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Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

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Archives for March 2005

Modernism (sigh)

March 31, 2005 by Greg Sandow

I loved Josh Kosman's piece on whiny modernist composers, linked from Artsjournal yesterday. Certainly there's a problem here, and in fact a serious historical conundrum. Why hasn't atonal modernist music by composers like Schoenberg and Charles Wuorinen caught on, even after a century (in Schoenberg's case)? Why does the mainstream classical music audience hate it so much?  Josh's piece was brought on by a New York Times interview with Wuorinen, John Harbison, and James Levine (who conducts a lot of atonal modernist music). … [Read more...]

Something good in South Dakota

March 31, 2005 by Greg Sandow

This came to me last night, from Delta David Gier, music director of the South Dakota Symphony: I am now coming to the close of a season of concerts centered around Pulitzer prize-winning composers. This is my first season as Music Director, and I have worked for the past ten years as an assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic. During the interview process in Sioux Falls last year I stressed the importance of the orchestra's commitment to contemporary music. When I was offered the position I then had to figure out how to make good … [Read more...]

Marketing

March 31, 2005 by Greg Sandow

What follows comes from conversations with several organizations, and a consulting job with one of them. Suppose you're a classical music group, musically terrific, reasonably well known, and with a reasonably long history of success. But now your audience seems to be shrinking. You're not alone in this, since the same thing seems be happening everywhere. But still you need to do something about it. What do you do? Immediately, as far as I can see, you have a dilemma. On one hand, you've got all the stuff you've always done to sell tickets. … [Read more...]

CD covers

March 22, 2005 by Greg Sandow

[This is an old post -- from January 25. But I'm not sure it ever got on my blog, due to some technical glitch, so I'm reposting it now.] Well, responses have been pouring in to things I've been writing lately -- the dimensions of the crisis, Baroque and medieval performance, CD covers. I'm glad I'm touching various nerves. And finding so much agreement! We've got a fine conspiracy going here. All through the classical music world are people who agree with the kinds of things I say, some of them in major institutions. The institutions are slow … [Read more...]

On the Town.

March 19, 2005 by Greg Sandow

Funny to read (in a Norman Lebrecht column, linked from ArtsJournal) that anyone might object to the English National Opera performing Leonard Bernstein's On the Town. It's a musical, see, and opera companies ought to be above that. (Which isn't Lebrecht's position, by the way.) My wife and I just listened to the On the Town original cast album, during one of our drives from our New York apartment to our country place. It's very sophisticated music, heads and shoulders, if you ask me, over most American operas. The beginning is especially … [Read more...]

Another look at orchestras

March 5, 2005 by Greg Sandow

Orchestras are in trouble, in the end, for one simple reason -- their market is shrinking. You can see that in a long-term decline in ticket sales, especially for most orchestras' core subscription series. You can also deduce the shrinking market from the overall situation of classical music, which each year gets less important in our culture. In the early 1960s, Life (then the leading mass-market national magazine) commissioned a piano piece from Copland, and printed it, for readers to play. In the early 2000s, classical radio stations … [Read more...]

Read the fine print

March 3, 2005 by Greg Sandow

If you've already read this…I've revised my conclusion, adding some thoughts on why deficits can be a misleading measure of financial health. Here are two headlines, from ArtsJournal links to recent news stories: "SF Opera in the Black (After Major Deficits)" (San Francisco Chronicle, February 21) "Cincinnati to Build on Recent Fiscal Success" (Cincinatti Enquirer, March 2). Both these headlines make you think that the San Francisco Opera and the Cincinnati Symphony are in good financial shape. Granted, they're a little sunnier … [Read more...]

Greg Sandow

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days involves the future of classical music -- defining classical music's problems, and finding solutions for them. Read More…

About The Blog

This started as a blog about the future of classical music, my specialty for many years. And largely the blog is still about that. But of course it gets involved with other things I do — composing music, and teaching at Juilliard (two courses, here … [Read More...]

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Resources

How to write a press release

As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here's a post I did in 2005 -- wow, 11 years ago! --  about how to make press releases better. My examples may seem fanciful, but on the other hand, they're almost … [Read More...]

The future of classical music

Here's a quick outline of what I think the future of classical music will be. Watch the blog for frequent updates! I Classical music is in trouble, and there are well-known reasons why. We have an aging audience, falling ticket sales, and — in part … [Read More...]

Timeline of the crisis

Here — to end my posts on the dates of the classical music crisis  — is a detailed crisis timeline. The information in it comes from many sources, including published reports, blog comments by people who saw the crisis develop in their professional … [Read More...]

Before the crisis

Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don't believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read More...]

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