December 2003 Archives

It's 11 PM on December 23. Tomorrow my wife and I leave to see family for the holidays. I wasn't planning to post anything to this blog.

And then something arrived by e-mail that just appalls me. It's a press release from Universal Classics, Renée Fleming's record label. It announces some auctions on eBay, to be conducted literally during Christmas, from now until December 26. Some lucky Fleming fans will…but let the press release speak for itself:

Universal Classics announced today that Renée Fleming, opera superstar and two-time Grammy Award winner, will be offering fans two new exciting auctions exclusively at the Universal Music Store on eBay (www.universalmusicstore.com/reneefleming), the world's online marketplace. These auctions will provide Ms. Fleming's fans with special access to both unique memorabilia and Ms. Fleming's stirring vocal performances.

A lucky fan will bid on and have the opportunity to win two orchestra-seating tickets to Ms. Fleming's performance at the "Live From Lincoln Center New Year's Eve Gala Concert" with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in New York City on December 31, 2003, as well as a chance to meet Ms. Fleming backstage after the show. Dinner, accommodations for two nights, champagne, and a signed copy of Ms. Fleming's latest release, By Request, are also included.

One hundred limited Collector's Edition CDs of By Request, each personally signed by Ms. Fleming, will also be available for auction.

I find this all offensive. It's Christmas! We're supposed to think of others, not ourselves. But here's Renée Fleming, conducting this eBay auction, with fans buying CDs and tickets to her gala at what might well be dramatically inflated prices -- and the money apparently goes right into her pocket (and, of course, into Universal's). I think it ought to go to charity. I read the press release over and over, not quite able to believe that the money wasn't being given to some worthy cause. But if it is, Universal Classics doesn't say one word about it.

Enough. Merry Christmas, everybody. Let's all promise to be more generous than Renée Fleming seems to be, at least as she comes off in this ill-timed press release.

For the last week or so, I haven't been able to blog. A work crunch hit -- this is the time of year when I write marketing blurbs for major orchestras, trying to describe next season's concerts in ways that both respect their artistic intentions and will attract an audience. You'd think this wouldn't be a new idea, or that there shouldn't be any contradiction between the two goals. But in fact orchestras are only starting to learn how to talk to their audience, and (sad but true) the way the artistic staffs of orchestras talk to musicians and to each other might not mean much to the good people who buy tickets.

So I've been lost in that for a week -- and haven't even lifted my head from the sand long enough to wish the warmest, happiest holidays to all of my readers! My apologies for that. I'll be gone for a week, starting Christmas Eve, happily traveling with my wife to visit her parents. I've posted a couple of music-related thoughts below, but otherwise I'll resume the blog early in January, with a different approach, at least for a while. I'd like to focus on some of the main problems classical music seems to have, taking them one at a time, starting with the most basic one -- what kind of trouble do we think classical music is in? (Thanks to Andrew Taylor for suggesting I tackle that one, quite a while ago.)

Until then, best wishes to everyone. May your days, nights, and new year be wonderfully bright.

Quite by chance, I learned that my post about public radio quite a while ago generated some froth on the web, not least a strong dissent from my blogmate Terrry Teachout.

I'd said that public radio has reasons for cutting back on classical music, and that it doesn't do any good to protest without understanding what the reasons are. But some people think I've forgotten what public radio's mission is supposed to be -- to broadcast things unavailable elsewhere.

Now, this is an old argument. It's one of the first objections brought up -- often in tones of outraged anger -- whenever any public station makes a classical-music cutback. So I want to say again why I think it misses the point.

The argument isn't about what public radio ought to do. It's about what can be done. Suppose you think that public radio has a mission to broadcast things that otherwise wouldn't be available. Suppose you're right about that. Suppose you've proved -- with absolutely incontrovertible logic and historical analysis -- that public radio has betrayed its mission and its trust if it doesn't broadcast classical music.

So now what? How are public stations going to pay for what you've proved they ought to do? Where's the money going to come from? Very few people listen to classical music on public radio. At WNYC in New York, fully 80% of everybody listening switched to another station every morning when Morning Edition ended and classical music began.

So how can public radio stations survive if they follow the mission you've satisfied yourself they ought to have -- and suddenly their audience is only one-fifth of what it used to be? Clearly, they'll raise a lot less money from their listeners. Can they make up for that with government funding? Not likely. Government has cut way back. And other funding sources -- corporations and foundations -- aren't likely to give more money to any institution that suddenly reaches many fewer people. Corporations give money essentially for public relations. Why would they pour it into radio stations that just lost their listeners? Foundations can be more altruistic, but the people who run them aren't all that different from the people who listen to public radio now, and don't listen to classical music. Some foundations buck that trend, of course -- the few that care about classical music. But if you cut off 80% of your listeners, you'll also surely lose many of the foundations that used to fund you.

So here's the bottom line. It's very simple. No matter how noble its principles may become, public radio can't survive at its present size if it broadcasts to a tiny audience. As far as I know, the only participant in this public debate to face this fact is Larry Josephson, a long-time public radio personality, who thinks that public radio simply should contract. If it can't broadcast what he feels its mission and its honor both require -- not to mention the larger health of our culture -- then he thinks it ought to downsize. Public stations should be very small (low-powered, too, I'd assume), broadcasting classical music with very tiny staffs. That's an honorable position, one that, as far as I can see, is consistent with reality. I wish other people arguing these points would face the facts this clearly.

Here are some freely paraphrased responses to my post on piano advertising (by which I mean piano companies blazing their brand name on the side of their pianos):

   -- from a music publicist: Thanks, I hate it too!

   -- from the publicist at a mid-sized orchestra: Get over it! Commercial sponsorship is here to stay.

To which I can only answer, sure, but shouldn't there be limits? Advertising, all over our culture, is spreading out of control. In the past year or so it started showing up on supermarket floors. Today, in the business section of The New York Times, I read that it may very well appear on airplane tray tables, and on overhead luggage bins.

And then, from my blog colleague Drew McManus, this typically individual response. Go for it, Drew!

We'd all be shocked, I think, if we saw a Nike swoosh behind the musicians during a classical concert. Of course commercial sponsorship helps keep classical music alive, but commercial sponsors are supposed to know their place.

Yet there's one kind of advertising we constantly see -- advertising for the brand of piano being played. I was at a mostly wonderful concert Saturday night, a recital by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson at Zankel Hall in New York. Peter Serkin was her accompanist, and there it was, on the side of his piano, placed so the audience can see it -- "Steinway & Sons," in golden, slightly gaudy letters, along with the company's logo, a none too pretty stylized lyre.

This is gross. I wonder when and how it started. Certainly the Steinway my parents had when I grew up was free of advertising. If anyone knows when and why that changed, please let me know. I have an idea that Bösendorfer started doing it, and that Steinway, their competitor, imitated them. But is that true?

Regardless of the history, the practice really ought to stop. During the concert, I wondered if Carnegie Hall -- of which Zankel is the newest and most delightful part -- could simply paint their pianos, getting rid of Steinway's flagrant self-promotion. Probably not, I thought. Steinway, after all, is their official piano. They naturally benefit from the deal; they don't want to piss Steinway off. Besides, putting more paint on a piano, or the wrong kind of paint, might hurt the sound.

But can't Carnegie -- and other honest classical music institutions -- protest? I can imagine a coalition of, let's say, Carnegie Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and a few top soloists. Suppose they all went to Steinway and the other piano companies, with lots of people pledged to back them, and respectfully but strongly asked (not to say demanded) for all this advertising to be removed. I don't know what would happen, but I wish somebody would try.

Like most of you, I'm sure, I get a lot of spam. But lately someone has been having fun with it -- I'm getting messages that pretend to be from crazy names. Much as I hate the spam, I'll congratulate the spammer, who's weirdly, unforgettably inspired. (I imagine that it's just one person making up the names, because the style -- which I might describe as W. C. Fields gone totally insane -- is so consistent.)

How could anybody think an offer could be real, when it claims to come from names like these?

Revitalize B. Germany

Anthrax T. Mending

Rabelasian J. Carting

Timelessness H. Lifia

Inalienable G. Stream

Specialist H. Dardanelles

Whisky T. Sniggering

Industrialist K. Legibly

Handball L. Margarita

Bobbie T. Suffragists

Defenders Q. Denomination

Hastiness E. Steadfastness

Tasked D. Bystander

Prophetically H. Recesses

Cashiers P. Blueberry

Insulting D. Holocaust

Dissimulating D. Tami

Furtively J. Act

Oration H. Arrest

Therapists O. Palatable

Parachuted D. Bunts

Broadsword V. Reduction

Stuttering U. Certify

Conferrer K. Latches

Reconstruction O. Inlaid

Bestows S. Wisecrack

Lordship L. Stranding

Zanzibar B. Trefoils

Buoys B. Disapproval

Demagoguery H. Dowdily

Guile J. Identifier

Skull H. Anaxagoras

Schoolteacher H. Favorite

Sauciest C. Flinty

Forecastle J. Republishing

Pigtail U. Emigration

Shylockian G. Hightailed

Clincher K. Wichita

Rou S. Streetcar

Placate G. Davit

Holster Q. Shovelfuls

Enduring R. Oculist

The following e-mail comes from Iris Greidinger of New York, who corrects me about some things I said about Andrea Bocelli earlier. I said, for instance, that the Metropolitan Opera should book him for a pop concert, unaware that (as Ms. Greidlinger lets me know) he now sings pop songs only as encores. Whatever one thinks about Bocelli's singing, I should have known more before I ventured my comments.

I'll only add that Ms. Greidinger and I have now exchanged more friendly messages, and that I hope it's clear that I'm serious about posting dissenting views.

Here's Ms. Greidinger's e-mail to me:

The e-mail just poured in, after I wrote my post about Andrew Litton. I've never gotten so much mail, even when I've raised questions I think are more important. But I'm not objecting. Conductors are big news, and, more to the point, they affect people directly -- listeners, orchestra managements, critics, and, not least, musicians.

The Dallas Symphony staff member who wrote to me angrily, wrote back still more angrily to say he didn't want his message to me posted here. Of course I'll respect that. One critic wrote asking whether artistic evaluation arguably didn't belong in the original story I'd quoted from the Dallas paper, since it was a news story, not a review.

That's a reasonable point. On the other side, I'd have to say that the events the story reported raise some questions. For instance, how often do conductors leave a post with a major orchestra so they can produce childrens' television? One of my Juilliard students asked me that, quite seriously. He wanted to know. If he did, I'm sure others might have, so from that point of view it might be a legitimate question to raise even in a news report.

Another critic wrote to say how tricky it can be to write in a city smaller than New York, when you're constantly writing about a very few institutions, and need to preserve relationships with them, both on the record (to get access to news and interviews), and off the record (to cultivate confidential sources). These relationships can be compromised if a critic isn't careful. I know this is true, and I respect it.

A reader from New York weighs in with an objection of a different kind. Why do I waste my time with Litton and with Gerard Schwarz, when Lorin Maazel, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, is (in this man's view, not that he's alone) a larger-scale disaster? My answer would be that I've written about Maazel in the Wall Street Journal three times, and that anyway his conducting has been loudly damned by other New York critics. Plus the situation at the Philharmonic isn't as clearcut as situations elsewhere. The musicians love Maazel, so it's not like Maazel's presence there is any kind of festering scandal. Nobody disputes that he's a master conductor, successful in many ways. It's just that many people think he's unexpressive.

A musican who disagrees with me on Litton congratulates me on exposing other "fraudulent" conductors. I must say, though, that I'm not going to make a practice of this. The issue I wanted to raise was rather different -- it's why conductors who don't do very well aren't often called on that by the press.

But here I want to add two things. First, that the New York Times has made a point of covering backstage doings at the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center. They don't always get it right (one problem is that their cultural reporters don't really know the classical music world), but at least they do it. Just yesterday they reported that the Philharmonic's board is deciding whether to renew Maazel's contract, and the musicians strongly want them to do it. Similar stories sometimes come from other cities, too, about the local orchestras. They're usually about administrative matters, though, and much less often about music.

Second, one reason conductors get a free ride is that it's hard to tell exactly what they do -- even sometimes for professionals who observe them from backstage or from the audience. We have to understand (have I said this here before?) that a professional orchestra can play without a conductor, or in spite of one, as long as the players know the music. So when someone ineffective gets onto the podium, the results won't be disastrous. The orchestra will cover for the conductor, ignoring his or her mistakes, and in some cases doing a far better performance than the conductor would have managed, if the musicians actually had followed his or her conducting.

Remember my post some weeks ago, about musicians from a mid-sized orchestra who thought most of the conductors they work with might as well be beating time in a mirror, to a CD. There's also an old joke. The music director of a wealthy church hires the Chicago Symphony to play Messiah at Christmas. He gets one rehearsal with the orchestra, and makes the mistake of criticizing the way they play. Comes a voice from the back: "Maestro, one more word out of you, and in the concert we follow you!"

Let me end with one thought. I was asked -- in questions about classical music criticism, put to me and other critics on a rock criticism site -- if many classical critics were musicians. Part of my answer was to say that they certainly look at things very differently from the way musicians do. If you talk to instrumental players, you hear (consistently, across the board, no matter who you talk to, as long as the players are professionals) that many conductors aren't very good, and that some, who might be names many people know, aren't even competent.

But critics don't say this. You won't read music reviews around the country, and find critics often writing that a conductor simply didn't do his or her job. So there's a gap between what musicians, at least, perceive as musical reality, and what critics write.

Of course musicians can both overestimate and underestimate conductors. I can't blame them for this. They may get disgusted with someone's lack of conducting technique (understandably, because that sometimes makes their work quite difficult), and overlook how powerful the musicmaking is, in spite of all the problems. Or they might fall in love with a conductor with a delightful, world-conquering technique, and not ask too strongly if the music comes off all that well. In the '80s, players in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra would say Guiseppe Patané was their favorite among all the conductors they worked with. I don't know that the rest of the world shared their excitement, though I could hear how wonderfully they played for him.

But musicians certainly know more than critics about what's really going on. They're on the frontlines of music, and it's a shame their views aren't better represented in the world at large.

I'll take a break from everything I've stirred up about conductors, and how they're covered in the press, mainly because I don't have time today to write about this. But there's been new e-mail, raising worthy points, not all agreeing with me. I'll get to it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, though, here's something I scanned a while ago from Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity. I've quoted Hornby's writing about pop music here, including some challenges he throws (though not intentionally) at classical music.

But I'm also always looking for solid thoughts about why classical music should exist, and -- after quoting Hornby on pop -- I want to give equal time to his description of something pop can't do, and (though Hornby doesn't go this far) I think classical music can.

This passage comes after a key character's father dies:

There aren't really any pop songs about death -- not good ones, anyway. Maybe that's why I like pop music, and why I find classical music a bit creepy. There was that Elton John instrumental, "Song for Guy," but, you know, it was just a plinky-plonky piano thing that would serve you just as well at the airport as at your funeral.

 

"OK, guys, best five pop songs about death."

 

"Magic," says Barry. "A Laura's Dad Tribute List. OK, OK. `Leader of the Pack,' The bloke dies on his motorbike, doesn't he? And then there's `Dead Man's Curve' by Jan and Dean, and 'Terry,' by Twinkle. Ummm ... that Bobby Goldsboro one, you know, `And Honey, I Miss You ...' " He sings it off-key, even more so than he would have done normally, and Dick laughs. "And what about `Tell Laura I Love Her.' That'd bring the house down." I'm glad that Laura isn't here to see how much amusement her father's death has afforded us.

 

"I was trying to think of serious songs. You know, some­thing that shows a bit of respect."

 

"What, you're doing the DJ-ing at the funeral, are you? Ouch. Bad job. Still, the Bobby Goldsboro could be one of the smoochers. You know, when people need a breather. Laura's mum could sing it." He sings the same line, off-key again, but this time in a falsetto voice to show that the singer is a woman.

 

 

"Fuck off, Barry."

 

"I've already worked out what I'm having at mine. `One Step Beyond,' by Madness. `You Can't Always Get What You Want.' "

 

"Just 'cause it's in The Big Chill."

 

"I haven't seen The Big Chill, have I?"

 

"You lying bastard. You saw it in a Lawrence Kasdan double bill with Body Heat."

 

"Oh, yeah. But I'd forgotten about that, honestly. I wasn't just nicking the idea."

 

"Not much."

 

And so on.

 

I try again later.

 

" 'Abraham, Martin, and John,' " says Dick. "That's quite a nice one."

 

"What was Laura's dad's name?"

 

"Ken."

 

" 'Abraham, Martin, John, and Ken.' Nah, I can't see it.”

 

"Fuck off."

 

"Black Sabbath? Nirvana? They're all into death." Thus is Ken's passing mourned at Championship Vinyl.

 

 

I have thought about the stuff I want played at my funeral, although I could never list it to anyone, because they'd die laughing. "One Love" by Bob Marley; "Many Rivers to Cross" by Jimmy Cliff; "Angel" by Aretha Franklin. And I've always had this fantasy that someone beautiful and tear­ful will insist on "You're the Best Thing That Ever Hap­pened to Me" by Gladys Knight, but I can't imagine who that beautiful, tearful person will be. But that's my funeral, as they say, and I can afford to be generous and sentimental about it. It doesn't alter the point that Barry made, even if he didn't know he was making it: we have about seven squillion hours' worth of recorded music in here, and there's hardly a minute of it that describes the way Laura's feeling now.

I got many responses to my Andrew Litton post, including a hearty "thank you" from someone in touch with the Dallas music scene, and a lively dissent from a musician who's worked with Litton recently (not in Dallas), and likes him. Not to mention an angry message from a staff member at the Dallas Symphony, which I hope he'll let me print here, uncensored.

The musician who wrote to me points out that the personal detail I touched on -- people close to Litton making demands on orchestras that Litton guest-conducted -- is years out of date. The people involved have long since stopped interfering, and in any case Litton himself had nothing to do with it. That's all true, and I should have said it myself. But on the other hand, what I reported really did happen, and did play a role in getting Litton a bad reputation among American orchestras. So I stand by my point -- it's something that should have been reported in the press. Certainly it would have been if Litton were a pop star, a sports figure, a big-time CEO, or a politician.

Another e-mail reminds me that Litton isn't the only music director who's gotten a more or less free ride from the press. There was Seiji Ozawa in Boston, who was ineffective for many years, and known to be so inside the music business, without anything mentioned in the local press. And to this day -- as my correspondent pointed out -- Gerard Schwarz remains as music director with the Seattle Symphony, even though he conducts badly, is thoroughly disliked by the musicians, and is equally disliked inside the orchestral world. When I wrote something about how badly he conducted when he was music director of the Mostly Mozart festival in New York, three members of the Seattle Symphony (people I'd never met or talked to) called me out of the blue to thank me. In my more than 20 years as a music critic, I've never gotten anything like that reaction to anything I've written.

More telling still: The Seattle Symphony recently hired a new executive director, after Deborah Card, who'd held the job for many years, left to run the Chicago Symphony. But the search was difficult. The most plausible candidates the search committee approached said they didn't want the job as long as Schwarz was there. I'd heard this from people in the orchestra world, and confirmed it first-hand with one of the people who'd been approached, and said he wouldn't even consider the job.

So here's yet another important unreported story! Did the Seattle Times tell its readers Schwarz is that unpopular?

No disrespect, by the way, to Paul Meecham, from the New York Philharmonic staff, who did take the Seattle job. What happened to him, though, actually was reported. He told the musicians, privately, of course, that he thought Schwarz had to go. Somebody told the press, and the whole thing showed up in the Seattle Times, giving Meecham a kick in the gut as he got ready to start his new job. But when the paper ran this story (which was linked here), they didn't mention any of the background -- that Schwarz isn't regarded as a good conductor, or that his presence is enough to keep many good orchestra managers away.

In a story linked from ArtsJournal, we read that Andrew Litton is leaving the Dallas Symphony. Two things were immediately notable. First, Litton has nowhere to go. He holds relatively minor jobs in Norway and in Minneapolis, but he's not leaving Dallas because of them. Above all, he's not moving up from Dallas, as his career path would have led us to expect. From Dallas, he might have gone to Pittsburgh, let's say, if not to some larger American orchestra, or to an important post in Europe. instead, he's leaving -- or so he says -- so he can spend more time conducting opera (what engagements does he have?) and developing children's television shows. One gathers, therefore, that his Dallas tenure was in many ways a failure.

Second notable thing, which of course supports what I've just said: Nobody quoted in the story said anything about Litton's conducting. Note these quotes:

He brought the orchestra more exposure through the tours and a lot of recordings.[Recordings, by the way, are no proof of artistic stature. They're very often subsidized, which is to say paid for by the orchestra, by private donors the orchestra recruits, or by the artists themselves.]

That will be one of his lasting effects, the many fine players he brought into the orchestra.

He pushed the board to raise enough money and give the Dallas Symphony the tools it needs to become one of the world's great orchestras.

Not a word about how good he was.

So here's the truth. Litton's not thought of as a good conductor. He can make a splashy effect; that's about it. Musicians who've played for him are damning. Administrators at orchestras where he's guest-conducted are equally damning. When Litton conducted the New York Philharmonic, his New York Times review was one of the worst I've ever seen.

And there were additional problems, which I'm going to be discreet and not describe here in any detail, though they were legendary in the orchestra world. Let me put it this way: People close to Litton would descend on any orchestra that he conducted, causing trouble and making demands. This hardly endeared Litton to these orchestras; it posed a problem for his career.

I'll stop here. No point beating up the guy who very possibly could read the writing on the wall, and might have left before the orchestra decided not to renew his contract. He did some things expertly, and in some ways was good for Dallas. But let me raise a question. Why didn't we read any of what I've said here, in the Dallas news story? None of it is secret. And Scott Cantrell, who wrote the story, is a really good critic and reporter.

Well, obviously we could glean a lot of it from what we read. But why didn't we read it more explicity? The answer, I think, is that there's in effect an agreement inside the classical music business, that news won't be reported fully. Things are santized. If Litton were a pop musician, everything I've written here would have been in the press long ago. Everybody would have known it. Dallas would have been abuzz. "What's this guy doing?" "Why is he our music director?"

Which leads me back to something I've said here before. In classical music, there's very little accountability. People in every city in the country know how good or bad their sports teams are. But they don't know where their orchestra (or opera company) might rank. They don't get comparative reviews, or reports from inside the field.

Granted, it's hard to pretend your baseball team is good if it has a losing season. To judge an orchestra is more subjective. Still, some standards can be objectively applied -- and then there are prevailing opinions from people whose judgment really matters. If your music director goes down in flames when he conducts in other cities, isn't that news you ought to read? If he's not welcome back as guest conductor, shouldn't you know that? We have to stop treating classical music as if it were something sacred -- or something that needs to be protected -- and start describing things the way they really are.

It seems more and more obvious that we're going to get recordings digitally -- and that this will, on balance, be pretty wonderful.

I, encouraged to think this by two recent experiences. First, I've been using Naxos Music Library, a soon-to-be-available service I've talked about here. (Available, anyway, to institutions.) If you use it, you'll be able to hear, on the web, any recording from the huge Naxos catalogue, in more than decent sound. Lately I've been working on projects that require me to hear huge amounts of music, mostly from the standard orchestral repertoire. I have a lot of it on CD, but it's hugely more efficient to simply type in "Prokofiev" and "Symphony No. 5" and have the music play. This goes beyond convenience; it's a revolution, which I wouldn't have understood if I hadn't needed it.

Soon all recordings will be available like this, available either for streaming or for sale via download. Even now, I can at least sample pieces I don't have on CD, and that Naxos hasn't recorded, by going to the Amazon or Tower Records sites, and listening to excerpts, typically the first minute of each track. (The Tower site, by the way, has a very fine classical search engine, and so does Naxos.)

Second experience: Getting a large-capacity digital music player, an iPod equivalent. It doesn't take much time to load it with a dozen CDs (and, in none too long, a hundred)I've thought I'd like to listen to. So now, there they all are, accessible all in one place, easy to hear at random moments. Elliott Carter, Michael Torke, wonderful Brandenburg Concerto recordings by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, David Zinman conducting Beethoven, a CD of Schoenberg and Shostakovich by a conductor I know…things I've meant to get to for days, weeks, or months, suddenly right at my fingertips.

A story in the New York Times this week -- my tired memory tells me it was in the media business section this past Monday -- predicts that in the coming year the digital download services (iTunes, the new legal Napster, BuyMusic.com, MusicMatch) will expand radically, offering all kinds of unusual music, including classical, that they don't have now.

But here's a warning! These services aren't set up to handle classical music. I've said something about this before, about how horrible the databases are, so it's hard to find the classical things you want, or even, all too often, to know what the classical selections are when you find them. (I'll never forget the enticing live CDs from the Vienna State Opera available through a defunct digital music company I used to work for. These offered live performances from the 1930s, pure gold for people who love historical vocal recordings -- but the people who made the database forgot to mention who was singing!)

But there's more. If you've used MP3 and Windows Media Files -- the two main online music formats in the Windows world -- you may have noticed that they include more than just the music. They can also give you information about the music, encoded into what the geek world calls "tags." So your download of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire might come with built-in listing of the title of each separate song in the piece, along with the names of the people performing. These will be displayed when you play the download on your digital music player, or your computer. Better still, you can sort what you've got by these tags, so at least in principle you can quickly look at everything you have by Schoenberg.

So here's the bad news. These tags weren't planned with classical music in mind. The standard tags are "Title," "Artist," "Album," and "Genre." For pop, that makes perfect sense. "Thunder Road," by Bruce Springsteen, from Born to Run. What else do you need to know? The genre, naturally, is "rock." You can sort through all the rock albums you have, or all the rock songs, or all the rock artists. Or hiphop, or jazz. Or you can see everything you have by Springsteen or KRS-One.

What's missing is a tag for "composer." In classical music, we need that. We want to see everything we have by Bach, everything played by the Vienna Philharmonic, and all our symphonies -- with, please, not just a listing saying "Symphony No. 5 - Allegro con brio." We'd like to know that movement is by Beethoven. And in fact, we need yet another tag, to keep tracks of separate works with all their movements. iTunes, Apple's download service, now available for Windows, encodes music in a format of its own (too much confusion!), and includes a "composer" slot in the information it displays (which can be customized). I'm told we can search for composers on the iPod, which is good news. But what about the Windows world, and all the digital music happening there, not just on little digital players, but on computers? 

In the Windows world, the standard MP3 and WMA music tags aren't much good for classical music. If classical downloads vastly grow, we'll be in trouble. We'd better do something now. Except there isn't any "we!" Who speaks for classical music? Who's got clout enough to make these download services -- and the linked but not directly coordinated groups who set the overall standards for digital music -- redo their work?

I went to the Met last night, to see Die Frau ohne Schatten. Striking production, and a touching one, too, by the late Herbert Wernicke; variable singing, but one really warm, deep performance, from Wolfgang Brendel, as Barak. (And OK, he's a friend, whom I met through my wife, who knew him when she lived in Munich. But sometimes there's an artistic reason, on top of personal ones, why someone is a friend. Wolfgang is a real mensch on stage, who feels everything in his heart, and renders it honestly, with no fuss. And he sings beautifully.)

At the two intermissions, I found myself deep in conversation with someone from the opera business, about why there were so many empty seats. Any performance of this opera is a real event. Maybe this year's revival isn't as striking as the debut of the production was two years ago (especially since then the conductor as Thielemann, and not Philippe Augustin, who conducts this time around, and seems to struggle somewhat with the orchestra, even though he renders the music honestly). But still, it's a major evening. Why couldn't the Met attract more people?

One unfortunate conclusion, very hard to resist, is that the opera house just doesn't do much marketing. I'd imagine they attend to their target audience, whom maybe they define as subscribers, likely subscribers, and tourists. The one conspicuous piece of marketing I've seen from them around the city is a billboard in Times Square, aimed at tourists. This makes sense. Tourists make up a reasonably large part of the classical music audience in New York, especially at a marquee attraction like the Met. Around 10 years ago, I talked to the marketing director at the company, and he made savvy distinctions between the taste of tourists from Europe and America.

But who does the Met reach out to in New York? Not many people, I suspect. The Met -- to put this rather harshly, but realistically, I fear -- isn't really part of New York's cultural life. Oh, it's there, a household name to everybody, but at the same time nobody has any special reason to think about it. This week, the Met is doing three striking evenings in a row. Last night, Die Frau; tonight, the premiere of a new production, Berlioz's oddball Benvenuto Cellini, which is rarely performed; tomorrow night, La Juive, also a rarity.

How many people in the city know this is happening? Doesn't matter whether everybody sees these productions; obviously, most New Yorkers won't. But how many people -- especially the educated, cultured (whatever that means) people who presumably could be the Met's audience -- know that the house is doing anything special? You'd think the Met would find ways to crow. You'd think they'd sell special ticket packages, especially because they're so famously having trouble selling tickets. Forgive the scare italics, but it's well known that the Met is having trouble. Not long ago, Joseph Volpe, their general director, even announced that they'd close for two weeks next season, during a time in January when they have even more trouble than usual getting people to come. Is that his only response? What's the Met doing to make itself more visible?

I'm not a marketer, and what follows is, maybe, amateur speculation. But still I've been around the business quite a bit, and talk a lot with marketers. Besides, classical music is, as we all keep saying, in some kind of trouble. So every classical music institution has go many extra miles to make some noise. The Met shouldn't only advertise its operas. It ought to do things designed to get people talking. Some of these, I'd think, would pay off in the long run, even if they lost money at the time they're tried.

So, for instance, I think the Met might introduce a $10 ticket for people under 30, as classical music groups have done in Toronto. OK, maybe $20. This is New York. But certainly a cheap ticket. If they're not filling the house -- and if most of the audience they currently attract is older than 30 -- how can they lose? The publicity alone could be worth its weight in gold. Especially if the program works! Then the Met has generated news. Younger people come!

Why not give tickets away to high school and college students? With major publicity, of course. Why not do one production each year that's really on the edge, something that will make critics and subscribers buzz with anger? The point here isn't simply to be controversial. The point is to do something artistically interesting, but not mainstream, so the house becomes known as a place that cares about art, and is willing to take risks. That creates more buzz, and makes even the standard productions seem more interesting.

Why not do really popular stuff? An Andrea Bocelli concert, for instance? Or an Aretha Franklin event, in which she'd sing some of the opera arias she's refashioned into Aretha tunes? (Assuming she's still doing them; a few years ago she was.) Oh, sure, these things don't meet the Met's usual notion of its artistic level (though I'd argue that on a good night, Aretha's way above the usual artistic level of opera). The point, though, is to show that the Met is for everybody, that it doesn't make rules, or turn anyone away. Combine that with edgy stuff that artists like, and you expand your reach both to the right and the left. (There might be a problem with Bocelli, though, because he fancies himself an opera singer, something he decidedly is not. If the Met let him sing opera, they really would compromise their standards.)

Why not fan out into the community? Why not send singers into every county of New York state (to borrow an idea from the brave pianist in North Carolina I wrote about here a while ago)? Why not send them into every New York high school? These singers wouldn't have to be international stars, though I'd bet some of the famous singers would be thrilled to go into small towns and schools. As long as the singers had the Met name attached, the events would be big news, and really -- gigantically -- welcome everywhere they were held. The company would do this, of course, with major publicity, creating more buzz, more goodwill, and more of a sense that the Met isn't just an opera house -- it's a place where things happen.

We could take this further. We could imagine the Met getting involved in all kinds of New York cultural events, from the Next Wave festival at BAM to the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. Big pop concerts, too. If Sting or Bruce Springsteen come to town, wouldn't some of the orchestra, chorus, and even big-time soloists at the Met like to hear them? Can't believe they wouldn't. They're people, just like us. So the Met makes sure they get tickets (house seats, more likely, which the people going to the concerts would be happy to pay for), and also makes sure the world knows it's involved. In return, of course, Sting and Springsteen (and everyone in their road crews and their bands) gets invited to see opera at the Met. Maybe people in touring pop shows couldn't go; they aren't in town long enough. Never mind. The gesture counts, and in other circumstances -- when the circus is in town, maybe -- the people involved could happily accept the offer.

So come on, Joe Volpe. Why not try some of this stuff? Would you lose your dignity? Well, what's your dignity getting you, right now? The key to success, I'd argue -- not just for the Met, but for all of classical music -- is to become both more artistic, and more accessible. And the two things, I'm convinced, reinforce each other.