Let's begin…

I'll start with a practical question. Will there be an audience for classical music in the future? People debate this all the time, but the debate's not very satisfying.

And that, I think, is partly because we don't have enough information. Many people in classical music think, for instance, that we don't have to worry about the classical audience getting older. The age of the audience --in its fifties, on the average -- isn't a problem, these people say, because the audience for classical music has always been that age.

But there are two problems here. First, how do we know how old the classical audience has always been? The evidence I've seen is pretty sketchy. And by chance I uncovered a study of American orchestras in the late 1930s that says, straight out, that the median age of the audience then ranged (depending on which orchestra you looked at) from 27 to 33!

Well, to be precise, the study only looked at two orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Symphony. But still this is the only data I've ever seen from this period, and it strongly seems to contract today's prevailing wisdom. (Source: Margaret Grant and Herman S. Hettinger, America's Symphony Orchestras and How They Are Supported. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1940, p. 277. Long out of print, but in the Juilliard Library, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress.)

Second, how do we know this next generation of people coming into their fifties will go to as many classical music concerts as the present one? My own inclination is to say they won't, because popular culture -- some of it quite serious, including thoughtful, serious music -- has taken a slice of the attention, ideas, and audience that used to be reserved for high art.

But this, too, isn't based on real data. Sure, Bruce Springsteen is playing 10 sold-out concerts at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, reaching half a million people, who range -- or so I'd guess from newspaper reports and my own experience at Springsteen events -- from their thirties to Springsteen's own age, 53. And sure, musical choices like that weren't available 30 years ago, when rock concerts were mostly for people a lot younger. But why does that mean that people (maybe even some of the same people who go to Springsteen) won't go to classical events? Or, more precisely, why shouldn't some small fraction of people in their thirties and forties go to classical concerts -- a small fraction, maybe, compared to the number of people who don't go, but still large enough to keep classical music alive?

Data I'd like to have: comparative studies of musical taste in college students now and in -- let's say -- 1960. If a lot more college students listened to classical music back then, maybe that tells us something. Specifically, maybe it tells us that today's college students are less likely to be symphony subscribers when they turn 50. (And don't we all know in our gut that this is precisely what the study very likely will show?)

Missing in all of this: a discussion of what classical music actually offers. Why should anybody go to hear it?

Which brings me to my second thought for today…