The Death of Classical Music?

[aconquija]

This is a great thread. It calls to mind an article I read recently regarding classical music in China. Here is an excerpt:

"The Chinese enthusiasm suggests the potential for a growing market for recorded music and live performances just as an aging fan base and declining record sales worry many industry executives in Europe and the United States. Sales for a top-selling classical recording in the West now number merely in the thousands instead of in the tens of thousands, as they did 25 years ago. More profoundly, classical music executives believe that the art form is being increasingly marginalized in the West by a sea of popular culture and new media."

The full article can be found here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/02/asia/china.php

I think that part of the problem for classical music during the last century has had to do with the major stylistic changes the art form has gone through. Even when I was studying composition in graduate school @6 years ago, students were frequently looked down upon if their music sounded too "tonal" or did not contain enough influence in the avant-garde. I am sure this isn't the prevailing attitude at every U.S. conservatory, but it goes a little way toward explaining why modern classical music can be tough for the un-trained to grasp. Let's face it, the average listener can have a hard time appreciating the music of a Schoenberg, a Boulez, a Messiaen or even a Stravinsky. We are living in an age where students have little or no exposure to classical music in the education system, so it is no wonder that concert attendance is down. Even in college, an entry level 101 course is generally narrowed to an overview of tonal music and may touch slightly upon 20th century music during the last few weeks. But those few weeks are the weeks during which the students just kind of mutter to themselves, scratch their heads and sit there wondering what in the world is going on.

I do think that the motion picture industry has had a positive impact on exposure to classical music styles. Remember when Corigliano won the Oscar? I was studying music in college at the time, and I can remember how happy everybody was that a well respected composer had won that award - we all felt a huge sense of accomplishment for the classical music world. What makes this especially ironic these days is that Joshua Bell, the violinist who performed on a large chunk of the score, just made the news for being virtually ignored while attempting to play anonymously for the public on the street.

Regardless, I don't think the future of classical music is hopeless. If anything, I think that styles are generally gravitating toward more tonal structures which will make modern music more accessible, and this will inevitably be helped by the advent of music technology. Maybe this will help create a resurgence in the appreciation of classical music. By putting an instrument such as the Gofriller or Strad in the hands of any computer user, I think we are opening the door to a whole new level of creativity and instrumental exposure. Not every student has the chance to find a performer or ensemble to record their music. And for what it's worth, I have created demos using these new instruments that are, sad to say, better than live performances of my compositions while I was still in school. Maybe now the problem will be that there will be plenty of music, but not enough competent performers to play it as music education systems completely collapse. When I was in high school, there was absolutely no music curriculum. That, to me, is a very scary prospect for future generations.

JS

[nikolas]

1. I have most albums of the ones I love (plenty), and I really see very little reason to go and buy yet a new version of Bethovens sonatas (for example). Kemph is fine for me (the 3rd recording he did btw)!

2. Contemporary music prettu much sucks in the 99%. I would never buy an album with MY own music, let alone others! Unless that other has a name like Schnittke, then :-/ Glad that my wife has a CD with works of Penderevsky. Of course there are other ways to hear works, but let's get into that (so that no one will come to tell me what I'm missing )

3. I have complainted elsewhere in this forum (the educational forums actually), and in other forums as well. Classical music should be dead by now. Contemporary composers have managed to bring "some" focus to them, thus leaving behind the grant masters (recording and expense wise). But nobody cares about contemporary music cause all the composers (including me of course), are either autistic (if you want), or even worst aunan! And I'm not kidding. Staying home and writing music for your drawer is a BAD idea!

4. with the Internet climbing SO HIGH, it's time that they realised that the only way for classical music to live is through concerts and not records. No orchestra in a CD can beat a live orchestra, as no sample can beat a live recording, as no classical album can beat a pop album!

5. Classical music status forbids for serious and offensive marketing techniques. Idiocy has made classical music either "calm" or "serious". Here in the UK there is the radio channel called "Classic FM". I loath it! I really do! Imagine that today, yes today, I heard the prelude from the 1st prelude and fugue by Bach. What moron would seperate these 2? Or the 14th variation from the variation on a theme of Paganini by Rachmaninov. (just some examples). The logo is "classic fm. To calm your spirit", or something, and the presenters seem to be talking like being asleep!

6. What's even worst with classical music is the length! With a nice pop song you get 3-4 minutes, a video clip with great boobs (which, yes I do like, I'm not blind), and plenty of dancing, selling, drinking. With a symphony of 35 minutes, you can't get any of these. Not to mention that no radio will play that. They should cut each movement for commercials!

Now, don't get me wrong.
I grew with classical music and I love classical music. All kinds (except Vivaldi. But if you're getting a guy who is extensively studying it, the "serious" kind, to hate the situation surounding it, then something must be wrong!

Either way, after 250 years of playing that damn 4 seasons, they already know how to play it and nothing new can come up from a new recording. Give it a rest will ya?

(So sorry for the rant. But I have a good excuse. I'm going through my upgrade to phd right now, and things are taugh. This was my break! Hope you enjoyed it!)

[nikolas]

Sorry, but this is rather too simmilar to let it be:

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/...ad.php?t=52297

focusing on contemporary music, but still :-/

[Doug Smith]

There is no easy or correct answer to this question, since the matter is quite complex and we don't have access to reliable data. Every commentator here has stated a piece of the larger truth, it seems to me. Further, I read a couple of the articles Gary has linked to, and the writers not only disagree with each other about the current state of classics recording but point out that we may not be able to rely on the industry's statistics.

Western classical music is the descendant of European court music, the music of the aristocracy. It has almost always been more complex and sophisticated than most of the music made by and for the common folk, hence less accessible to the masses. So there's a limit to how large the audience can grow no matter how much public education we pursue even for Mozart and Beethoven.

Contemporary music ought to be a steady new market, as it is for all popular genres. But modernism, whose adherents still dominate composition training in US universities and conservatories, and probably in most other Western societies, ensured with their unnatural, dissonant styles that classical audiences would be alienated by contemporary compositions and that new-music audiences would be smaller than miniscule. Suicide, in other words. No amount of education can make modernism palatable since it violates fundamental neurological processes (but that's a long digression). Modernists made audiences skittish about all contemporary classical music, so the new tonal composers have a hard time breaking in as well. A few like Arvo Pärt or Einaudi make names for themselves, but I'm already tired of the former and I share Pingu's impression of Einaudi.

On the business side, how many more recordings of Beethoven's 9th can the market sustain? I count about two dozen Tristan & Isolde recordings, and there must be far more of the popular orchestral pieces. Solti's Ring recording may have been profitable, because it was good and it was the first complete one, but what about the sixth complete Ring? That market is saturated, unless, as pointed out by others here, one considers the extreme low-budget CD outfits. Yet there's no direct financial reward for the artists from these recordings. In fact, the articles point out that artists now often pay to get recorded. Recordings serve the artists as advertising for reputations and concerts, and this I understand is true of popular genres as well.

On the musician side, the orchestral, opera, and ballet genres require large ensembles, hence large, permanent expenses that cannot be reduced. That is, until recently, with the advent of electronic tools such as recordings (accompanying live Sleeping Beauty performances, for instance) and hardware and software samplers as in popular music. Other industries work steadily on increasing productivity, but the Big City Philharmonic can't do it without firing musicians. They have to build a foundation of generous donors in the US, or in Europe they rely heavily on government support, which can shrink if the economic tide turns.

Then we have the blessing and the bane of the boundless recordings library that makes all the music of all times and places fairly easily accessible to anybody. How thick would a current Schwann catalog be now? We're drowning in easily available music of all kinds, which is wonderful, but it does distract from the classics. I suspect that the classical-music recording industry will always survive, but it will be forced constantly to adapt and cut expenses.

[Edi]

NIKOLAS,

About twenty minutes before you I said some of the same things as you, but I MUCH prefer your literary style and it is more in keeping with the points being made.

All the best,
Ed

[Edi]

...
...Western classical music is the descendant of European court music, the music of the aristocracy. It has almost always been more complex and sophisticated than most of the music made by and for the common folk, hence less accessible to the masses...

You may be too young to have seen "Amadeus": "My dear Mozart, too many notes, too many notes".

This is purely for amusement- I do take your statement seriously. But what you say about Arvo Part is exactly the problem with Neo-Romanticism.

(How did you get those two little dots over the "a" in "Part"!)

The problem of contemporary classical music is the same as that of contemporary culture: Maybe the sixties "went too far", which is really arguable but should we then go back to the 19th century idea of morality, which so many seem to want! Ahhhh!!! The 20th century did a great deal of "liberating" on many fronts but it had its problems. Now we have the choice to fix those problems and go forward or instead to go backward. So, youngsters, what's it gonna be?


Ed

[Edi]

The virtue of computer simulated traditional orchestral instruments has been succinctly and definitively expressed by Gary in his response to Stephan.

The artistically significant thing about sampled and other computer- generated sounds goes beyond the simulation of traditional western orchestral instruments. There is a very compelling analogy to photography and painting. When photography first was invented a great deal of discourse was about how it would impact painting. Of course, it did impact painting of the most mundane kind, particularly realistic portraiture. However, as we all know, photography as an art went on to develop totally independently of painting as an art form onto itself.

Similarly, computer generated sound has opened up a new sound-based art form in which a single individual artist can create a sound art object completely on his own, thus changing music from a performing art to an an art more like painting or sculpture.

This view of music (or sound art, if you must) has very little been exploited by "classical" musicians. In this regard rockers are way ahead of the game.

Ed

[Doug Smith]

You may be too young to have seen "Amadeus": "My dear Mozart, too many notes, too many notes".

Ha. This is most amusing. Would that it were true (too young to have...), and that I could keep my present level of understanding and knowledge. I taught my first college class as a grad student in the late 60s.

(How did you get those two little dots over the "a" in "Part"!)

It's called an Umlaut (German). I either copy/paste from an online source, as in this case (the article I had read), or I use MS Word. Select Insert>Symbol and click the symbol or letter/accent you want. There are lots of font possibilities, just search till you find one that has your symbol. "Normal/text" has the French/German/Spanish diacritics. Other word processors surely have a comparable feature. There used to be hot-key combinations (in DOS) but they keep changing.

It took a while to compose my previous speech, after reading up to Pingu's post. In the meantime others echoed many of my sentiments, I see.

[germancomponist]

Gary,

this thread raises an important discussion.

Before I mean opinion to this topic deliver, I translate very before carefully my thoughts on it.

I have to say much to this topic. Commercial is in the long run the seed of the money-greedy! These money-greedy do not have respect for any culture, art, ability or whatever.

Best
Gunther

[germancomponist]

Gunther,

Well said - to your list I would add their lack of respect for humanity, other living things, the very planet that gives them life - even themselves or their own families and future generations.

They don't respect - yet they demand it towards themselves. They don't spend any time or effort earning it - paradoxical isn't it?


Bis Spater!
stephen

Hello Stephen,

the money greedy acres possessed OF the devil. And they make everything broken for us! In the long run, the money greedy are soooo poor!

Bis später