that the “old fashioned way” to make musicians is so obviously to train people to sit still and listen, and not to make it themselves. JP Sousa was right.
I really shouldn’t have said “the only real way”. I was being a bit overdramatic. “An amusing alternative to consider” was closer to my original intent.