Measuring the crisis

(In which, as promised, I start from the top, measuring the subject of my blog…)

Lots of us say that classical music is in crisis. But what exactly do we mean?

Well, we might start with what I might call the commercial problem, or, more simply, the objective, measurable side of what's either a crisis now, or soon might be one: Many people worry that classical music will simply disappear. There won't be any audience to sustain it. The current audience, average age at least 50, will grow old, fade away, and never be replaced. Orchestras will wither, opera companies will die, music schools will fold; that'll be the end of us.

Will this happen? That's a complex question, which can't easily be answered now (I'll return to it). But there are other measurable signs of trouble for classical music. Not long ago I reported that Columbia House isn't selling classical CDs any more; that's typical of many things we've seen in the past few years. The main areas of decline might be:

• less media coverage for classical music
• the decline (surely too weak a word) of classical recording
• the shrinking of classical radio

To those we could add related phenomena: the disappearance of stores that sell classical sheet music (as the term goes in the business; of course I mean piano music, orchestral scores, opera scores, and so on). And the disappearance of classical music from record stores (not many years ago we had five serious classical record departments in New York record stores; now we have two, both in Tower branches, and the chain is bankrupt).

To these objective signs of trouble we could add some common sense: Classical music obviously plays a far smaller role in our culture than it used to. Go back to the '60s -- CBS TV commissioned music from Stravinsky, Life magazine published a new Copland piano piece. Nothing like that happens now. Popular culture has swamped classical music, and, most significantly, has developed art music of its own. It figures, then, that classical music is losing influence and market share -- and might lose them drastically in the future, when the generation now growing up takes over. Already, the newspaper editors classical music critics have to deal with, smart professionals in their 30s and their 40s, don't have classical music in their backgrounds. What will their successors be like, 30 years from now?

But common sense isn't always right, and developments don't always (or even often) unfold in straight lines. Going against everything I've just said is something else -- there's no shortage, at least in America, of young people studying classical music. Youth orchestras flourish; students still flock to conservatories to study the bassoon. As a result of this, orchestras (including the very biggest ones) are now younger than their audience! What this means is hard to say, but it certainly means something. One thing it very likely means is that musicians themselves will be demanding changes in the field.

I'll write more on all these points in future weeks. But next: Why the crisis goes beyond numbers; why there's rot even inside the classical music sanctuary.