"But music gets to us more strongly. It envelops us; we can’t escape from it."

We meet again, and under such auspicious circumstances. It is quite a set of wandering queries you float in your chaplet (a small chapel?) A tedious fellow from Caius has just published a 'drome' arguing that Poetry is the highest art form; he might have some Tory aesthetic history you can borrow.

But seriously, do you think there is a fundamental need to re-create 'classical' music? Glyndebourne just finished expanding its hall to fit more people. No one can get a billet to Covent Garden; the Proms is booming (even though Albert Hall isn't air conditioned and the concerts are in the summer). And I see horrible new opera all the time. But then I have to suffer through La Boheme and Butterfly, which are thoroughly mediocre.

After researching and ruminating on the attacks and defenses of poesie from Plato to the NEA, my conclusion was that the arts are notoriously healthy, and just won't go away. Now, the institutions may change. (And I am a UN delegate to the WSIS in November in Tunis, where I am proposing an entire new concept of "intellectual property".) But Mozart will still be around.

NB: I've always talked while I performed (a friend who does research on chick brains says it has something to do with white noise in the frontal lobe). And, in at least one Bach work, I don't play hands together.

Always good to have a positive view. Sometimes I think that classical music these days might be like Russia in 1916, a year before the revolution. Yes, you can go to concerts packed with interested people. Just as, in 1916, the Tsar may well have had glorious soireés in his palace. And then the deluge.

Or as somebody I know said a couple of years ago, "Classical music is like East Germany a month before the Wall fell."

There are certainly classical music institutions in the US with falling ticket sales -- the Metropolitan Opera being one scary example. But it's worth pondering (as Christine said in a later e-mail) what happens if major institutions die. Mozart will still be around. But a lot of musicians will be out of work. Already there are signs (see a recent story in the Pittsburgh newspaper, for instance) that there's less freelance work for classical musicians than there used to be.

These are big questions. I wish I had Christine's delicious good humor.

First of all, thanks for adding to my blog addiction. I was particularly intrigued by your story about Mark in the classical section of Tower records. Yes, the record companies may not "get" how to market classical music, but I am an advocate that this shortcoming can be compensated at the local level.

I have found that my experiences in places like Tower are very similar to Mark's despite the fact that I buy lots of classical recordings. Here in Seattle, Tower is pretty much the only place to buy classical recordings. My biggest peeve is that most stores that carry any classical here usually relegate the section to the very back of the
store making it even more uninviting to the casual browser. Many is the time I have had to push though carts packed with material to be stocked to browse through the classical section. I am sure that the casual browser is not go to resort to this, but rather just move on.

Most disheartening is the lack of guidance provided by the stores. This stands in marked contrast to the stores catering to the independent rock crowd. Most neighborhoods in Seattle host an independent music store that features very a opinionated staff that is more than willing to guide you on your way whether you want them to or not. In addition all of the stores feature racks of "Staff Picks" usually accompanied by snarky notes about why they like the recordings. It is certainly cheaper to buy the recording online, so I have to think that it is this guidance that keeps these places alive.

Can it really be that this model is not applicable to classical music? I would really like to believe that a city the size of Seattle can support such a venture. Maybe I am just dreaming. What I wouldn't give to go into classical music store and have an opera queen (I mean that in the best possible sense) gush on about a recording of a singer
I have never heard of, or provide a very opinionated alternative to the latest crossover craze. A snarky staff pick about why I should listen to Leonie Rysanek rather than the soprano of the moment, bring it on. You better believe I would return to that store.

A slightly unrelated note. I am currently obsessed with 20/21th century music. An obsession started in all places the ballet. A short piece to a Gyorgy Ligeti piano etude, turned me into a Ligeti freak and provided an entry to contemporary music. There are lots on avenues into classical music, even contemporary music. I guess the
problem is finding them and making them inviting.

Many thanks for this. At the NYC Tower branch at Lincoln Center, there are a few staff picks. Very sweet, not too convincing, mostly for classical performances from past generations, full of gushing language like "absolutely wonderful!"

Not sure I can blame record stores for putting classical in the back. Sales are low; better put the top-selling stuff in the front. In Tower's case, I can't quite imagine how they can afford the big classical departments they still have in some stores. The revenue per square foot (or however stores calculate such things) must be miniscule.

Greg

Note that there are more comments on the book, attached to my entry on comments.

Your description of "The Pastoral" made me grin: "If this final movement were a painting—“Peasants Celebrating After a Thunderstorm”—we could study it and then walk on. But music gets to us more strongly. It envelops us; we can’t escape from it. And so the rejoicing, if it moves us very deeply, really needs some explanation."

Since you are a music critic and composer, I understand your bias. However, a masterpiece in any media may move many of us just as deeply. It's just that with recorded music, it's so much easier to repeatedly commune with both a masterpiece and its interpreters.

A very good point, especially (as you say) for an aurally inclined person like myself.

I do think music -- classical music, anyway -- can be inescapable in performance. A piece starts, and you're basically stuck listening to it until it's over. So maybe the emotional immersion, while equally strong from other media, has an especially enveloping quality in music.

The subject of your book-in-progress is near and dear to me, and my head is spinning with all sorts of thoughts right now. I'll begin with a story similar to those you've told here. I once went to an all-classical Tower annex in Los Angeles with a friend who doesn't listen to classical music. Looking at the wall-to-wall volumes of CDs, he said "how do you even know where to start?" I suspected he wasn't asking "do you start with A and then work toward Z when browsing CDs." I think he meant "how do you know what to listen to, how do you discern one recording from another?" This got me thinking about how someone new to this music would start, and it made me realize that many people probably find classical music daunting and threatening, even though it isn't.

Now, he could start by reading classical music magazines such as Gramophone or Fanfare. But unless he has musical training or years of experience listening to recordings, it's likely these publications will scare him away. As it is practiced today, music criticism is largely about looking for perfection in performances, about technical minutiae, about arguments regarding which recordings and performers are better than others, and much of it is written with the assumption that readers have substantial musical knowledge. But I can imagine that my friend would only come away from these magazines with bemusement, confusion, or lack of interest.

I've always believed that certain habits of thought prevail in criticism of any kind, and they are very hard to escape. In reading music criticism lately (and in my own writing about music, which I don't do professionally), I've wondered if a change is necessary. Is the way we think and write about music helpful? Why don't critics talk more about the experience of listening to a recording, about the aural and sensual and emotional aspects of a concert? Why don't we talk more about what great music means to us, how it makes us feel?

I realize that writing about music in this manner is very difficult; it's hard not to sound trite or cliched, hard to avoid purple prose. But perhaps it's what classical music needs to make it more appealing, to keep it alive. Enthusiasm and passion and articulation are infectious, and classical music needs champions who can talk in ways that affect people.

I read magazines like Gramophone regularly (and there's a part of my brain that loves the technical discussions), but I rarely remember what I've read. Only rarely is a review truly memorable. Bryce Morrison's recent review of Daniel Barenboim's recording of Book II of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier is one of the rare ones. He did mention some of the technical aspects of Barenboim's playing, but throughout the entire review there was a very clear sense of great affection and admiration. And even though Morrison maintained that purists wouldn't like this CD, he didn't seem to care. Most of all, he concluded with something I personally thought was wonderful. He said: "For Barenboim, as for Andras Schiff, Bach is the most 'romantic' of composers and his imaginative fullness and delicacy laugh to scorn a less bold or inclusive view. How Jacqueline du Pre, his late wife, would have warmed to such performances; this is music-making after her own heart." It's the kind of comment that I believe is too rare in music writing, and it's the very thing that made me purchase the CD.

So we need, I believe, more ardent expressions of genuine appreciation. Of course, as you argue here, there are many more issues than this, some of which have to do with presentation. I agree about classical music CD covers. The way the major labels used to (and sometimes still do) package the music makes it seem as if only antiquarians would be interested in the stuff. Thankfully, minor labels like Black Box and Naive and Onyx and ECM are offering more exciting, more appealing covers. The major labels are finally, reluctantly, changing in this respect, but much more needs to be done before people like my friend can walk into a classical music store and feel welcome and believe with confidence that starting with classical music will be exciting and rewarding.

Thanks so much for these thoughts, impressions, anecdotes, opinions. You've given an example of the way music might be written about -- from a personal, rather than historical, theoretical, or analytical point of view. I've advocated that kind of writing very strongly, and tried to practice it myself. Some others do, as well. I'd certainly recommend my favorite critics of the past, George Bernard Shaw and Virgil Thomson. And also my wife, Anne Midgette, who's currently a music critic for the New York Times. Check out this recent review of hers, to see what I mean. I've often asked the Juilliard students I teach to pick some piece they play, and find a way to tell people who don't know classical music what they love about it. It's an exercise in learning to do what you're talking about.

You wrote your comment from the heart. Thanks again. And did your friend ever find any classical CDs to buy?

Both you and Michael S. write about the difficulty of starting to listen to classical music partly because the sections in stores are large, if I may thus sum up the matter.

I myself am fairly new to classical music, in the sense that I had no unvoluntary contacts with the field... I first started at 14 to just buy records of this and that, mainly budget priced.

There probably is no other way to start, unless you have friends to tell you what to buy, or let you have a go at their (hopefully large) CD collection.

Unfortunately, stores are not especially known to employ experts in things other than mere selling, so there's no help to be expected in that respect.

Other than that, I see one basic flaw in the whole argumentation: that all this (complexity, confusion) should be limited to classical music. It's the very same situation when you want a "best of" compilation of any major pop artist, or almost anything else in the field of any other kind of music. You don't usually go buy "a CD of guitar rock" and therefore to want a "CD of piano music" is probably the wrong notion to start becoming something of an expert, or just somebody who feels delighted rather than intimidated in front of a huge shelf of records. You might get a CD of piano music, and that's that.

There are lots of libraries offering CDs with classical music where you could weigh Klemperer against Bernstein, but if you just want to read some Shakespeare, it, too, might not be the best idea to start and compare editions. That'll come soon enough.

You raise a good point, one I've thought about a lot. Why should the situation of classical music be unique? Of course somebody without any knowledge of pop would be baffled in a record store. I think the difference, though, is that classical music is shrinking, and needs to find ways to make itself more accessible. And, to put this more strongly, to make itself more interesting, and even more artistic. To SAY something, if you'll excuse me shouting. The pop department of a record store is thronged with people who know what they're looking at. The classical department is relatively empty, and even many of the people who go there interested to buy something don't know what they're lookking at.

You're right when you say there are many ways to start listening. But most people, even those with some mild degree of interest, may not ever do that. We need to understand why.

Greg,

I found myself responding most to your story about Jed and the Pastoral on a different basis.

You make the point that classical music is not a contemporary art. And I think implicit in that is the feeling that it makes it less vital, or even non-vital. (You say earlier about theaters doing living playwrights, etc.)

But theaters also do plays by dead playwrights. Shakespeare's a popular fellow and he predates almost all canonical classical music. And old movies are popular. There are TV stations that show endless reruns of Leave it to Beaver and Gilligan's Island.

I'm being a little silly in that, but I think a hugely relevant distinction is that most classical music is, by nature, abstract. I don't think our culture's particularly good about abstraction. I think in the media-driven, celebrity-addled, television-saturated, hyper-marketed society that we have, something as abstract as a symphony, that has no meaning or narrative or pictorialization, falls flat with most people.

Pieces that aren't abstract -- operas and symphonic poems, primarily -- have other difficulties; foreign language is a barrier to the former, and not having the first clue about the program is a barrier to the latter, which would render Totentanz to be it as abstract as, say, either Mozart G-minor Symphony.

I think the great difficulty about classical music's reception nowadays is that people approach art wanting to know what it *means,* what it's about. A play or a movie, no matter when it was written/produced, has a story; at it's most basic level, the meaning can be just what the story is. If they don't know what it's about, it's far easier to dislike it, or be confused.

So most people don't know what classical music's about because trio sonatas and string quartets aren't really about anything. Non-classical music, 99% of which are songs, with lyrics in a language its listeners understand, is like a movie or a play; it's about whatever the singer is singing about. Love, loneliness, patriotism, why birds suddenly appear, cop-killing, you name it.

But to the point: I posit that the Pastoral's different. Not only is it one of the most perfectly evocative program pieces ever created, Disney helpfully supplied the world with some very well-matched visuals; as a result, everybody who's seen Fantasia "gets" the Pastoral Symphony. (Same for Sorceror's Apprentice, for that matter.) So it doesn't surprise me that Jed professes a love for the Pastoral, presuming he's seen Fantasia, but doesn't particularly care about the orchestra playing it. I'm not saying that he sees centaurs and unicorns and satyrs in his head while the music's playing, but that this is a piece of music whose story he knows.

David, thanks for all of this. Very good thoughts. Very helpful to me. I think we disagree about the abstraction of classical music, though. I don't think the pieces in the standard repertoire seemed abstract when they were written. The musical language was familiar; many of its detailed connotations were familiar. In the Baroque era, everybody knew which affect every piece of music had; they could also recognize the dance rhythms in virtually every piece. Audiences in Mozart's or Beethoven's time followed -- or so I believe -- sonata form like a narrative, or an adventure. Thus the applause during the premiere of Mozart's Paris Symphony, when the audience heard a new theme it liked. I've taught the first movement of that symphony in one of my Juilliard courses as an example of musical entertainment, the furthest thing possible from an abstraction. If you look at this historically, I think you'll find that the notion of music as abstact is relatively recent, in the longer sweep of things, pretty much unknown before World War II. People didn't hear or perform Beethoven, for instance, as any kind of abstract music. You can tell that from how the music was written and talked about, by both listeners and musicians. The idea that classical music is abstract, I'd argue, is something that could only arise at a time when classical music has essentially become music of the past. That is, we don't recognize the non-abstract cultural cues that gave immediate meaning to the music when it was new, so we're forced to think of it as abstract.

I like what your wife wrote in her review: "the strengths lay in small touches, bright thoughts and easy vigor." Other critics might be more inclined to focus on rubato, or faithfulness to the text, or the presence of wrong notes, but your wife instead gravitated towards the experential side of the performance. That's the sort of thing I was stressing in my previous comment, although I'd also like to stress that I do believe that music is performance, and so discussions of the purely musical and technical aspects of recordings and concerts are certainly necessary and welcome.

The friend who visited the Tower classical annex with me did not buy any CDs, and over time I think he just decided that classical music wasn't for him, which is okay, in the sense that we all have the right not to like something. I have tried to make this music palatable to people who are unfamiliar with it, and it's not an easy thing to do. Thinking about all this in the context of David's very interesting comments about abstraction makes me wonder something (and I'm just thinking out loud here, so I'm not sure how coherent my argument might be). If it's not a matter of abstraction, could it be one of development? In other words, perhaps popular music has spoiled listeners. Rock songs might be about something, but the music and the melodies don't develop, certainly not in the way they do in classical music. Listening to classical music requires learning how to recognize development and follow it, and I suspect that modern listeners might find this unappealing or alien. I can speak from experience; having grown up on rock music, it look me a long time to learn how to listen to development and structure in classical music. I now realize that there are narratives here -- but they're sonic instead of verbal.

But, then, thinking about all of this makes me wonder if it's more a matter of presentation, about classical music's presence in our culture, about how it is offered to the public and how the public views it. We have to walk a fine line; it's possible to talk about development in music in a way that makes it seem as if this music is inherently superior. Perhaps it is, but no one takes well to arguments like that. And Jed may not go beyond the Pastoral because, as Greg suggests, maybe the music's practitioners aren't making the music palatable enough. From what I gather, Greg, you're suggesting that are larger cultural issues here, which leads me to another question. Is this a strictly American issue, or is the future of classical music in question in its place of origin, Western Europe? How many Jeds could one find there?

Glad you liked Anne's review. I agree -- she goes right to the human issues at stake.

I know much less about the issues for classical music elsewhere in the world. Many of my Juilliard students come from other countries, in Europe and in Asia, and they all say the problems are similar there, though maybe more advanced in the US. They certainly expect Europe and Asia to have problems just as serious in a couple of years. In Britian, there seems to be a decline in the number of people studying the less popular orchestral instruments (viola, bassoon, and so on). That hasn't been reported in the US, as far as I know.

The abstraction/development issue is pretty complicated, and I'm grateful for all the talk about it in these comments, and especially to David for bringing it up. It's something I'll have to think very seriously about, and address in the book. I continue to think that the cultural cues in music are very important -- that if you're familiar with the language of the music, and the meanings musical gestures are expected to have in the culture the music comes from, it's much easier to follow what's going on. I asked David, in an e-mail, whether just possibly vocal music, even rock songs, might depend on this. That is, the words don't make vocal music intellgible, but rather our reaction to the music.

.

There's also a question of audience reaction, and performance. In Mozart's time, and very likely through much of the 19th century, people applauded the moment they heard something they liked. That implies more vigorous listening than we do now. And performances can be designed to show listeners what's going on in the music. Brahms, I was amazed and delighted to learn, said that tempo changes in his music should be exaggerated for the sake of performers who didn't know the pieces yet. At least one other notable musician in the 19th century said that this should be done also for the sake of audiences. This is something we never hear about now. Audiences are supposed to hear the music however it's performed, and accept it. Nobody thinks of finding a way, within the performance, to reach out and make the music speak more directly. I'll bet this thought will be very controversial now.

(/i>

Maybe I'm out of the ordinary on this, but when I find my interest piqued in something, I do one thing: research. I go to the library and find books on the subject, check the Internet, ask friends if they know anything about the subject, whether it's music, art, astronomy, Anarcho-syndicalism etc. I don't expect to be coddled or things made easy for me. I just dive in.

In the late 80's I figured the one musical genre I'd not really explored was opera. So, I looked up what the local Los Angeles Opera was doing and saw it was Britten's A Midsummer Nights Dream. I bought a cheap ticket ($20)--don't get me started about the whining that goes on about ticket prices--went, didn't understand a thing except the plot that I knew from reading the play but loved the overall experience (it was a great production as it turns out; it was revived years later and I loved it even more the second time since I knew the opera like the back of my hand).

So, what did I do? I went the next day to Tower, got the only Britten opera on CD at the time (the Britten/Pears Peter Grimes) and just dove in. I listened to it over and over and over. I checked out books about opera, books about Britten, started talking to clerks at Tower and so on. I soon was trawling the used LP bins for cheap Wagner opera sets etc. Today, I'd test my knowledge of 20th century opera, especially post-WWII stuff, against any critic.

In other words, I didn't expect to be hand held through the process of learning about opera, I did it myself. There's simply no excuse, in this age of the Internet, for someone to claim that there's no guidance out there. There's dozens of books in the "Opera for Dummies" or "Opera for beginners" genre and dozens of websites in a similar vein.

Go to Amazon, search for "Beethoven symphonies" and you'll find a list of recordings and VERY opinionated reviews of the various performances that almost always say "this is good, but get the [insert conductor/orchestra]". Read a few pages of reviews, you'll get an idea of the performances that are considered first rate. Buy one of the recordings that are commonly mentioned ("Get the Karajan 1963 Berlin"), listen to it, then listen to it again, and then again and....

As you can tell, I have no patience with the "But...but....it's all so bewildering!" thing. I too was once a total novice with both the orchestral repetoire and opera but I was pro-active, not a passive consumer frightened away by the fact that people knew far more about the subjects than I did.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, I'm more than happy to talk to people who are novices about opera if they express an interest--sadly, I usually can't instill my love of Birtwistle in them!--I'm just utterly baffled that anyone could claim there's no help out there for the newcomer. [Apologies if this contains typos, the preview function isn't working]

Henry, thanks for this, and I can only congratulate you on your interest, your determination, your initiative, and your enjoyment of everything you've loved. (Except Birtwistle. I have trouble there myself.) You must have a very busy and fulfilling life, and if everybody was like you, politics, among so many other things, would be a lot better than it is. Candidates wouldn't be running misleading TV ads, because everyone would be investigating their claims, and discovering the truth.

Which is my way of suggesting one limitation of what you've said. People could do what you mention, but they don't. Blame them if you want, but remember also that not everyone can put everything that interests them at the center of their life, or even near it. So there are many people who'd like to know more about classical music, but don't put it as high on their priority list as you apparently did.

What would happen if businesses that sell to the public depended on people like you? They'd probably go out of business, because their sales would be low. That's why everybody tries to find ways to get the public interested. You can wish things were different, try to educate other people, try to reform the world…but meanwhile we have to deal with the world as it is.

Besides, if the classical music business made things easier for newcomers, wouldn't more people eventually be inspired to follow your path?

Thank you for including me in this forum. After reading the first offering and comments I can't help to think that there's material for more than one book here.
The changes taking place with this genre are part of a greater culture shift. I don't believe the problem or direction can be corrected by tweaking this or that; there is going to be fundamental changes in the marketplace that can't be controlled by any one entity. The best we can do is be poised to adjust to changes as they occur.
I think we can learn about the future by looking to the past (forgive the cliche, please). There have been times of transition in culture during the last five hundred years. One example that comes to mind is the state of music in the thirteeth century, the subsequent changes that brought about the work of Palestrina. My point is that there were many factors outside of the music world itself that effected this change. Disease, wars, migration of peoples, religious upheaval and the rise of nations all helped to bring about these changes. I don't know that we will see this dramatic example in our time but the larger societal context should be in our thinking.

Yes, let's hope we don't see a dramatic change in context! Global warming…endless war…vast increases in the price of oil, before we're prepared with alternatives…more intense terrorism…we don't want any of that.

But you raise a terrific point, and I mean to address that in the book. The entire third part (see the outline on the top left of the page) will be about changes in our culture. Which, of course, could be (and has been) a book in itself. So you're right; this book could be many books. I'll try to keep it manageable.

Greg

Long time no talk. Now I understand why.

I come at this question, as you know, from a rather different angle than your other posters, having been a musician practically all of my life. (I like to think that I may have been one of the people that opened some of it up for you.)

I have some fairly disconnected thoughts:

I have found a good deal of sympathy for those who are trying to come at "classical" music (what is that, BTW?) from the pop perspective, that is, rock in its endlessly mutable forms. My sympathy comes from the simple fact that outside of its obvious "rock"-bottom values (mostly the beat) , its aesthetic is about as comprehensible to me as that of traditional Chinese opera. That is, when I hear people put one rock performer up and another down, I have no idea what standard they might be using to make that judgment. What usually grabs my attention is something that my own musical values can respond to: a nice turn or phrase, maybe a catchy hook or bass line, or even a bit of instrumental color (of all things, after lo these many decades, I still rememeber the bass-clarinet line in Elvis' "Return to Sender"!).

It's ironic that so much of this discussion has been and will continue to be about records. I've been in a lot of recordings, including some in the great days of Motown (which is a story in itself). Nothing is harder or more removed from the reality of doing music (I refuse to say "making"!) as a living art, except possibly auditions. All in all, I think that recordings have been far more destructive of classical music's values than helpful. (I know this is a disputable position...dispute away !)

Aside from habituating listeners to artificial standards of technical perfection, unreal balances, making music into aural wallpaper, etc. they have turned music for the most part into a spectator activity. I credit Charles Rosen (no relation) with emphasizing in many different contexts the simple but basic point that much of what we consider classical today was meant to be played by its "consumers", not passively attended. Beethoven could not have survived without a playing public, including his pupil and patron Rudolf, the Archduke to whose name is on not only the famous trio, but a lot of chamber music and the Missa Solemnis. Some skill at a musical instrument was expected memebrs of the "cultivated" classes in the Europe of the time in question. Even into our time, many a German-Jewish emigre scientist or doctor was an accomplished player...Einstein was not unusual in this... and I spent many hours in "amateur" chamber music with such people in my younger days.The "hands-on" experience alters your perception of the activity profoundly, no matter at what level of skill you possess, and composers wrote to this constituency --- as a simple example, think of all the sonatas that end quietly. It seems ridiculous, but two summers at a music camp playing catcher on a soft-ball team (you know the place!) made me a much better appreciator of how the game "means", even though the difference between me as a player and the even worst professional is galaxy-wide. Without some revival of this sort of possibility, I have little hope for the survival of the art that has defined most of my life.

As for the Pastoral , you might be amused to know that as a member of the Festival Casals, I was privileged to particpate in Casals' last performances as a conductor...and it was the Pastoral, which he said at the end was his favorite, and for many of the same reasons mentioned in the previous posts. Make of this what you will...

And finally, was the angry school-teacher George Szell? If so, that is an excellent description...but no one did Schumann better, IMNSHO.

Yes! The “angry schoolteacher” was George Szell. A hundred points for Jerry Rosen, who (to clarify his allusions to our shared past) taught music at a summer arts camp I went to when I was what…14 years old? Maybe a little older. I remember a little later hearing him play Bartok in, of all places, the Café Figaro, a New York coffeehouse (no relation to the Figaro that now exists on vaguely the same spot on Bleecker Street).

I’m grateful for all of Jerry’s comments. He’s as experienced a musician as we’ll ever meet, and I agree with much of what he says. The gap between classical music and pop is surprisingly large, especially so since a fair number of people (maybe a lot of people) very comfortably enjoy both. This is something I’m going to write about extensively (I think) in this book.

It’s interesting that many, many pop music listeners do make their own music, as most classical listeners (as Jerry points out) do not. That can even extend to making their own recordings, which anyone can do these days with a computer, a microphone, and a thousand dollars’ worth of software. (Maybe less.) That might be one of the many reasons pop is thriving, while classical music isn’t.

You offer many thoughts of interest, and caused several memories to surface, regarding hearing music for the first time and how to interest people in listening to classical music.

In 2001-02 season of the NY Philharmonic, I sat next to a young (20's) man who had come to hear Rachmaninoff Rhapsody (Paganini variations) for the first time, in person. He explained that he had heard it for the first time in a movie, and had bought every version available to him. He had never been interested in classical music until that movie introduced him to what he considered a
beautiful piece.

After the performance by an eccentric nordic artist who shall remain unnamed, he turned to me, disappointed, and said, "It didn't sound right. It didn't sound like any recording I have."

Learning music exclusively from recordings can be unhelpful, in that the performances are usually made in such optimal conditions that all surprise is removed. Live performances make the best introduction to a new piece of music. I have found that watching an orchestra play an already familiar piece (familiar, from listening to recordings), helps me listen in a different way. Seeing heightens understanding of how the music is put together. The structure of the composition and the performance then becomes obvious and exciting.

Going back to the disappointed young man at the NY concert, I suggested to him that he continue to go to concerts and to hear other pianists play the Rachmaninoff. His experience of the piece would grow with every encounter. I think that his interest in classical music will be ongoing because of a fortuitous convergence of events: movie, recordings, concerts, disappointment in a particular performance. All these things create longing for perfection and the ultimate joy of a great performance.

In regard to choosing the "right" recording of a piece based on the cover art: one never knows what one is getting. That's why I have so many performances of the same pieces by different artists in my collection. It starts as hit or miss, and then becomes a quest for the best performance. And, just when I think I've discovered the what I think is the best, my sister, a concert pianist and teacher and her husband, also, shoot me down and say, "But you haven't heard "so and so." It's an ever-changing experience, echoing what several have described music as being: life!

Margaret, thanks for this. It's interesting, and hopeful, to see how sometimes people come to classical music all by themselves, without any need for "outreach." It does sound like the Rachmaninoff fan you wrote about was genuinely puzzled by the performance he heard, and maybe even for good reasons! But, as you say, he'll probably get used to a wider variety of performance styles as he listens more, and goes to more concerts. I'm not going to worry so much whether he listens on CD or life, because he's listening so actively -- buying every version he can find of the piece he loves. Though I'd be curious to know one thing -- has he been interested to hear other pieces? Maybe not! There's no accounting (thank God) for the wonderful variety of our fellow human beings.

I feel that the
general level of classical performances
is quite high,and that there are many outstanding performers
who are imaginative and
individualistic inter-
preters,contrary to what
many cynical critics
and commentators claim.
What those who bemoan
the fact that classical
music from the past is so popular fail to
realize is that there is
currently greater di-
versity of repertoire
being performed today than ever before in the history of Western
classical music,everything from
medieval and renaissance
music to the latest works
by living composers.
I don't think that this is a bad thing;in fact
it's wonderful to have
such a vast arrary of classical works avail-
able to us.There are quite a few contemporary
composers who can't say that their music is being
neglected,such as Glass,Adams,Corigliano,
Henze,Carter,Maxwell
Davies,Heggie,Tan Dun,
Saariaho,and others.
Corigliano's symphony no 1,for example,has been
performed over 800 times
since its premiere about
15 years ago.Not a bad
track record for a contemporary work!
The reasons for the
fact that many people
know little or nothing
about classical music today are complex and
difficult to determine,
but I reject the notion that our symphony
orchestras and opera
companies are to blame
for it,and that they
have failed to make
concertgoing worthwhile;
on the contrary,it has never been more worth-
while.
Comparing the Cuban
singer you speak so
highly of with classical
musicians is comparing
apples and oranges;a
futile thing to do.But
I think that it's a
very unfair comparison.
This singer does not
prove that there is some-
thing lacking in classical
performances today.

Robert and I have had this discussion in many e-mails, and I'm glad he's chosen to continue it here. I certainly agree that the standard of performance is high these days, though I think we need to make some distinctions. In opera, for instance, baroque and contemporary opera are performed very well, and the classic Italian operas are done pretty badly. Musicians from major orchestras have complained to me privately that the standard of conducting isn't high enough, specifically including their own music directors. There's also the question of whether the playing is distinctive or individual enough to be interesting to a wide audience. This is something I'm going to address in my blog. It involves both a comparison with performances of the past, and a challenge to orchestra musicians today -- do they really come on stage each night, determined to excite their audience? After many conversations with musicians, it's clear that the answer isn't "yes."

We also have to ask why ticket sales for classical performances have been declining so steadily for such a long time. This is a hugely serious crisis, hugely underreported in the press. In, again, private conversations with people who run classical music institutions, I've learned how serious it is. It's up to classical music groups to do something about this. If they don't, they'll go out of business, probably faster than anyone expects.

Finally, about apples and oranges. I agree that classical music and Beny Moré are apples and oranges. That was exactly my point, and I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear enough. Classical music thinks its oranges are better than anyone else's apples, when the truth is that they're simply different. The apples also are more in tune with contemporary life, so it would help if classical music stopped talking as if the apples were worthless, and even started adding some apples to its orange pureé.

Greg:
Appreciate what you're trying to accomplish with your "real time" book. Seems you are starting with two relevant themes: the conflict of an industry that has grown 10-fold in the past 40 years, yet hews with religious vigor to a concert protocol of 150 years ago. So, at a time when each performer or orchestra needs to differentiate itself more in the marketplace, they are stuck in a system that forbids individuality and derides appealing visual elements (whether in how a performer dresses or how a cd is marketed).

The second relevant theme is that any person most attaches to the music they discovered early in life, at vulnerable, impressionable times; they will always cherish most the music that spoke to them as they were coming of age, usually, under the age of 25. If there was classical music, they might attach to that (I did, reluctantly, cuz my dad was an opera freak and pianist; it wasn't until later in life when i studied voice that i actually learned to appreciate it). If pop, R&B, blues, jazz, it might be that. In other words, the most important place for classical music to permeate anyone's life is when they are young - and people important to them, like parents, uncles, aunts, have to show a passion for it.

Bottom line: there's more competition, and more appealing competition, for the youngest ears now, and the generation of influence - parents and mentors - are far less likely to have developed a wide range of musical interests themselves to offer any opinions about. That means the youngest ears now find classical music through the newest ways: by downloading, by online buzz, by recommendation from a friend.

Classical institutions as a whole (except for the recent BBC Beethoven recording download experiment) don't get this. It's the old story: if you keep delivering new wine in old bottles, the bottles will eventually break and the wine be spilt.

Thanks, Willa. We could make long lists of the things classical music institutions don't get. They're trying, God bless them, but the transition to their future -- aka their transition from the past into the present -- is difficult for them.

Willa, by the way, is the music critic of the Newark Star-Ledger, and (among other good things) one of the best reporters I've read, when it comes to journalistic coverage of arts stories. She put together the monumental study of music critics in America, sponsored (I hope I'm getting this right) by the Music Critics Association of North America and the National Arts Journalism Program (the one that used to be at Columbia University). She's also way cool as a human being.

Hi Greg,

How pleasing that people have responded to your collection of anecdotes (or anecdote-based riffs?) with stories of their own. I think it shows that you've started to go about this in just the right way, getting to the big issues by going through real life situations that obviously resonate with your readership.

My reaction was less along the lines of what you wrote than how you wrote it; perhaps it's because I've been familiar with many of your ideas for some time.

I liked all the elements of your three anecdotes: the dissembling about how you came to it, the detailed description of the actual moment in question, the bigger issues the story raises in classical music today, your personal stories about various aspects. But, I felt like my attention was jerked back and forth between these different elements. I didn't really put together what you were getting at - except possibly for the second story - until I thought about it later. The bigger points in each, that I might connect to bigger points in the other stories, or the book as a whole - didn't jump out at me when I was reading and it felt a bit like I was reading you wander around. Later I saw more consistency in everything, and felt like I could organize the chapter in my head. So, I guess I'm saying I think the rhetorical structure could be more obvious. After all, many in the target audience may have no resonance with Mozart's sense of character, the concept of rubato, or the covers of classical CD jackets, so erring on the crisp clean side with respect to thought progression might have its benefits with a variety of readers.

Eric, thanks. I've come to the same conclusion myself. I've also heard from two people privately that they had trouble following the thread, but you're the first to say it publicly, and I'm grateful. Might spark some further reaction. In any case, i've been thinking about how to tie my points together better, and will take a shot at it, in fact, when I summarize this first episode at the start of the second one.

That said, I'm trying something that might work wonderfully, or might not work at all -- namely, to write a book in which (as in a novel) various threads come and go. I obviously need to work harder to tie the threads together, but it's also true that the structure will work best when a reader has the whole book to go through, not just a short excerpt. I don't mean this as a copout ("You can't understand what I'm doing until you read the whole thing.") It's more like a wistful observation -- I'm putting myself at a disadvantage, with the structure I'm trying to use.

So there are many people who'd like to know more about classical music, but don't put it as high on their priority list as you apparently did.

Then that's *their* problem, not the covers used on CD booklets, not the art form itself, not the marketing department of the Boston Symphony etc. As I wrote before, there's a whole industry built on introducing people to opera/classical, from the most simplistic "This is a clarinet" books on tape things to 400 page doorstoppers listing virtually every standard repetoire piece with 3 recommended recordings/DVD's, so if somebody can't take 15 minutes on a lunch break at work to type "opera for beginners" in Google and go from there (I just did and it returned 1,700,000 hits; of course most of them are useless beyond the first 3 or 4 pages but I saw a lot of good links in those pages), then is that the fault of the Los Angeles Opera, for example?

No, the onus is on the person who can't use common sense and set aside a small chunk of time to begin exploring. Getting started is but a few mouse clicks away and *still* that seems an insurmountable summit to traverse for some people. I realize that I'm out of the ordinary with my all consuming curiosity about things that pique my interest, but I don't think anyone is saying "You're going to have to take a leave of absence from work so you can get in to the Pastoral symphony", it's simply "Don't get 3 movies from Netflix for one night every few months". If somebody has a curiosity because they heard a snippet in a movie/commercial or at a restaurant or whatever and doesn't follow up on that curiosity with the welter of tools available in 2005, and can't budget a relatively small amount of time that they'd otherwise spend at a movie or watching Oprah or playing a video game, then that's *their* fault.

It's similar to the perpetual whining about ticket prices. I once sneered at a friend of a friend who was bitching about ticket prices to the Los Angeles Opera ($25 for a good balcony seat; $10-12 for standing room at San Francisco Opera/Met), "For what you spend a month on dinners at the trendy restaurants you love, you could buy a subscription in the balcony, a perfectly decent seat with good sound". The blockhead didn't make the connection that if he took the money he spent on appetizers and appletini's for one meal at those places, he could buy a good seat at any opera he wanted to go to. He made his choice about how to spend his disposable income, and I certainly couldn't care less about that, but to blame the infrastructure of performing arts orgs or the fact that a concert doesn't contain a piece with the ink still wet on the orchestral parts for that choice is absurd. Short of having nude dancing girls/guys gyrating around during the Tchaikovsky 6th or laser light shows during the Poem of Ecstasy or mimes doing their interpretation of the Rach 2nd, the classical concert experience is never going to change all that much from the basic template that it uses now; either the new person accepts that reality or they don't and I don't see any way around that. See also the very popular: "Waaaah, waaah, I don't have the time" [complained the woman who spends 20 weekends a year going on wine tasting tours up in Napa].

There seems to be no willingness whatsoever on the part of a lot of potential customers to meet the performing arts orgs halfway; if anything about the experience appears that it might inconvenience them--having to not look like a street person in their appearance (which they would never, ever bitch about if it meant getting in to a trendy club), the length (um, The Return of the King that made hundreds of millions anyone?), the fact that they actually have to shut their Game Boys and text messaging off for an hour and a half and all the other excuses that are trotted out--then it's the fault of the orgs and the "dead white European males". No, it's *their* problem and their loss. They're not really interested in my view, they simply want something that requires no effort from them other than plonking their butts in a seat and that's simply not good enough for opera and classical music.

Oh, and Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus (c'mon ENO, revive it already, there were lines down St. Martin's Lane hoping in vain for a ticket during the only run of performances it's ever had) and The Second Mrs. Kong (an amazing libretto by Russell Hoban) are blazing masterpieces IMO, as are his orchestral pieces Secret Theatre and Earth Dances.

Best of luck with your book-in-progress, Greg. You should develop quite a readership. It has been my experience that those of us who love classical music often seem to enjoy kvetching about it more than we do listening to it.

As I read your sample chapter and the comments following it, it seems to me that you raise two ultimately interrelated questions: 1) Why are today’s classical performances so dull, and 2) How do we expand the audience while raising the profile of classical music within the broader culture?

Much of your writing and that of your readers focuses on recordings. That’s a good place to start. Recordings make stars, stars create buzz, and buzz creates excitement.

The problem is that the labels aren’t doing much recording anymore. To be sure, this is partly due to the declining audience that has us all so concerned. But it is mainly due, in my estimation, to the maturity of the compact disc as a sound medium. Think about it: the compact disc is as old today - 23 years, give or take - as the stereo LP was when the CD was introduced. If you will cast your mind backwards, the late ‘70s weren’t exactly a great time for classical record labels, either.

What the classical recording industry really needs – more than attracting new listeners to the fold – is to convince those of us who already love the music to go out and replace our thousands of compact discs with their new Omniphonic Nanosonic Holographic Super Discs, or whatever they end up calling them, just as we ran out and replaced our thousands of LPs. Someone needs to give the engineers at Sony and Philips a swift kick in the ass. And, no, I don’t consider the SACD to be a paradigm-shift in this regard; it is at best a marginal improvement on an existing format.

The only innovation in recorded sound in recent years – the mp3 player – is hostile to classical music. It raises the individual track to the unit of consumption, when most classical music is a multi-movement affair. And mp3 data compression? Even the truncated frequency response of a 1411 kbps CD was too much for the vinyl nuts. I can’t imagine choosing to listen to classical music at 128 kbps unless I’m trapped on an airplane.

Many people complain that classical music is too focused on long-dead composers; I’d argue that a bigger problem is our fixation on dead performers. On a recent browsing trip to Tower Records, I was struck by the overwhelming presence of ghosts from the past – Karajan, Bernstein, Klemperer, Szell – among the inventory. These are wonderful artists, no doubt, and I own many of their recordings, but shouldn’t we worry that their continued presence (if not outright dominance) on record store shelves is crowding out today’s performers? Beethoven’s music is still very much alive, but Toscanini isn’t appearing at Carnegie Hall anytime soon. At the very moment we need to be generating the stars of tomorrow, the labels are finding it much more economical to reissue old recordings. We need a new sound format, one that makes Karl Böhm’s recordings sound as antiquated as Oskar Fried’s. Easier said than done, I know.

A lot of the discussion here focuses on the formality or stodginess of the traditional classical concert. This puzzles me, as one of the things I like about classical concerts is their formality amidst an otherwise sloppy culture. I guess I’m open to experimentation here, whether with the lighting, the staging, or the attire of the musicians, but in my experience, most orchestra musicians are not fashionistas. If the concert equivalent of “office casual” were to become the onstage norm, the resulting spectacle would not be at all dignified. Just as a blue suit, white shirt and red tie give the overweight schlub in accounts receivable a gravitas he does not possess wearing khakis and a polo shirt, so does formal evening wear subsume the 250 lb. harpist and the violinist with unorthodox facial hair within a harmonious visual element, one that does not distract from the music.

As for raising the profile of classical music within the broader culture, I would direct your attention to Los Angeles, world capital of popular culture. There you have a crack orchestra, led by a young, movie star-handsome conductor of impeccable artistic credentials and possessing a reputation as a composer in his own right, performing in a spectacular new venue by a world-renowned architect that has been greeted with hosannas by both the musical and architectural press. If classical music is to make waves in the broader culture, I suggest that the stars are not going to align themselves any more favorably. Yet, if you were to mention Esa Pekka Salonen to most people in Southern California, they would probably think you were making some kind of off-color joke.

Some people complain that the institution of classical music has become like a museum. We should be so lucky! Most classical music presenters would give their endowments to be as relevant to their city’s cultural scene as the local art museum. My friends are all members of the museum here, and the members-only first nights of a new exhibit are packed with the sort of well-dressed, well-educated 20- and 30-somethings the symphony and opera cannot seem to draw. These same people also attend gallery openings displaying new works by living artists, and they can intelligently relate what they see among the new to what they know of the old.

The institution of classical music is not a museum. It is a veritable medieval monastery, one served by dedicated monks protecting a precious cultural inheritance against rampant vulgarity and barbarism. We cannot let the barbarians in lest they destroy what we love (Bond, anyone?). But in retreating to the cloister, we have lost our ability to regenerate.