Happy new year, everyone! I’ve been slow restarting here. Much holiday travel and happiness, and a weekend in our country house, flying Rafa’s new remote control helicopter clear over the roof.
And then preparations for my spring semester Juilliard course, Classical Music in an Age of Pop. The link takes you to last year’s class schedule, with all assignments, but this year’s will be reasonably similar. For a shorter read, here’s a course overview.
And now…
…I’ll tease some upcoming blog posts…
How will we know when classical music is truly back, when it’s been reborn, when the crisis we’re having now is truly over?
Answer: We’ll see a new, young, paying audience filling our halls. And we’ll see new classical pieces that matter in the wider culture, that have as much impact as Hamilton.
Questions:
Do we believe these things are possible?
If not, why not?
If we don’t believe these things can happen, how can we believe that classical music can ever matter again? I mean matter to the world at large, as it used to in past generations. When so often it set the tone for the culture at large.
And finally…what would have to change to make our mark on the world this year.
Comments welcome. I was a bit amazed when, on Facebook, some people seemed to think it would demean classical music to make a mark on the outside world, the way (an example I gave) Hamilton has.
But how could that be? If a classical piece changed the course of our culture, wouldn’t that mean classical music now was central to our world, and really made a difference?
Or do we believe that, in our time — very much in contrast to past generations — classical music has to stand outside the culture. Because it’s exalted and complex, while the culture at large is simplistic and shallow.
If that’s true, then our culture has badly devolved in the past century or so. Once it was good enough to take leadership from classical music, but now somehow it isn’t. Making classical music a pocket of resistance, a stubborn remnant of better times, a small spark of future hope.
That makes no sense to me. But apparently it does to others. Comments welcome!
As someone who is in his 75th winter, I must say that I don’t recall that “classical music” (which is not a good term for the genre, I think most of us agree) really had any more of an impact on the nation’s culture in general than it does now.
Exceptions might be mentioned, of course. Van Cliburn’s triumph in Moscow made something of an impression at the height of the Cold War, but only in a few headlines. Jackie Kennedy might have attracted a few people’s attention to Casals, but at that time pop music was already what nearly every American listened to. Oh yes — there were also some Disney cartoons, and Fantasia.
So when you talk about the huge impact of classical music in the past, you might be referring to an earlier time, perhaps the 1920s and 1930s. But I’m doubtful about those days, too.
We just can’t ignore the fact that “classical music” (at least the kind of music I’m interested in) is *indeed* more complex and less approachable for most people, by nature, than popular music. Of course, there is also “cross-over” music, John Williams’ film scores, and so forth. But until radio stations playing Shostakovich string quartets and TV networks carrying Met opera performances are as common as ones who don’t, or are even within shouting distance of them, I will still have to think that “classical music” is not going to sweep the nation, unlike George Gershwin’s “love.”
What also has to be taken into account, I think, is the history of the entertainment/musical media themselves. Decades ago, recording and radio were just getting underway, and television didn’t even exist. So Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra managed to be pretty prominent on NBC, and Bernstein could show up in TV specials. Only relatively “upper-class” folks could afford to buy the equipment to listen to the highest-fidelity recordings and broadcasts that were available then. Now we are flooded with entertainment media which nearly everyone has access to, and classical music has a much greater amount of competition to cope with.
Nevertheless, I appreciate your efforts to fight the good fight, and I would agree that there is some prospect that new composers and performers will gradually attract bigger audiences. I doubt that they will get to the level of a “Hamilton” for a long, long time, though.
Yes. If you alter “demean” to “change in a way I don’t like” there are many examples about.
In music, perhaps trad jazz is the clearest historical example and, as a result, is dead or dying in most places.
And remember when Dylan went electric?
I’ve come across comments objecting to surtitles in opera.
Opera cannot be made simple. You must do your homework. As a minimum, several days’ research before seeing an opera. With Wagner, this includes learning all the motifs before your first Ring cycle.
Back to your main point, Greg, my guess is that mainstream classical music concerts won’t change much. They are hostages to their existing audiences. The rejuvenation that you and I want will come mostly with new performers, new venues and new audiences I reckon.
In tech, it’s disruption that achieves these changes.
More, and probably better developed, thoughts to come…
Meanwhile, I hope 2017 has started well for all three of you and just gets better n better.
Always great observations and questions Greg!
The answers I’ve come up with, the ones I’ve made work in all settings, are to reset the context for classical music, making sure the new audience quickly understands how the conventions developed, how they can be updated so they can participate, and how they can approach the challenges of the concert tradition without panic.
Being art-centric, instrumental classical music simply can’t enjoy popularity like Hamilton simply because it’s vocal, rhythmic, dancing and rapping in current styles: it’s commercial (audience-centric) to an extreme. That doesn’t mean art music is never commercial; it usually has to break even, if not make a modest profit. Today, enough of us musicians seem ready to throw off the “a true artist must suffer” paradigm and embrace CRAFTSMANSHIP as an equal balance or alternation of opposing extremes (artistry and commercialism). To be sure, most artists need to earn a living and are thus defacto commercial entities. And orchestras have adopted commercial programs (pops) to help pay for their strictly artistic programs. What has been missing are services that POPULARIZE or sweeten or even EXPLAIN the tradition that is so mysterious to most Americans.
If we want to hip young, diverse, even older Americans to the HISTORY of this music tradition, it is best to blend it with what they are already familiar and common musical elements. Thus adding some sharp beats via soft drumming, using projectors, dancers, even singers and body language to dramatize our performances, letting audience join in the fortes with soft eggshakers — these are not the DEATH of music (although many veterans will think so), rather it is the ADAPTATION of music intended for the majority OUTSIDE the arts bubbles. “New Classical” as I call it doesn’t replace the tradition; it creates alternatives, some steps toward and introductions to the tradition. And it is not for the music veterans or even the musicians to criticize it, because it is not intended for them. Exclusivity and frankly academia have been both blessings and curses to the art form; preventing the musicians from adapting the music to the larger humanity, who also owns it (public domain).
Classical music will always play a great role in the music industry. Although such genre is not often being listened to, there will always that moment when you tend to appreciate its sound. My love for classical music is here to stay and I actually got more inspired by reading this post, Thanks for sharing.
While it might be nice for classical music to make a mark on the broader culture, I would like to reserve the right to be irrelevant, and, paradoxically, that might be the sought after relevance. Personally, in the aftermath of the deplorable election, I had quite a burst of creative energy and composed a lot, but not pieces of impotent rage. (My sketches ranged from goofy to serene.) The refuge of, for example, exploring arcane nuances of 9 against 7 polymeter might be the actual utility of classical music. But how to get a broader audience to find it useful? Our benchmark is even higher than Hamilton – it is Beethoven. How can instrumental music (of course leaving the last movement of the 9th aside) express things about the human condition that would be felt by a significant slice of the literate class today? I hope your students try to find an answer . . .
It is interesting to me that for all the political humor, protest songs and arts-based activism in the past several months, the biggest mark made by the cultural sector has been the cultural embargo on the inauguration, a negative act. What active expression would speak as powerfully?