As I said in my last post, I ask the students in my Juilliard course on the future of classical music special questions online. I do this to supplement what we do in class, and — in this very complex discussion — to touch on things we might not otherwise get to.
In my last post, I quoted the first question I asked, about what classical music will be like in 20 years. The question after that was more personal. It was cued to what we talked about in class this week (follow the link and scroll down to February 4). Which was how classical music does — or doesn’t — relate to the rest of our culture.
A killer question, I think, because it goes right to the heart of our biggest problem, which is how to attract a new audience. We (talking about all of us together in this field) have many ideas about how to do this. Restore classical music education in our schools. Or go out in the world and find our new people where they work, live, and play. Which means we have to join their culture.
(Regular readers will know that’s my answer. And I’d say that most of the students, without rejecting other approaches, seem down with it.
Restoring music education seems to me like a fantasy, something not likely to happen, and not likely to work. Why that’s true should be a separate post. I’ll say just one thing now, about practicality. If the problem is that our society doesn’t value classical music, then how will it muster the money and the political will to make classical music part of every kid’s education?
Or, to put it differently: If the problem is that we give classical music a high priority and the rest of our culture doesn’t, why do we think that everyone else will turn around, and make our priority theirs?)
But back to the second question I asked my students online. It gets at a deeper query, and an important one, which we don’t pose to ourselves often enough. If we want to find a new audience, what do we know about the people we want to reach? Do we really know who they are, what they enjoy, what their culture is?
Too often, I think the answer is no. So here — moving into that tricky area — is the question I put to my students:
Think of the people in your life — your family, your friends, whoever. I’d guess that some are classical music people. Other musicians, people who love classical music, people who go to classical concerts.
But some people in your world might not be into classical music. They might think they might like it, and might say they that really ought to go to a concert someetime. (I keep meeting people like that.) Or they might not care about it in any way. Or they might have some problem with classical music. They might say that they don’t understand it, or that it’s too complicated, or it’s too stuffy, or too elitist. Or many other things!
As you think about the people in your life, which kind do you have more of? Classical music people, or people who don’t relate to classical music? If you have people who don’t relate to classical music, do they say why they don’t? What are their reasons?
And — whichever way this works out with you — how does it affect your understanding of classical music’s future? If you know many people who don’t relate to classical music, does this help you understand what we might do to reach them? And if you mostly know classical music people, does that make it harder for you to understand how we might reach the outside world?
It’s too early to say much about what my students answered. Their responses have been marvelously individual, and for that reason hard to summarize. Though I might say that the people they know (friends and family) who don’t go to classical concerts seem hard to turn around. These people might say they’d like to go, but for various reasons — classical music just isn’t on their radar; classical concerts seem too formal; they’d rather do other things; classical music is dying, so why bother? — in practice they don’t go.
Here’s my own answer:
I grew up in a classical music household, and heard classical music from my earliest days. No surprise I grew up loving it, especially since this was in the 1950s, when classical music was far more popular than it was now, and had a much younger audience.
And now, because I work in the classical music biz, I’d say that most of the people I know are into classical music. But they might not be standard classical music lovers. Because of the particular work I do, the classical music people I’m close to tend to be those who want classical music to change. (Though lately — a subject to explore later on — that seems to be just about everyone.)
I spent several years in the pop music world, as a newspaper pop critic, and as music critic and music editor of Entertainment Weekly magazine. Which gave me a solid grounding in popular culture. But that wasn’t new for me. I started loving rock & roll when I was a pre-teen, the very years when rock & roll exploded. And I kept my love for it, and other kinds of pop music, and for jazz, throughout my life.
My listening, these days, is all over the map. So I think I’m AC/DC — able to understand the classical music world from the inside, and very comfortable (if not always current) in the varied, shifting landscape of popular culture. If I have any problem it might (honesty here) be losing patience, once in a while, with people who have a traditional classical music view, don’t like the changes, and maybe decry popular culture becuase they think it’s [fill in the blank: ugly, shallow, empty, anti-art, anti-intellectual, many other bad things].
But I’ve learned, I hope, to show them respect. First because that’s the decent thing to do, simply on a human level. And of couse also because in my work, I need to reach as many people in the field as possible. And I can’t do that if I don’t trust and respect people who might disagree with me.
Your comment here about relative priorities is timely, given the NEA’s release of research data showing that people participate in the arts for reasons that differ dramatically from what we assume.
When asked, arts patrons explain that they go primarily for social reasons, but also for learning and belonging reasons and, of course, because they have an affinity for the art form. Sadly, classical music institutions almost never ask. And if they do, the answers they get never inform the way they speak to new audiences.
I suspect that classical music organizations don’t do research into new audience motives because they’re afraid of learning that affinity for the art form is lower on the priority list than enjoying time with friends. Enjoying time with friends is a perfectly good reason to go to a concert, but it’s a motive that classical music professionals find insulting. They should be coming for the music, and not just any music that might make a night out enjoyable, but THIS music. And the music should the reason for the social experience, not the other way around.
We have to respect the eclectic tastes and casual motives of new audiences, and we have to relate to them in a manner that validates their choices, which is something classical music administrators can’t quite bring themselves to do.
Very well stated Trevor. On top of denial in the established industry are the complications that arise from considering servicing two different sides of the same coin: the social and the artistic. There’s no conflict with a perspective that recognizes, embraces and intends to service BOTH sides. And yet it remains impossible out of fearful perceptions of losing support, both financial and artistic, for “purity of essence”, which afterall was hard won. This is why I’ve proposed that orchestras build a special series ONLY for diverse audiences that starts VERY small, doesn’t cost much, but which can grow toward what the AUDIENCE, if we’re listening, needs it to be. Classical Revolution is a good example.