NY Times Sunday Dialogue on Saving Classical Music

[Mirror Image]

I believe 20th Century music has a chance of survival and here's why: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/alex-ross-inspires-a-festival-all-20th-century-music-all-the-time/

[Karl Henning]

That's so last century, John . . . .

[Mirror Image]

That's so last century, John . . . .

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

The WSO has a tremendously popular and well attended "New Music Festival" that runs every year for a whole week between the end of January and beginning of February.

That's really impressive, especially considering how friggin' cold it gets there.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Exactly. An excised part of my letter

Brian, could you post the whole letter please?

People who think that the 1800s were a golden age are forgetting that back then everybody whistled stuff like Yankee Doodle, not tunes from Reger viola suites.

Think how different the whole experience of music was in the 19th century. There were no recordings, and unless you lived in a large city (or had your own palace or whatever), your chances to hear an orchestra or opera were rare. Most people knew classical music from piano and chamber reductions - there was a thriving business in those. To hear music you had to put in some effort; not like today when you can just flip a switch and have the Berlin Philharmonic in your living room.

[not edward]

I'd have contributed if I'd known about this this, with my usual spiel: noting that in my experience many younger listeners (often those interested in the more intelligent offshoots of various popular musics) are at least as likely to respond to comparatively new music as they are to the classics.

I've managed to help push along the interest of a few people through Ligeti, Schnittke and the like. I'm sure they'd have got interested anyway, because they were intellectually curious, but at the time they were completely unaware that "classical music" could sound this way, and found the experiences pretty revelatory.

Oh, and earlier this year I sent a non-classical-listening friend a link to Bruce's favourite, Professor Bad Trip, on Youtube. A couple of days later I get a reply saying "This is awesome. I didn't know classical music had a Captain Beefheart. CD recommendations, please."

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

they were completely unaware that "classical music" could sound this way, and found the experiences pretty revelatory.

The term "classical music" is part of the problem. We use it for everything from Perotin to Xenakis, which doesn't make a great deal of sense. Unfortunately we don't have any better term at the moment, at least one that most people would understand.

[Brian]

I will say that the single most effective composer for "evangelizing," in my own experience, has been Shostakovich. My best classical-loving friend was hooked by Shosty's Fifth and then his violin concertos. And I'll always treasure the memory of two black dudes with chains dangling from their blue jeans showing up to a performance of Shosty's second piano trio, hearing that the Shosty was canceled because of an injury to a performer, and loudly complaining that Houston had some kind of blockade on Shostakovich and it was pissing them off.

Now then, my original letter, which I'm afraid doesn't name-check contemporary composers like I though it did.

--

Classical music is not dead; it's not even resting. But, like a listen to an unfamiliar and challenging work, one's experience depends a great deal on one's frame of mind.

The classical world is evolving. Live listening experiences are incorporating new elements like video feeds, audience chats, short lunch- or dinnertime programs, and late-night cocktail concerts. The old major record labels have been largely replaced by new majors (Naxos and Harmonia Mundi chief among them) and a constellation of specialty labels. Admirers of the baroque know to look for Ramée CDs, while keyboard lovers can buy albums from Grand Piano. Even Houston, Texas hosts a contemporary opera society (Opera Vista), a chamber music group (Da Camera), the all-black Ebony Opera Guild, and not one but two early music ensembles (Mercury Baroque and Ars Lyrica).

Yes, radio stations are abandoning classical formats, but the sounds still echo on streaming sites like Spotify and online shops like iTunes (home of the album "Binders Full of Women Composers"). I linked my Twitter followers to a YouTube video of a mass by Jan Dismas Zelenka and an old college classmate found it profoundly moving. Last year, I watched the Glyndebourne Opera's Meistersinger live through a feed on my laptop screen.

Does my own perspective influence my optimism? Undoubtedly: I am twenty-three years old and felt no qualms watching Gerald Finley sing Wagner while clad in my pajamas. Classical music has never had a mass audience; even in Beethoven's day it was to popular music as Breaking Bad is now to network TV. My generation is shaping the musical world in the same way Mr. Dreyer's influenced his.

Many things will change, but some will not. Artists are as plentiful and talented as ever before. Audiences are engaged by new twists on concert-going traditions. And nothing can ever diminish the power of the music.

Brian Reinhart

[Brian]

Oh, and earlier this year I sent a non-classical-listening friend a link to Bruce's favourite, Professor Bad Trip, on Youtube. A couple of days later I get a reply saying "This is awesome. I didn't know classical music had a Captain Beefheart. CD recommendations, please."

Just found this on Youtube. Damn is it awesome.

[ibanezmonster]

The term "classical music" is part of the problem. We use it for everything from Perotin to Xenakis, which doesn't make a great deal of sense. Unfortunately we don't have any better term at the moment, at least one that most people would understand.

And to add to that, there aren't enough distinctions in subgenres.

Punk, rock, and metal have a good amount of subgenres which are helpful in understanding which general style is used. Metal may go overboard on the amount of genres, but at least you know what to expect. What style is Xenakis? Metastasis is "avant-garde classical," or "20th century classical," or maybe even (stretching it) "contemporary classical." Metastasis is an avant-garde orchestral work, but so are the orchestral works of, say, Scelsi, even though they are completely different in style.

What's the label for Boulez's non-serial music? Lachenmann's early (I think) serial music? Darmstadt? That's not even really a label; it's just referring to a school within that city.

New Complexity, Spectral, Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, Holy Minimalist... all great labels. Still not enough labels, though.

[Mirror Image]

And to add to that, there aren't enough distinctions in subgenres.

Punk, rock, and metal have a good amount of subgenres which are helpful in understanding which general style is used. Metal may go overboard on the amount of genres, but at least you know what to expect. What style is Xenakis? Metastasis is "avant-garde classical," or "20th century classical," or maybe even (stretching it) "contemporary classical." Metastasis is an avant-garde orchestral work, but so are the orchestral works of, say, Scelsi, even though they are completely different in style.

What's the label for Boulez's non-serial music? Lachenmann's early (I think) serial music? Darmstadt? That's not even really a label; it's just referring to a school within that city.

New Complexity, Spectral, Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, Holy Minimalist... all great labels. Still not enough labels, though.

Why get hung up on labels? I mean why can't music be enjoyed without putting it into some kind of bubble or category? When I say I like 20th Century music, it means exactly what it implies --- music of the 20th Century. That should be enough. I mean I understand the need for somebody who works a record store to categorize music by this genre or that genre, but for this listener I either enjoy the music or I don't. People have to over-complicate things when there's no need in it. I'm starting to feel like Duke Ellington when he said "There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind."

[The Six]

These photos of aging rock stars make the point perhaps more graphically than is decent:

http://www.mandatory.com/2012/08/20/rock-stars-age-just-like-the-rest-of-us-and-it-aint-pretty/

At least classical performers tend to age gracefully.

If classical performers were cool enough to get all the heroin and loose women they wanted, they'd look like that, too.

[Karl Henning]

It isn't the loose women who do that damage. (They tell me.)

[Karl Henning]

Why get hung up on labels?

You've clean missed the point here. It isn't the question of a group of people already familiar with the meta-idiom, "getting hung up on labels." It's that the umbrella term "classical music" miscommunicates to the rank "outsider".

Did you read Edward's post?

[Brian]

If classical performers were cool enough to get all the heroin and loose women they wanted, they'd look like that, too.

James Rhodes at 37, with Cyrillic Rachmaninov tattoo:



(James Rhodes, reviewed by me. He's a great example of how classical artists can bust out of all the fusty old stereotypes without sacrificing their artistic integrity.)

[Mirror Image]

You've clean missed the point here. It isn't the question of a group of people already familiar with the meta-idiom, "getting hung up on labels." It's that the umbrella term "classical music" miscommunicates to the rank "outsider".

Did you read Edward's post?

Yes, I read the article and thought "Oh, another one of these?" There's so much going on in the world and things in my own life that I guess this topic is just ridiculous to me. Classical music, like jazz, will always be a dying art form and on the outside. That's just the way it is and people should stop writing articles about classical music that ask these kinds of questions, because the bottom line is people are going to listen to what they want whether it's popular or not.

[Brian]

Classical music, like jazz, will always be a dying art form

Whoa be careful with your terminology. Things can't always be dying, because things that are dying stop dying and become dead. Classical music and jazz will always have niche popularity, is what you mean - the way classical music has had niche popularity since its inception.

[Karl Henning]

Whoa be careful with your terminology. Things can't always be dying, because things that are dying stop dying and become dead. Classical music and jazz will always have niche popularity, is what you mean - the way classical music has had niche popularity since its inception.

Word. Mortality don't enter into it.  Classical music is not shuffling off this mortal coil.

[Karl Henning]

I will say that the single most effective composer for "evangelizing," in my own experience, has been Shostakovich. My best classical-loving friend was hooked by Shosty's Fifth and then his violin concertos.

It'd kill Froot Loops to hear it!

[Florestan]

An excised part of my letter pointed out that even in Beethoven's time, the mass populace was not all flocking to see Beethoven live.

Very true, but then again Beethoven's funerals were attended by more than 20,000 people, according to contemporary records --- meaning that classical music in general and a famous composer in particular had a fame and prestige that far surpassed anything seen in present days. Of those 20,000+ people one can safely bet that at most 500 (and I'm being very generous) ever heard his live concerts --- yet they flooded the streets the day of his burial. Not having heard a single iota of his music, what prompted them to do so nevertheless?

Classical music has lost some of its status-symbol prestige and expense (that is, we're not all dukes and counts with court orchestras!)

True again but then you say:

The classical world is evolving. Live listening experiences are incorporating new elements like [...], audience chats, short lunch- or dinnertime programs, and late-night cocktail concerts.

Well, these elements are not new in the least; on the contrary, they are the very practice which all those dukes and counts were accustomed to; the very thought that they should have experience music sitting stiff and still and motionless and speechless would have been completely alien to them. So in this respect we are not witnessing any novelty; we are returning to the old "dukes and counts" practice; the only new thing is that there are no more dukes and counts...

nothing can ever diminish the power of the music.

Once again, true --- this time without any qualifications.