November 2003 Archives

in 1979, the San Francisco Opera staged a troubled production of Ponchielli's La Gioconda. It was troubled because the two leading singers -- Pavarotti and Renata Scotto -- didn't get along. Or, rather, Pavarotti pulled some of his familiar tricks (showing up late for rehearsals, not knowing his part), and Scotto didn't like that. She says as much in her autobiography (out of print, but available through Amazon); she doesn't mention Pavarotti's name, but everybody in the opera world knew who she meant.

Everybody in the opera world, too, knows some of the other things that happened. Scotto -- a powerful singer, but vocally out of her depth in a role too heavy for her -- got heckled at the premiere, after her big aria. In the silence just before the applause began, a voice cried out, "Povera Ponchielli!" ("Poor Ponchielli!") Scotto may have thought the heckler was a Pavarotti plant. She was livid backstage afterwards, even though she'd gotten an ovation at the end. Someone came into her dressing room, and introduced himself as a Pavarotti friend. She exploded at him. She also said she didn't want to work with "gente di merda" (if I've got the Italian right), meaning "people who are full of shit."

But all this is more than lore. It was captured on two videos, a documentary about the production, and a telecast of the premiere. They're hard to find; they're not officially for sale any more, but can be tracked down through people in the opera world who keep such things available. I've watched them both, and they're extraordinary -- but at the same time troubling.

The documentary shows the backstage turmoil, or at least the turmoil after the premiere. Scotto, beside herself, has to be consoled by the very diplomatic stage director (and director of major opera companies), Lotfi Mansouri. The "friend of Pavarotti" incident is shown. The gentleman who comes backstage is preening, bragging that he knows Pavarotti, naively thinking that will score him points.

But there's something missing. There are performance excerpts in the documentary -- Pavarotti laboring his way through his big aria, though rising to the climax with tremendous verve, and then Scotto finishing the aria that got her heckled. But the heckler isn't heard! He was snipped out, so the aria segues directly to applause.

The heckler is heard, large as life, in the performance video. It's astonishing; we just don't get moments like that in modern opera houses. Scotto in fact has done a tremendous job with the aria, delivering a true old-school, performance, a piece of intense melodrama that stops just short of going over the top. She can't hide her vocal problems, though -- a bottom range that's vague and hollow, because she pushes the sound too strongly, and a screechy top that wobbles. As a listener, you have to take it or leave it; the heckler (taking the anti-Scotto side in what then was a familiar debate) can't take it, and makes his feelings known.

Scotto reacts like a magnificent professional. She holds her pose, maybe flinching just enough for us to see in the TV closeup, but not giving an inch to the heckler in any way the audience would notice. She throws herself into the rest of the performance, and gets, as I've said, a huge ovation at the end. But none of this is mentioned in the wolly, reverent PBS performance commentary. The announcer doesn't say, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've just witnessed something extraordinary -- outright heckling in the opera house. Let's applaud Mme. Scotto for the dignity with which she handled it." At the end, as she takes her bows, he doesn't say, "Mme. Scotto surely must be gratified by this ovation." These are things that anybody watching the performance would think. Why can't they be said?

I can understand, or at least guess, why the heckling might have been snipped from the documentary. Scotto, I'm sure, had to sign some kind of release before the footage of her could be shown. She may have said she wouldn't sign it if the heckler wasn't cut. Or the opera company, thinking it might cast her again, might have thought discretion was the better part of valor here.

But the failure of the announcer to say one word about the most striking thing that happened in the performance seems ridiculous to me. Must we be so reverent about everything in classical music? La Gioconda isn't exactly great art (though its libretto, by Arrigo Boito, who later wrote the libretti for Verdi's Otello and Falstaff, is surely the most literate text ever to grace such shameless melodrama). And opera isn't exactly famous for the restraint of its singers. Can't we enjoy it with a smile, and acknowledge what's going on -- especially when it happens right in plain view?

Very scary story linked from ArtsJournal today -- it says that in England, not enough kids are learning to play less popular orchestral instruments, like the trombone, bassoon, oboe, or french horn.

Here's a quote:

Gavin Henderson, principal of Trinity College of Music in London and chairman of Youth Music, the government advisory group behind [a plan to do something about the problem], said the future of traditional music was at stake. "Orchestras are facing difficulties due to the lack of young, high quality players," he said.

While 48,657 pupils have school flute lessons in England and 52,484 learn the guitar, only 1,106 are taught the bassoon and 915 the tuba.

The rescue plan hopes to make lottery money available to schools, so the schools can buy instruments for students to play. The high cost of bassoons (and other instruments, too) is said to be one reason students don't learn to play them.

This is the second story like this I've read out of Britain. Do we have similar troubles here in the US? A while ago, I asked the head of one of America's leading music schools, somebody who really knows what's going on in music education, even in small towns, whether enough Americans are studying orchestral instruments. He said we don't have the British problem, though just recently he told me that only kids from well-off families learn the bassoon, because only families with money can afford to buy one.

Still, he didn't think we have a crisis in instrumental study here. In fact, from everything I've heard, youth orchestras are booming all over the country -- and the musicians in professional orchestras are now, on the average, younger than their audience! That's something you can see for yourself at most orchestra concerts. (And when the Rolling Stones came through Philadelphia on their last tour, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a cute little story, showing that the Philadelphia Orchestra was, on the average, younger than the Stones.)

Odd but very hopeful development, at a time when classical music is looking so hard for a younger audience. Something to be thankful for -- and happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

Here's a big difference between classical music, and pop music of the rock era -- rhythm. Not that classical music doesn't have rhythm, but rhythm functions very differently in it. In classical music, rhythm is analyzed as a structural element of music. To repeat the same rhythms, over and over, is considered very crude. Rhythmic patterns are supposed to change and develop. To understand the rhythm of a piece, it's enough to study a score. You can see what the patterns are, and how they change and develop. The identity of the music -- and a lot of its value -- lies in the score, in elements that can be written down and fixed for all time.

In pop music of the rock era, none of this is true. Rhythm is (among other things) a "groove" -- a way of inflecting rhythmic patterns, so that even simple, repeated rhythms can be changed in ways that make them not simple at all. The drummer in a rock band might push the beat forward, playing always a little bit ahead, while a sax solo might lag sexily behind. Meanwhile the singer (just listen to James Brown!) can dance around the beats, getting ahead of them, playfully falling behind them, and often landing in the cracks between. Pop musicians (and jazz musicians, too) know exactly what they're doing with all this; they do it purposely.

But classical musicians often don't hear the groove at all! One reason for this is that -- especially in romantic classical music -- rhythms are stretchable. Imagine a melodic phrase that arches up toward a climax. Most classical musicians will push the beat faster as they surge toward that peak. They'll literally change the beats, pressing them closer together. Then, as they come down from the climax, they'll slow down. They may not know they're doing this; it's so much a part of classical performance that it's practically unconscious. And they may not be able to avoid doing it, even if they're suddenly thrust into a non-classical context where pulling and pushing the beats in this way isn't appropriate.

Here's a real-life example. I won't name names, but I know a terrific musician who works both in classical and pop. He's done some crossover projects, using pop musicians and classical musicians together, including some very big classical names. He told me once that one of the big classical names couldn't feel the groove. He'd push the beat forward when he reached toward the climax of a melody -- not really hearing the other players, who were grooving along, each in his own way inflecting what they infallibly felt as a steady pulse. What the classical soloist did in this case would be reasonable, if he knew he was leaving the groove, and came back to it after he'd pushed the phrase to its climax. But he couldn't do this, because he didn't feel the groove, or at least didn't feel it with the tight precision that the pop musicians had. He'd come back to a very slightly different tempo, which for the pop musicians was like not feeling any tempo at all.

One result of this -- some people, for whom classical music is home base, can't always hear what's going on in pop music. A classical musician might hear a rock song, and say, "Yuck! Those rhythms are just juvenile! The same pounding 4/4 in every measure." While a rock musician will say, "Listen to how tight they are!" -- meaning we should listen to how well they play their groove. Each good band has a groove of its own. Those different grooves help give different songs their identities -- something classical music people may not hear, because they're listening for structural things that just may not happen in rock. Meanwhile the groove is developing in ways they don't get at all.

To put this in another way (crudely stating an intriguing philosophical difference) -- classical music gets involved with thought, rock gets involved with body language. I'd say both are needed for a full view of life. But remember that this really is quite crudely stated; rock music in fact has thought, and classical music does have body langauge. It's just that the relative importance of thought and body language differs.

Far-reaching footnotes: First, rock and jazz -- with their stress on groove and body language -- were a musical eruption of non-western culture (some aspects of it, anyway), in the heart of the west. That's a profound change, and helps explain some of the more flagrant attacks on rock during the '50s. Was rock the end of civilization? (Or, as some southern sherriff put it, was it "negro [not quite the word he used], Communist music"?) No, but in many ways it was one forward-looking nail in the coffin of western dominance.

Second, classical music didn't always have the free play of beat-lengths that it has now. At least in one famous 19th-century book on singing (Manuel Garcia Jr.'s L'art du chant), singers are told that they can freely change the rhythms of what they sing, but that the accompaniment is going to keep a steady pace. In other words, when a singer pushes the beat, going up the hill toward a climax, the orchestra will keep on playing those Italian opera oom-pahs without any change. Nowadays, one mark of a good opera conductor is his or her ability to move the orchestra along with a singer -- but apparently this isn't what happened 150 years ago.

I've gotten a self-produced CD from one of America's more prominent composers, Augusta Read Thomas, composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony, etc., etc., etc. The CD is very professionally packaged (though badly designed), and offers just two works, lasting together no more than 20 minutes, in performances conducted by no less than Pierre Boulez. The project was conceived as a CD single, not a full-length CD, and the idea behind it (or so I'm told by the publicist for the project) is in part to plant a seed for major record companies. Why don't they record Thomas's work?

I like the idea of composers taking command of their careers, including their recordings. But my suggestion in this case is to cut the CD price in half, and give the tracks away as free downloads on the Internet. The CD, I'm told, will sell for $11.99. And yes, that's less than the $18.99 you might pay for full-length product on a major label (or even a smaller one), but it's too much. Who's going to buy this? Hardly anyone, if we're going to face the truth. A few people in Chicago. Libraries, if Thomas is lucky. (And if her publisher doesn't promote her work by giving the CD to libraries at no charge.)

So income generated by sales can't be an issue here. The CD, in any case, was very likely funded at least in part by helpful donors; I see at least one credit to people who'd do this sort of thing on a list of acknowledgements. In any case, the money came from somewhere, has already been paid, and will never be earned back from sales. Why not cut the price, to put the music in as many hands as possible?

And that's also why Thomas should give the tracks away. She can't seriously worry about cutting into sales; there aren't going to be many sales. So -- I can't say this often enough -- why not just give the music to anyone who's curious to hear it? Thomas might even generate more sales that way -- more people, in other words, might buy the CD after hearing the download than would decide not to buy it because they can download the music free.

Composers have to be realistic. (Ditto everyone in classical music.) CD sales -- especially for music like this, which sounds a bit like Boulez -- can't be an issue. Getting people to hear the music is what counts.

Despite everything I said in my last post…

Today I was listening to the Sibelius Fifth Symphony. I'm writing marketing blurbs for the Philadelphia Orchestra, blurbs that (as I've mentioned here before; I've done them also for the St. Louis and Pittsburgh symphonies) try to evoke the way the music at each concert really feels. Philadelphia, next year, has programmed the Sibelius Fifth along with other haunting music; I was listening to some of it, looking for the proper words to write.

And the symphony, taking me by surprise, just swept me away. I felt as if I moved inside it, almost awed. One key, I think, is that it took me by surprise. I wasn't looking to be swept away. All I needed was to hear the music, which then crept around me, surrounding me with feeling I couldn't hold at bay.

Another tribute to the power of classical music, overwhelming even a weary critic who'd just written that he didn't need, today, to hear big and strenuous orchestral works.

(The performance: Petri Sakan conducting the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, streaming from the Naxos website. Not at all bad, and at the beginning and in the second movement, quite evocative. Naxos, I might add, is testing a new service, in which, for a fee, we'll be able to stream their entire catalogue, even copyrighted works, in really good sound, for what I think will be an annual or monthly subscription fee. Depending, of course, on what they charge, this may well be a bargain for anyone who needs to hear lots of music, including both standard works and things from odd corners of the repertoire. Or, for that matter, tremendous historical recordings, which Naxos has in abundance.

(And while I'm at it, let me recommend a Sibelius site, which some of you may know. Certainly it deserves to be widely known. It's by the Inkpot Sibelius Nutcase™, as he calls himself, and his or her essay on the Fifth Symphony is powerful and thoughtful stuff. It's all on the Flying inkpot site, from Singapore.)

Recently three CDs found their way into my wife's and my home, all featuring a certain mid-level European conductor, someone who once had made some noise, and now, apparently, has settled into a career not undistinguised, but also none too notable. His publicist would like him to be better known.

The repertoire on these CDs: Ein Heldenleben, The Shostakovich Seventh Symphony, and Mahler's Third. Since we're critics, my wife and I are requested to be curious about all this, and to listen to the CDs.

But -- speaking, let me be clear, only for myself, not for my wife, and also meaning no disrespect to the conductor or his orchestra -- I can't bring myself to listen. For one thing, I have a life, or try to have one, in which music is both central, and therefore also something that needs to be rationed. I can't go swimming in orchestral depths every moment of the day. I don't feel, right now, like listening to any of these three works, Heldenleben, The Shostakovich Seventh, or especially the Mahler Third, the one of the three that I love the most, and for just that reason don't want to hear except when I'm thirsting for it.

Or, to put this differently: Just because I love music so much, I don't want to jump inside large and strenuous orchestral works every day of the week, just because some conductor has recorded them. I hear enough music as it is, some of which, inevitably, I'm not listening to by choice. I have to be careful -- for the sake of my love of music, not to say my sanity -- not to let music become a burden.

And since I have no reason to believe (again meaning no disrespect to this conductor) that these performances will be in any way a revelation, why should I listen to them at all? What can they possibly tell me about these pieces that I might not already know?

Sorry for the honesty. But if we're going to play the same music over and over and over and over and over and over again, what else should anyone expect? It's not a healthy situation. Nick Hornby, bless him, puts the problem very nicely (though in a somewhat different context):

And no, that fourth track [which you've just fallen in love with, listening to some new album] is not as good as anything on Pet Sounds, or Blonde on Blonde, or What's Going On. But when was the last time you played Pet Sounds?…But then, like I say, if you're going to stick rigorously to the Greater Scheme diet, then it's Blonde on Blonde and Pet Sounds for you -- and Don Quixote and Moby Dick -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Yesterday I was talking to Eric Booth, a dynamic guy who works as a consultant, facilitator, and provoacateur in the arts. He's been talking to some orchestras, and working very closely with one of the big ones, and he's full of good ideas. One of them just knocked me out -- why, asks Eric, shouldn't the Chambers of Commerce in cities of all sizes fund local orchestras to compete with each other?

Eric calls this "The Battle of the Biggest Bands," and imagines a kind of orchestral world series, with orchestras all over the country competing for a championship. This would, to say the least, bring attention to orchestras, and get them backed by some local pride. Immediately I wondered how the competition could be scored, and together we decided that it could be judged like figure skating, with a panels of judges awarding numerical scores. The panels, I thought, could each have nine people, three critics, three musicians, and three members of the audience. We'd have to refine this, of course, since the people from the audience shouldn't live in cities the orchestras they judge are from, and the musicians can't be soloists who might play with any of the orchestras. We'd also have to make sure the orchestras played the same music at the competition, and that, if soloists were involved, the same ones played.

But the details could be worked out, and the competition wouldn't have to be nationwide, at least not at the start. It could begin with just two cities, with orchestras of comparable size (measured, usually, by the size of their budgets) -- Houston and Dallas, let's say. (Somehow the idea of this competition seems perfect for Texas.)

Now, someone's sure to object (and maybe many someones will) that this is undignified, that the arts aren't about competition, that a public battle between orchestras would demean classical music. To all of which I say, "Piffle." For one thing, I could cite a George Bernard Shaw review from the 1890s, of two concerts in London, one by a local orchestra and one by a visiting one, both involving virtually the same program of Wagner excerpts. Shaw thought the implied competition was a fabulous idea, since it would show listeners how well their local orchestra measured up, and would also put that local orchestra on notice that it ought to measure up.

Now, this applies to America in 2003, but with a vengeance. Because my main answer to all the purists would be that, as things stand, our orchestras aren't held accountable in any way at all. Do people in Houston have any notion how good or bad their orchestra is, compared to Dallas (or, for that matter, to Minnesota, Kansas City, or Seattle)? Will their local critic tell them? How would their local critic know, if the comparisons are to be extended nationwide? The only critics even remotely in a position to make these comparisons are critics in New York, who at least have the chance to see most of the country's larger orchestras when they come through on tour.

And even New York critics couldn't tell you much. Quick, which American orchestras has the best principal bassoon? Whose brass section is best in loud music, and which plays softly best? Which orchestra would you most like to hear in Mozart and Haydn? (That's easy, actually: The Orchestra of St. Luke's, though to be honest, I'm guessing. St. Luke's plays Mozart and Haydn so wonderfully -- with such style, grace, and feeling, not to mention clarity and precision so relaxed that they're positively joyful -- that I can't believe any orchestra in America can do it better.)

No critic I know can answer these questions, and if musicians or orchestra administrators can, they're not telling. Public competitions could tell the world just how good each orchestra is, which in many cities would be a revelation. Let's not forget that, under Seiji Ozawa, the Boston Symphony sounded horrible for years, and nobody called them on it, at least not in public, even though everybody in the music business knew the truth.

If it weren't too cumbersome, we could even score the competitions in great detail, with judges giving not a single overall rating, but separate ratings for different aspects of performance -- for separate sections of the orchestra, the strings, brass, and percussion, for precision, clarity, expression, style, you name it. Then people in each city would know not just how their orchestra was rated, but why, and if the rating wasn't high, could begin demanding changes. This could be one of the best things that ever happened to American orchestras. Chambers of Commerce, are you listening?

(And check out Eric's book, The Everyday Work of Art. It's a deep and also lively and accessible training course on how to bring an artist's outlook into everything we do. I've never seen anything that bridges so easily the gap -- which shouldn't really exist -- between artists and everybody else.)

A followup to my last post, from Nick Hornby's Songbook, the most thoughtful and engaging book on music that I've read in a long time (and which I've quoted here before):

You could, if you were perverse, argue that you'll never hear England by listening to English pop music. The Beatles and the Stones were, in their formative years, American cover bands who sang with American accents; the Sex Pistols were the Stooges with bad teeth and a canny manager, and Bowie was an art-school version of Jackson Browne until he saw the New York Dolls. But you'll never hear England by listening to Elgar or Vaughn Williams, either: too much has happened since then. Where's the lager-fueled violence? Where's the lip, or the self-deprecation, or the lethargy, or the irreverence? Where are the jokes? Where's the curry? You may not want to think about any of that when you lie back and think of England, but it's all undeniably there, and if you're English, the odds are that you'll eat a curry more often than you see an ascending lark.

That's one of the best descriptions I've seen of why classical music -- as encountered in classical concert halls -- smells like the past. Someone, though, is bound to say, "But I don't want lager-fueled violence! I want larks!" So do I, so do I. But if we don't admit, in our art, that the lager-fueled violence is there, then our art is just escapism. And so if you flee, for your larks, into the classical concert hall…

1931:

Maurice Chevalier stars in a movie called The Smiling Lieutenant. His costars are Miriam Hopkins, who plays his wife, and Claudette Colbert, a much more worldly woman, with whom he has a fling. Colbert knows that her affair can't last, so she teaches Hopkins how to hold her man, with advice on clothing, hair, and music. Hopkins plays the piano, old-fashioned pieces like "The Maiden's Prayer." Colbert teaches her to play some jazz, demonstrating in a lively song, which she both plays on the piano and sings. Hopkins tries to sing along, but her voice is stuffy, old, and classical. "Not like that!" says Colbert. "That was good in 1850!"

2003:

American Express runs a radio commercial for a gift certificate. Various kinds of music play, classical and pop. Then the announcer explains why you should buy someone a gift certificate, instead of a CD. "You know he likes music. But you don't know from which century."

So classical music sounds today like music of the past -- and it sounded the same way in 1931. The perception of it hasn't changed in 70 years. How can we make it sound like music of the present?

A helpful reader -- after I'd complained (in an earlier post) about classical music search engines on the web -- recommended Amazon's advanced classical search. Certainly it offers more choices than the normal classical search, but…when I looked for Album/Work Title "Symphony" and composer "Beethoven," the first thing that came up was Sarah Brightman's greatest hits CD, with no symphonies or Beethoven anywhere on it.

And two days ago I was browsing on the new (and legal) Napster, which turns out to have more or less -- or maybe exactly -- the same classical music iTunes and BuyMusic.com have. As I rooted around, I came across all the Beethoven sonatas in the old and greatly respected Artur Schnabel performances. All of them! Ninety-nine cents per track.

There's only one problem. What you get, when you look these up -- and it's the same on all three services I've mentioned -- is a track listing. As follows (transcribed verbatim):

1  The Complete Piano Sonatas, I. Allegro

2  The Complete Piano Sonatas, II. Adagio

3  The Complete Piano Sonatas, III. Minuetto (Allegretto) & Trio

4  The Complete Piano Sonatas, IV. Prestissimo

5  The Complete Piano Sonatas, I. Allegro con brio

(etc.)

The title of the collection is identified…each individual movement is identified…but the sonatas themselves aren't! The first four tracks are indeed the four movements of the first sonata, but the fifth track isn't the first movement of the second one. It turns out to be the first movement of the third sonata. So good luck finding the sonata you'd like to buy, unless you know the tempo indications of all its movements (and have the patience to browse the whole collection, track by track).

And now for an iTunes rant. I said something nice about the software and the service in my earlier post. It is nice -- within its notable limitations. Apple really is out to get you here; they're even worse than Microsoft. Microsoft, some years ago, got people angry when it introduced a new music format, Windows Media, to compete with MP3 files, which were and still are the Internet standard. Microsoft upgraded its Windows Media Player, making it a serious competitor to the RealOne Player and MusicMatch, its main competition on PCs. But it sneakily made the Windows Media Player only able to create Windows Media files. It plays MP3s, but can't create them, for instance from tracks of a CD.

Bad Microsoft! It tried to push you toward its own music format. Though you can buy plugins for the Windows Media Player that let you create MP3s, and, as it happens, Windows Media is actually a better format than MP3. Anyone who knows audio knows this. The advantage of all these formats is that they're compressed, and take up far less disk space (and download time) than uncompressed audio. But Windows Media is twice as compressed as MP3; files of half the size sound just as good. (And, according to one study I saw on the web long ago, are arguably better, or so said a blindfold test of listeners.)

I prefer Windows Media files, and encode most of my digital music that way, on my hard drive and on my website. Windows Media is also standard on some other, much bigger sites -- BuyMusic.com, for instance, which sells downloads only in Windows Media format, and Naxos Records, where you can stream most of their catalogue, but only in Windows Media.

So what's wrong with iTunes? The answer is simple: Apple, wishing to push you toward its services and products, has outdone Microsoft. iTunes doesn't recognize Windows Media files at all. It won't create them, and won't play them. It doesn't even tell you they exist. (The Windows Media Player at least offers to explain why Windows Media is better than MP3.)

And something almost surrealistic happens when you try to import Windows Media files into the iTunes music library, which you have to do with any music file before you can play it. The open file dialogue displays the Windows Media files, and doesn't object when you select one of them and click the "Open" button. But then nothing happens! The "file open" windows disappears, just as it would if the software were doing what you want it to, but the file doesn't appear in the iTunes library. iTunes doesn't explain why it doesn't, and anyone who doesn't understand these format wars will be absolutely baffled, especially since the help files that come with iTunes never mention Windows Media at all.

iTunes also will transfer music to only one portable digital music player -- Apple's own iPod, of course. Other software players transfer files to any player you've got. Oh, and the iPod is just about the only portable player that won't play Windows Media files! Apple, supposedly the voice of freedom in the digital world, and the great alternative to Microsoft, here proves itself even more grasping and commercial than its widely hated enemy.

If you're curious to hear what I said on the radio yesterday -- my subject was the audience for new music -- go here. I start about halfway through the program ("Soundcheck," on WNYC, in New York) and I don't mind getting second billing to Michael Tilson Thomas.

From the "Circuits" section (technology, computers) of today's New York Times, a letter to the editor:

To the Editor:

Re "It's Got a Good Beat, but Where's the Cover?'' (Nov. 6), on the decline of album art and the potential for digital offshoots online: I regret that the article discussed this issue only in terms of popular music. In fact, the writer's apparent certainty that online music distribution will replace the compact disc demonstrates a perspective that relegates recorded classical music to the fringes of the market.

Classical music fans, by and large, remain loyal to the compact disc. It offers quality and convenience that MP3 cannot match. Moreover, perhaps more than any other genre, recorded classical music benefits from tangible album art. There is no substitute for the lavishly annotated and illustrated booklets included in many classical and opera releases; their contents add greatly to the enjoyment of the art form.

Dana John Hill

This should tell us how small the audience for classical music is -- or, maybe more precisely, how little impact classical music has on the media. Or how little the people who create the media (editors, for instance, in their 30s and 40s) are interested in it. What the letter-writer describes is familiar. In Billboard, for instance (Billboard is the weekly trade paper of the record industry), it's possible to read huge articles on the impact of some change in the recording business -- the sale, let's say, of one of the major record companies -- without finding even one mention of what impact the change will have on any classical labels involved.

Or take iTunes, Apple's generally wonderful online (and legal) music download store. Lots of classical music is available, but the database that lets you search for it is a mess. This is common, almost universal, in any kind of online music service, whether it's the old Napster, or Amazon.com. A search for Beethoven Symphonies at Amazon brings up "The Only Opera CD You'll Ever Need" and "25 Piano Favorites."

A search on iTunes for Schoenberg produces only a few of their Schoenberg selections. I was looking for "A Survivor from Warsaw," which, as it turns out, they have as part of an old Erich Leinsdorf recording, which paired that Schoenberg piece with Beethoven's 9th. But on iTunes, the Schoenberg work is apparently indexed under "Beethoven," so a Beethoven search produces it. You can also find it by searching for its title, but my point here is that you can't find every Schoenberg piece by searching for Schoenberg -- or, I'm sure, every Beethoven piece by searching for Beethoven. The problems here grow wildly baroque, as I learned some years ago when I worked for an online music company, and tried to reform their classical database. Information is typically entered by people who don't know one classical work from another. Often (look at iTunes) there's no way to search for music by composer. You have to search by "artist," and it's a crapshoot what artist name any classical CD might be listed under. The composer? The conductor? A soloist?

And what about the "Vienna Philharmonic" and its German-language doppelgänger, the "Wiener Philharmoniker"? Same orchestra, two languages. What search will give us all recordings filed under both?

This problem, though, is just about never talked about, when these online services get covered -- as they are almost constantly -- in the media. As far as I know, only my wife, Anne Midgette, wrote about the situation, in an "Arts and Leisure" piece in the Times. Mostly, though, classical music has so low a profile that people in the media never even notice these problems exist.

What's the solution? I've said it before, but I'll say it again. We shouldn't waste our time blaming the media. That'll get us nowhere. Instead, we should make noise on our own, to draw attention to classical music and to any media problems in covering it. What if the New York Philharmonic had issued a press release, complaining that classical album art wasn't mentioned, or that online music services mishandle classical listings? Every classical music organization -- and, really, any classical musician -- has to act as a representative of the entire field, drawing attention (as far as possible) to everything about classical music that the world needs to know about. It's not enough, any more, for all of us to make noise only about our own projects.

(Important caveat: What I've just said is exaggerated, because some artists are only artists, and have no head for public agitation. Bless them. They should continue just as they are, and disregard everything I've just written. Organizations, though, should take seriously what I've suggested.)

From Harper's magazine, in a provocative article by Thomas de Zengotita, which suggests how a proposed new liberal TV talk show ought to work:

Whatever his style, the Host must embody [a] fusion of high and popular culture. That is the key to our enterprise.

Why? Because the base of a renewed progressivism in this country is made up of young people for whom that fusion is a way of life. People in this base have read Foucault and spent time in chat rooms discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. From interns to associates, these people drive the culture industry -- media, arts, nonprofits, the academy.

But they don't drive classical music, and in fact are barely represented in our field. Nor is their aesthetic reflected in the concerts we give. Except in new music, of course. The current generation of new music groups -- Bang on a Can is the obvious example -- come completely from this culture, which is why they have a chance to capture the new young audience that mainstream classical music might never attract.

Mainstream classical music, in fact, doesn't even seem like high art to younger people; it can all too often seem middlebrow and sentimental. That's because irony is a big part of the culture that de Zengotita describes. To see how older classical music -- at least as we present it now -- can strike younger people, see the new issue of Chamber Music, the publication of Chamber Music America. In it, there's a very good piece by Stephen Rodgers and Kevin Gosa, reporting an informal survey of people from 24 and 34, who were asked what classical music meant to them. And in that piece we read, quite wonderfully, the following:

Many…associated the classics with clichéd expressions of triumph or raging love. Jarod, 30, offered a mock voiceover for each: "Uplifting! Triumphant! The soldiers and the Spanish noblemen have just arrived, Sire! We will feast tonight!!!…Two long-lost lovers, married many years ago, suffer amnesia and forget they are married, only to have their memories completely restored to them! At last! They are back together! Love!! YES!!"

What's our answer to that?

Sam Bergman writes (he's a violist in the Minnesota Orchestra, and news editor here at ArtsJournal):

I didn't hear the recital, obviously, but that review drew some awfully broad conclusions about the soloist's personality and outlook on his newfound celebrity. Unless Tommasini interviewed him before the recital, I'm not buying a word of it. Lang Lang opened our season this year, and I thought he was fantastic. Is he showy? Over-the-top? Perhaps even a bit too into his own head? Sure. He's also, what, 21? I'd hate for my whole career to be summed up in the nation's newspaper by one writer's view of the way I played a single recital when I was 21. But I guess, by NY Times standards, that's old enough to expect perfection.

I don't mind when reviewers offer a bit of backlash against artists who have clearly been overhyped, and Lang Lang might fall into that category. But to make some of the assumptions of personality that Tommasini did is unprofessional in my book.

Scroll down to the Lang Lang photo to see what this is all about. I'll add (without taking any stand on Lang Lang or Tommasini) that critics sometimes get defensive about the integrity of classical music, so that performances they don't like -- especially very populist performances -- seem not just disagreeable, but attacks on the entire field. You'll see that also in reviews of composers, especially Philip Glass.

This can't be good for classical music. If we're now so threatened that we need to get all holier-than-thou about our hoped-for purity, then we're really in trouble. In past generations, when nobody thought classical music was in trouble, we were allowed to be light and entertaining. Recordings from the early years of this century -- especially of singers -- show people taking far more liberties than Lang Lang ever does. Recently my wife and I got a multi-CD collection of recordings by Sam's own Minnesota Orchestra, dating from the 1920s to the present. I listened to the first CD; it's almost all bonbons, light music, pure entertainment. But I'm sure nobody back then thought the orchestra was doing anything disgraceful.

Wednesday, November 13, I'll be on the radio talking about new music, and why it's such a problem in the classical music world. This will be on John Schaefer's wonderful music and talk show, Soundcheck, on WNYC, New York's public radio station, sometime between 2 and 3 PM Eastern time (in the US). 93.9 FM, or live on the web.

Here's Lang Lang, photographed as he gave his first-ever recital in Carnegie Hall:

Change is in the air. Some years ago, Jean-Yves Thibaudet made waves just by wearing red socks. And now this!

(Doesn't matter, I think, that Lang Lang is getting slammed -- in Anthony Tommasini's Times review, and by others -- for distorted, showy playing. That's related to what he wears, obviously, but not inevitably related. Others will come along, and in fact are surely here already, who dress in their own spectacular fashion, without puffing up the music.)

The Boston Globe, weighing in on public radio, is notably unhelpful:

Bring back music and culture programming. NPR's news reports are thoughtful and compelling. Its talk shows are topical and a nice way to bring listeners into conversations. And "Car Talk" is great entertainment. But occasionally all this talk is wearying. Balance could be provided by music shows and radio documentaries.

But as anyone who's actually studied this subject knows, public radio listeners overwhelmingly don't want music. They want talk. The Globe's editors are free to have their own desires, but it's just silly for them to lecture public radio, as if their own opinion had to be right. At least they should learn why public radio makes the choices that it does.

And then, sigh, there's this:

What's going on outside the often overwhelmingly adolescent world of popular music? Who are the up-and-comers in jazz and classical music? NPR should take more time and programming space to offer answers.

Sure, why not? But "the often overwhelmingly adolescent world of popular music" -- serious people just have to stop talking like that. As anyone who knows anything about popular music will tell you, there's a lot of serious work that may well have even more trouble getting on the radio than classical music does. Think about it. Classical radio stations still exist. But how many stations -- apart from college radio -- play the kind of pop music that doesn't get on any pop charts?

There's one radio format, AAA ("adult album alternative") that might come close, but even then, there's music too serious, too gritty to be played commercially. Neil Young's new album was described in this past Sunday's New York Times as a novel, told in music and text. Has any radio station broadcast it complete?

(NOTE! Sometimes I get e-mail from people who want to tell me what trash pop music is. Let me say right now that I'm not engaging in that debate -- unless, that is, my critics show me they actually know something about the pop music they love to hate. If they want to tell me pop music is trash, let them do it with specific references to songs and albums by pop musicians that smart people take seriously.)

 

Again from the New York Times Book Review, this time from last week's review, by Carlos Fuentes, of what sounds like a wonderful new translation of Don Quixote:

This Don Quixote [translated by Edith Grossman] can be read with the same ease as the latest Philip Roth and with much greater facility than any Hawthorne. Yet there is not a single moment in which, in forthright English, we are not reading a 17th century novel. This is truly masterly: the contemporaneous and the original coexist. Not, mind you, the "old" and the "new." Grossman sees to it that these facile categories do not creep into her work. To make the classic contemporary: this is the achievement.

And this would be the great achievement, too, for performances of older classical music. Who can do what Grossman describes? Roger Norrington, I think, in his original-instrument Beethoven, which is fresh, brisk, and alive, full of power that feels both current and as if it's from the 18th century.

Any other nominations?

In today's New York Times Book Review there's a review of a book on ancient Greece -- Thomas Cahill's Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. I was interested; if Cahill could tell us why we should pay attention to ancient Greece today, maybe we could learn something about why classical music matters, too. Not that I'm consigning classical music to the distant antiquity of Homer and Euripides, but the parallel (partial, not complete) ought to be obvious.

When I got to the end of the review (by Joy Connolly, "who teaches classics and political theory at Stanford University," says her blurb) I was both sad and not surprised to learn that Cahill -- at least in Connolly's opinion -- hadn't done his job. "Cahill's book," Connolly writes, "is a rich, lively presentation of why the Greeks matter to those who already believe they do."

I wasn't surprised because much the same thing often happens when people explain why classical music matters. "It's beautiful," someone e-mailed not long after I began this blog. Someone else wanted to tell me why classical music is better than pop, and said, with genuine feeling, that nothing could compare to the Magic Fire music at the end of Die Walküre. I respect the emotion behind that, but if you already agree with the statement -- which you might not, simply because you like Bach better than Wagner -- then you won't be convinced.

I've especially seen people fall into this trap when they lament the decline of classical music on public radio. For instance:

[C]lassical music is public radio's birthright in New York and shouldn't be easy to abandon. Every community in the country, not just New York, deserves a station seriously dedicated to serious music, because that music is partly how we have defined what we want to share and preserve as a culture. The job of providing this service ultimately falls to public radio because few commercial stations are willing to do it.

Who's the "we," who've defined what should be shared and preserved? Evidently it's those of us who like classical music.

Or this:

Who knows how many of the uninitiated would discover the greatest music ever written if it were broadcast during a station's peak listening hours?

But who says it's the greatest music ever written? The people who love it. (And, to go a little deeper, not all music is written down. Think of jazz, or classical music from India. So the statement I've quoted makes a careless but revealing slip -- it takes classical music as the norm, and uses "written" as the word to describe how all music is created.)

We have to do better. If we're going to defend classical music, we have to explain why it ought to matter to people who don't yet like it -- and even to people who may never like it, but might benefit from having it around (the way we all benefit from bridges, let's say, that we ourselves don't cross, because they're crossed by people we need to see, and do business with).

I've been reading Kyle Gann's blog with the greatest admiration, and hesitated to comment only because I thought that -- to do justice to what Kyle does -- I'd have to write something long. But that's not so. I can say it simply. Kyle's blog is the most important one here, because, while the rest of us carry on about issues and opinions in the arts, Kyle writes deeply about art itself. Of course I know that Terry and Tobi talk about arts events, and so do I sometimes, but Kyle does it from the inside.

And not just because he's an artist himself, a composer, though that's surely part of it. He writes from the inside of art, from the center of the kind of attention artists bring to their work. This is rare. I'm tempted to say that he writes with the kind of focus he surely has when he composes, but that would be presumptuous. I don't know what composing is for him. I can only say that when I read him, I'm reminded of how I feel when I myself compose. Art (unlike "the arts") doesn't care what anybody thinks of it. It has no truth except its own, no compusion except the deepest instinct, no concern about what's right or wrong. It doesn't care where it fits in anybody's world; by its own existence, it defines a world of its own. Later that may turn out to overlap with everybody else's world, or (more likely) to invoke a world, and help to bring it into being, that doesn't yet exist, but soon will. But at the moment of creation, none of that matters.

Kyle brings me to this place, more than anyone else I read these days about music, anywhere on the web or in the press. For that I'm grateful. He matches the inner truth of the work he writes about (Feldman, Nancarrow, all the rest) -- music that's just as much worth hearing as Kyle says it is, and which Kyle's strength and fierce purity should drive all of us to hear.

From a musician in a major orchestra, speaking about whether classical music should be "relevant":

We shouldn't be relevant. We should be be prophets.

I'm always flattered, when I'm linked on the main ArtsJournal site. And today's link gives me a chance to add something to my column this month in NewMusicBox, which is where the link goes.

In this column, I suggest a new term for new classical music -- "alternative classical," a useful term, I think, because it addresses two things: First, that much of new classical music doesn't sound classical (though it uses classical techniques), and second, that there's an audience already tuned to alternative pop, that would like a lot of "alternative classical" music, if only it didn't think that music carries the classical taint. Calling it "alternative" could help us move beyond that.

But here's something I didn't address. Is all new classical music alternative? No way! Mine isn't, for instance. I think what I write is rooted very strongly, maybe too strongly, in the classical music past. Elliott Carter's music isn't alternative; to me, at least, it carries the formality, even the self-importance, of the classical concert hall. (Or, to be more polemical, the formality and self-importance that the music we call classical didn't have when it was written in past centuries, but developed in the past century, as the classical concert hall retreated from the world at large.)

But maybe I'm wrong about Carter. Maybe, in an alternative classical context, his would sound alternative, too. (Maybe Bach would sound alternative as well, which, come to think of it, is a wonderful way to preserve and extend the classical music past -- present it in the light of new music.) In New York, the concerts I'd call alternative classical don't tend to offer music like Carter's, but maybe that's not true elsewhere, and maybe it's too limiting. We could have fabulous debates over what new classical music is alternative, and what isn't. David Del Tredici (outrageous neo-romaticism) -- alternative! Ned Rorem (safely traditional, no matter how drop-dead classy the best of his songs are) -- not alternative!

Everything Kyle Gann praises in his wonderful blog is alternative. Though that's the least of the reasons I love his blog so much.

 

In my NewMusicBox column, I quote a lot from some helpful e-mail I've gotten from Cory Schwarz, a composer in New York, who has a post-rock band (his term for it). Among much else, he wrote:

 

There is an audience for [new music]. I have many friends in and around Brooklyn with very modern tastes in music and [who] listen to some pretty crazy things even by my standards. And there is good new music out there. However, what these “hip young Brooklynites” are listening to isn't modern classical. It's post-rock and art rock. Groups like Tortoise and Sigur Ros and Mogwai and God Speed You Black Emperor do very well.   

 

All of my friends who I get to listen to Stravinsky and Lutoslawski and Varese and Bartok et al enjoy it very much. What gives then? Product positioning. Classical music is unhip. But what does that mean? First, it takes place in a very stuffy atmosphere with some very stuffy patrons. Venue. Also, it is presented as an elitist undertaking and even modern composers don't shed that very well. (Except for maybe [Christopher] Rouse and definitely [John] Zorn). Image. which is probably the biggest problem.…

 

There is a viable audience for “classical” music if it is modern enough. Even in concert halls with huge orchestras. It just has to be promoted and grants and commissions must be given to young composers based upon facets of their work that is seen as progressive and not just tolerable. I've seen it. A program with Zappa and Ives almost sold out Carnegie Hall and I've seen “The Soldier's Tale” (which will always be modern) billed with a Rouse piece and a young Spanish composer whose name I can't recall. But, to court this new audience there has to be immense organization. New music festivals and the like. 

 

And there is a huge audience for modern chamber music. Promote certain ensembles in clubs. I've seen the Kronos Quartet sell out Joe's Pub as well as the “Bang On a Can All Stars.” Also the Knitting Factory is always open to new music and can hold 200 young people who are usually very open minded.  Another good promoting strategy is to bill crossover concerts in big halls. Tap in to a new fanbase. Say, “Modern American Music at Carnegie,” and book Bill Frisell with an orchestra playing Ives, Rouse, and maybe Strav's “Agon.” Call sonething “Modern Abstractions,” and book Sigur Ros and/or Radiohead and/or Mogwai and have an orchestra play Lutoslawski's Third and [Jacob] Druckman's “Aureole.” Or maybe, “Odd Times—Then and Now.” Book Tortoise with a chamber ensemble and a string quartet playing “The Soldier's Tale,” and Beethoven's “Grosse Fugue.” Stuff like that would work I think, and always remember that any jazz or rock artist will ALWAYS want to play Carnegie Hall even for a much reduced rate.

 

A group of musicians, all of them from mid-sized American orchestras, were asked what advice they'd give to young conductors.

The question came from someone who's organizing a conductor training program. And the musicians' answers were amazing, for two reasons. First, because so much of the advice was so basic, and because it wasn't aimed just at young conductors. Some of the players said their comments could just as well be aimed at their well-traveled, experienced music directors.

"Speak up," the musicians advised. "Don't mumble." "Speak loudly enough so the players in the back can hear you." "When you stop the music to say something, don't talk before we stop playing. You'll only have to repeat what you said."

And from there they went on to musical matters. "Admit your mistakes, if you make any." "Hold postmortems, after performances. Let's talk about what went right and what went wrong." "Use the resources of the orchestra. Ask our advice about how to conduct or play tricky passages." "Ask the musicians how to fix things that aren't going well." "CONDUCT us! Actually conduct the performance going on in front of you. Don't just wave your arms as if you're following along with a CD."

All this reflected some important realities. Conductors, even well-known ones, aren't as good as they should be. And orchestral musicians often know far more than any conductor about how orchestral music really works. Certainly they know far more than young conductors do.

But these comments weren't limited only to musicians from small or mid-sized cities. When a larger group of musicians was told about all this, a string player from one of the Big Five orchestras agreed. "Conductors should ask us how to fix problems," she said. "If some passage isn't going well, conductors should ask our advice."

And what's the second amazing thing about all this? That nobody had ever asked these musicians what they thought. Nobody, at their orchestras or anywhere else, had ever before thought of asking them if they could help conductors in any way.

I sense a new trend in the classical music business -- the empowerment of orchestral musicians (not just from these conversations, but from many other straws in a new, fresh wind). And I think this empowerment is an important part of classical music's future.

From a musician in a mid-sized orchestra, at a meeting I was at today:

I was taught that the art is everything, but that's a fallacy. I've come to think of classical music as an advocacy profession, like being a lawyer, and working as a public defender. You'll have to explain why you do what you do.

Many younger musicians feel this way. Another way I've heard them put it is that careers aren't in any sense automatic, even for musicians who are really good. To some extent, you'll have to make your own way -- and an important part of your job may be to explain classical music to people who don't know much about it.

In my last post, I looked at Vanity Fair's music issue from the viewpoint of its editors. Why did they pick the two classical artists they included?

Now let's look at it from the outside in, from the viewpoint of the classical music world. Why isn't there more classical music in Vanity Fair, and especially in its music issue? Suppose I ran the Cleveland Orchestra. I might ask myself, "Why aren't we featured in the magazine this month?"

I can think of four answers (not that there might not be more):

a) We don't belong there. Vanity Fair is commercial, slick, and trendy. We're artistic and refined.

b) We're too dorky. They're not interested.

c) Even though we're a vital musical group, and far from dorky, we don't know how to create events that get on Vanity Fair's radar.

d) Our publicist dropped the ball. He or she didn't think to pitch us to the magazine, or doesn't know how to do it effectively.

If the answer is a), I've got another question. How do we project our artistic, refined image to more people than are captivated by it now?

Just bought their annual music issue. Gorgeous, thoughtful photos, lots to read (or at least skim). An overview of where music is right now, for many of the people we in the classical music world hope to reach.

And of course nearly all of it is pop, in all pop's striking variety. What part does classical music play? Well, look at "The Music Portfolio," starting on page 333, a kind of honor roll of musicians in 2003. First The Dixie Chicks, in a warm, arresting photo luxuriously spread over two pages. Clearly three smart women, and, above all, fine musicians -- they're glamorous enough, but also not done up extravagantly, and focused, in this photo, on their instruments, banjo, fiddle, and guitar.

Then Perry Farrell, who's back with Jane's Addiction after many years out of the spotlight, an arresting dandy. Then Bette Midler, timeless, playful, elegant, relaxed. Then Jimmy Scott…80 years old? Suave in a tux, waving a cigarette while he gestures. What a presence! 

You look at these people, and you want to hear their music. You almost can hear it, just from looking at the photos. There's a wonderful shot of Elvis Costello and Diana Krall, she standing by a grand piano in a luxurious living room (or that's what it looks like), him lying on the piano, his head on her shoulder, his hand touching hers. Two of the happiest people in the world, you'd think, head over heels in love. And, of course, musicians of serious stature, which makes the photo all the more delightful.

Turn the page, and there's another photo that almost gave me chills -- Robbie Robertson and, white-bearded, Ronnie Hawkins! If you don't know the story, it's just wonderful. In the '50s, Hawkins, a rockabilly guy from Arkansas, got big in Canada, and used to tour there with a group drawn from both Canada and the American south. Robertson, only 15, joined the band as a guitarist. Some years down the road, the musicians who played with Hawkins went out on their own, eventually calling themselves The Band, and the rest is history, as they became one of the most deeply satisfying (and musically deep) rock bands ever to play. Robertson became something of a music intellectual -- and here he is, nearly 50 years down this road, still great friends with the very different, completely non-intellectual man who started him off!

But wait. Classical music? There are two classical entries in this happy pantheon. Anna Netrebko, first, soprano and glamour queen, heavily pushed by her record company, Deutsche Grammophon, walking down a hallway, looking almost like an old-time movie star in a striking, deliberately grainy black and white photo. And Juan Diego Florez, the terrific Rossini tenor, in a double-page spread that made me almost laugh out load. He's on a European beach, compact and dapper in a white shirt (linen, I'd guess) and shorts. Behind him are beach chairs and beach umbrellas, echoing the sky in blue and white, and on the right of the photo, a crowd in bathing suits has gathered to look at him. And maybe he's been singing -- at the front of the crowd is an older woman, grinning, with her hand cupped to her ear.

What a delight to see this! But there's one sadness. Florez, too, is heavily pushed by DG, and while there's nothing wrong with either him or Netrebko, what we have here is a portfolio of widely diverse pop figures, some trendy, some not, joined by two heavily promoted classical flavors of the year. Again, no disrespect to Florez or Netrebko -- but classical music has its own survivors, its own long-time figures of total class and integrity, its own Robbie Robertsons, Bette Midlers, Perry Farrells, Jimmy Scotts, and Elvis Costellos. Why not get them in Vanity Fair? Why do the editors use their own fine judgment when they assemble pop greats, and then, in classical music, take their cue from the publicity machine?