Here’s something I might add to my list of ways that classical music is in crisis: Even music students now don’t seem to have the same interest in classical music that students used to have, years ago. (And as they did when I was a graduate student in composition at the Yale School of Music, from 1972 to 1974).
A fair number of my Juilliard students say they never listen to classical music. Of course, they play it all day, and maybe that explains why they don’t want to listen when they’re not playing. But some of them show no curiosity about great musicians of the past, or repertoire, or the leading musicians around today. Maybe that was also true when I was in school, but I don’t think students were as militant about it. I can’t remember anyone saying, “I just never listen to classical music.”
And the results of a recent survey in Britain are really sobering. I should note that I’ve heard of this only second-hand, from someone in the British music world who says he heard about it. (If it’s been published, I don’t know about it.) But the guy is well placed, and involved with a serious project to extend the reach of classical music, so I trust him.
He says that a consortium of British commercial companies involved with classical music — Gramophone magazine and Classic FM were two of them; I don’t remember the others — surveyed young classical musicians, kids who play in youth orchestras. Almost none of these kids, the survey found, would even consider reading Gramophone. They think it’s a magazine for old people. And almost none wanted to go to classical concerts. My source was quite shaken by this news.
Britain — as has been reported several times, in news stories linked on ArtsJournal — is also seeing a decline in the number of students studying the less popular orchestral instruments, like the viola and the bassoon. This decline, the stories say, is reaching crisis proportions. I have to say, though, that I haven’t heard anything like this in the US (and I’ve asked about it).