October 2005 Archives

One of the happiest professional moments I had in the last year came when I named a baby llama. I was e-mailed by a llama breeder, Trish Brandt-Robuck, who runs the RBR Ranch in Newcastle, CA. She likes to name her llamas after opera singers, because groups of children often visit, and she likes the llama names to be educational.

Her question to me was this. A new and perfectly adorable llama baby was black, and male. Could I suggest a male black opera singer to name him after? I thought a bit and came up with Roland Hayes, the pioneering African-American recitalist of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a wonderful singer, and contended with racial barriers we can barely imagine. What could it have been like for an African-American to give a recital in Berlin in 1920, and endure 10 minutes of hissing before he could begin? Hayes persevered, and became, along with his artistic distinctions, one of the most highly paid classical vocal recitalists of his time. His influence was enormous; among much else, he helped to mentor Paul Robeson, William Warfield, and Leontyne Price.

Trish did name the llama Roland Hayes, and keeps me posted on what’s happening with him. He just won second prize in his first competition, which Trish thinks is only the beginning. She’s sure he’ll be a champion.

And how can I doubt that? Here he is, posing with his second-prize red ribbon. Isn’t he a beauty?

From Joshua Kosman, the fine classical music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, comes this reaction to my post about the Shostakovich ad:

The SF Symphony had a marketing director once who was perfectly capable in many areas, just not really as marketing director of a symphony orchestra. She lasted a *very* short time. The best mistake she made -- the one people still cackle over -- was the ad she conceived and approved in connection with the Symphony's performance of Babi Yar on 2/14. I can't remember the details, but it was actually a Valentine's deal, something like "Treat your honey to Shostakovich's great Symphony No. 13" or some damn thing. No one who knew better saw it until it was way too late.

That symphony, for those who might not know it, is a vocal piece in many movements, premiered (not exactly to the delight of the Soviet communists) in the early 1960s. It condemns Soviet anti-Semitism, worries that Stalin’s terror will return, and commiserates with beaten-down Soviet women lined up for hours to buy food.

Not long ago I teased — was that the word? —Early Music New York for their CD A Bohemian Christmas. Of course they meant Christmas in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic, but I thought people new to classical music wouldn’t have a clue, and might wonder if the CD was for an offbeat artist’s holiday.

So now, to be fair, I have to note that the CD is the latest in a series from the group: A Medieval Christmas, A Renaissance Christmas, A Baroque Christmas, and A Colonial Christmas. So if the target audience is established fans, then of course the title makes more sense. I could argue that we need to reach beyond established fans, and as an industry (so to speak), we do. But individual groups can be forgiven if they don’t deal with all that heavy lifting, and just try to sell their CDs to the people who already are likely to buy them.

I was in a store, and heard an ad on a classical station for a Shostakovich festival put on by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. “Celebrate Shostakovich,” said the ad, “with spectacular performances.” Or something like that. “Celebrate” and “spectacular” were certainly words the ad used. I pulled out my little notebook and wrote them down.

This was ridiculous, of course, and almost offensive. Shostakovich isn’t celebratory or spectacular. He’s bitter, wry, and painful. Yes, he’s dramatic, but not in spectacular ways.

This is yet another way in which classical music is drained of all meaning. Who cares what Shostakovich really is? It’s classical music! It’s a celebration! It’s big, grand, and colorful! Can anyone imagine talking about any other serious art this way? “Celebrate Spielberg, with his spectacular Schindler’s List.” That would just about be obscene.

Many thanks to ArtsJournal founder, guru, and all around good guy Doug McLennan for the spiffy new look of this blog. Doug does prodigious work, and has prodigious ideas as well. I don’t know when I’ve had a more stimulating or more helpful colleague. As I’ve said before! But it bears repeating many times. Doug deserves massive funding for everything he does, so he can be repaid in more than gratitude.

Here's a wonderful passage from E. M. Forster's novel Howards End, about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. A followup, more or less, to those Louis Biancolli notes about the Sixth that I posted recently. Again we have somebody describing music the way we might experience it, not historically, and not analytically. A rare art, today, as many of you agree (if I can judge from the enthusiastic e-mail I've been getting).

I'd love to know more literary passages that describe classical music this wonderfully. I know a few: the famous passage about Lucia di Lammermoor in Madame Bovary; a lovely short comment on a Walter Giesking concert in a novel by Dawn Powell (forgot which); the description of a Die Walküre performance in Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark. There are also bracing -- and lovable -- evocations of jazz in Kerouac's On the Road. But I'm sure I've forgotten some things I've already read, and I know this short list can only be a start. More, anybody?

Forster:

It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--of course, not so as to disturb the others--or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fraulein Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is echt Deutsch; or like Fraulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fraulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings. It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen's Hall, dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.

"Whom is Margaret talking to?" said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion of the first movement. She was again in London on a visit to Wickham Place.

Helen looked down the long line of their party, and said that she did not know.

"Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest in?"

"I expect so," Helen replied. Music enwrapped her, and she could not enter into the distinction that divides young men whom one takes an interest in from young men whom one knows.

"You girls are so wonderful in always having--Oh dear! one mustn't talk."

For the Andante had begun--very beautiful, but bearing a family likeness to all the other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven had written, and, to Helen's mind, rather disconnecting the heroes and shipwrecks of the first movement from the heroes and goblins of the third. She heard the tune through once, and then her attention wandered, and she gazed at the audience, or the organ, or the architecture. Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen's Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck. "How awful to marry a man like those Cupids!" thought Helen. Here Beethoven started decorating his tune, so she heard him through once more, and then she smiled at her Cousin Frieda. But Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could not respond. Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could not make him inattentive; there were lines across his forehead, his lips were parted, his pince-nez at right angles to his nose, and he had laid a thick, white hand on either knee. And next to her was Aunt Juley, so British, and wanting to tap. How interesting that row of people was! What diverse influences had gone to the making! Here Beethoven, after humming and hawing with great sweetness, said "Heigho," and the Andante came to an end. Applause, and a round of "wunderschoning" and pracht volleying from the German contingent. Margaret started talking to her new young man; Helen said to her aunt: "Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants dancing"; and Tibby implored the company generally to look out for the transitional passage on the drum.

"On the what, dear?"

"On the drum, Aunt Juley."

"No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they come back," breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end. Others followed him. They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made them so terrible to Helen. They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendour or heroism in the world. After the interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation for the second time. Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt the same, and had seen the reliable walls of youth collapse. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! The goblins were right. Her brother raised his finger; it was the transitional passage on the drum.

For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the goblins and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person. He gave them a little push, and they began to walk in a major key instead of in a minor, and then--he blew with his mouth and they were scattered! Gusts of splendour, gods and demigods contending with vast swords, colour and fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death! Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even stretched out her gloved hands as if it was tangible. Any fate was titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would alike be applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.

And the goblins--they had not really been there at all? They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human impulse would dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or ex-President Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They might return--and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall. Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.

So now it's official. The first installment of my book will appear on Monday, on a special page right here on ArtsJournal. The subject of the book, of course, is the future of classical music. The title might be something like Looking for a Future: What We're Going to Do About Classical Music. Or maybe just What We're Going to Do About Classical Music. Which do you prefer? Or would some other title be better? True to the adventure that's a big part of this project, I'm happy to revise the title as I go. I'm certainly going to be revising the manuscript.

To say that I'm happy to unfold the book at ArtsJournal would be the understatement of the year. I love my presence here, and I value Doug McLennan -- the man in charge, who founded this site and makes it the invaluable resource that it is -- as one of the best colleagues I've ever had. ArtsJournal seems like the natural place for this emerging book, and I'm grateful to Doug for being so open to giving it a shot.

And now I'd better get back to writing. Earlier I'd posted a very broad outline, which I'll repeat on Monday. The first section is tentatively called "We've Got a Problem," and, no surprise, it introduces that problems that I think classical music faces. They'll then be explored in much more detail in section two. Monday's episode will launch section one, with a look at two people I know who briefly brushed up against the classical music world. and the reasons why they weren't induced to rush back again. But woven into this is something about my own love for classical music, which -- along with my love for other kinds of music, too -- is going to be a major theme as the book moves forward.

One further note, for people who read this blog. (And thanks, all of you!) You'll of course find many things in the book that you've seen me write before. That's unavoidable; I'm writing not just for those of us who've been talking about these issues for years, but for a wider audience as well. With any luck, I'll strike a balance, so that newcomers can be brought along point by point, and even so, people who've been down these paths before will still find something new. And if I don't succeed in that, please let me know! This is very much a work in progress, and I value all of you as collaborators.

I was in Tower Records the other day, and they were playing the opening chorus of what turned out to be the Klemperer recording of Bach's B Minor Mass. It was slow and massive, moving (if it could be said to move at all) without a trace of what we now understand to be Baroque rhythm. Nobody, I think, could do Bach that way today. Some people would laugh, others would groan.

Then, later the same day, I was listening to a 1955 Charles Munch recording of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and could barely believe the liner notes. They were by Louis Biancolli, who back then the music critic of the New York World-Telegram and Sun (and, as it happened, a friend of my parents). I could barely believe what I was reading:

In the heart of every music-lover there is a cherished place for the "Pastoral" Symphony of Beethoven. Should some malign occult power ever banish it from our midst, it would leave an aching void in the artistic consciousness of the world. Ever since its premiere in 1808, the "Pastoral" has been the great revelation of Nature in music. To it have come those seeking refreshment and strength and escape. Here, for some precious forty minutes, they have found a healing power for the torment of spirit and the stress of daily living. Those who have learned to love every measure of this monument to the outdoors have come to cherish still more the message of profound solace and beauty that Beethoven gleaned from the smiling face of Nature.

 

And this is as it should be — and as Beethoven willed it. For him Nature was more than a seasonal pageantry of marvels to hear and to see; in the gathering turmoil and turbulence of the years it had become the great healer, the center of repose, the confidante. Flowers, clouds, running brooks, forests of firs, rolling vistas of green spoke to this troubled pilgrim of the countryside. At times it was of man they spoke, of his immemorial dream of world brother­hood and love; at more sublime moments they were the very voice of God. "What sovereignty in a forest like this!" he exclaims. "On the heights there is rest — to serve Him."

And so on. Nobody -- at least nobody with any prominence -- would write like that today. Anyone who did would be laughed out of the business faster than someone who conducted Bach like Klemperer.

And yet haven't we lost something? What Klemperer and Biancolli have in common is conviction, and above all deep and honest feeling. Music matters to them. You can groan at Klemperer's remorseless, heavy pace, but when the main theme shows up in the bass, it's so huge and deep that it seems to rise from the depths of the earth. Maybe that's not something Bach ever dreamed of (though didn't his organ pedals go down to the lowest depths?), but it's powerful. You can smile, or wince, at Biancolli's gushing, but doesn't he try, at least, to touch the powerful emotion in the piece? And simply by trying (and doing a decent, if old-fashioned job of it), doesn't he come about a thousand miles closer to the real Beethoven than all the careful scholarly, historical, analytical, and (the new trend) lightly anecdotal notes we're getting now?

I've gotten two e-mails about my "Media world" post, from people who got the idea that I'm impressed because guys in the Marines put Carmina Burana -- a classical piece -- on DVDs they made about their time in Iraq. So I guess I didn't write clearly enough. Really, I do know that Carmina Burana has been heard a lot in pop culture; I wouldn't conclude that anyone who uses it on the soundtrack of their homemade movie is sophisticated in any way about classical music. What I wanted to say, instead, was that guys in the Marines are making such capable DVDs, no matter what music they use. I see classical music organizations trying to bring new listeners in, and assuming that these new listeners need to approach classical music by taking baby steps. And then I see people out there in the world, with no special education, making movies on their own. Our hoped-for new audience, I have to conclude, is far ahead of us.

The recent announcement from the BBC about their upcoming broadcast of everything Bach wrote reminds me that — unaccountably —I never said anything about their free Beethoven downloads, which must be the most wildly successful classical music promotion I’ve ever heard of.

And it wasn’t just the downloads. They filled their website with Beethoven material, fascinating, readable stuff. They knew, in other words, how to create an event. And in fact they’ve been creating classical music events for a while now. We shouldn’t forget their ceremonial broadcast, with wide publicity, of John Cage’s 4’33” (the famous silent piece), or their Webern broadcasts, again with lots to read on their website.

But what about those classical record labels, bitching because the BBC gave away Beethoven free? In my view, that’s pathetic. Utterly pathetic. Beyond pathetic. The record labels don’t know how to sell Beethoven, so now they yell because someone found a way to get people interested — to do, in other words, the one crucial, fundamental thing the labels couldn’t figure out how to do themselves.

Instead of whining and moaning, the labels ought to learn from this. And the first thing to learn was that the BBC didn’t succeed simply by giving Beethoven away. It created an event. Sure, the fact of the free downloads (which by the way were available only for a strictly limited time) was an essential part of that event, but those alone wouldn’t have made much difference. I ask the record labels to look at themselves in the most merciless mirror they have, and ask themselves this question: If we had offered the free downloads, would anyone have paid attention? I strongly doubt it. The record labels don’t know how to create any buzz.

And so now, instead of bitching, they ought to piggyback on what the BBC has done. Let’s suppose they have Beethoven recordings in their catalogue (as of course they do), that they think are better than what the BBC offered — Beethoven symphonies conducted by Karajan, Szell, Roger Norrington, Osmo Vanska, name your favorite conductor. Why not promote these as downloads? Pick some famous movement, maybe the first movement of the Fifth Symphony. Sell it for 19 cents, with the rest of the symphony available at a discounted price to anyone who buys the first movement, and now wants the rest. Offer five versions of the first movement for $1, stressing how different they are, and how fascinating the differences can be. Offer subscriptions to Beethoven. All the symphonies conducted by Karajan, with one movement available each week. Even e-mailed, if you have broadband, and don’t mind the download time intruding on your e-mail. Or else all the symphonies conducted by different people, again so buyers can enjoy the contrast, with one movement made available each week.

Of course, then the record companies would have to figure out how to promote this. But they need to learn promotion anyway, and having something notable to promote — notable, that is, in ways people outside the classical music world would understand — would be a good way to start.

Is it just me, or is this yet another demonstration of the way classical music lives in a little box, without looking up to think how it might look to the outside world?

A CD by Early Music New York came in the mail, called A Bohemian Christmas. Now, nothing against the CD itself, which is just fine, really nice to listen to. But won't most people think first of offbeat artists celebrating Christmas, and not, as the group intends, about Christmas in medieval Bohemia, the place Dvorak later came from, which is now part of the Czech Republic?

Sure, there's a vaguely appealing graphic on the cover, obviously a reproduction of medieval art. (It would be more appealing if the cover were laid out more professionally.) But still the title won't suggest -- at least to most people  -- what the group wants it to.

Which brings up a related problem. It's been said many times that non-initiates, browsing in the few remaining record stores that have large classical music sections, don't know what they're looking at. This CD is a perfect example of why that happens. Christmas in Bohemia? Since it obviously doesn't mean offbeat painters and poets, what does it mean? How many people browse through record stores with medieval Bohemia on their minds? Who's the target audience for this? Anyone at all? And thus some really lovely music fails to find its listeners. (Or at least fails to find the many new people, outside the group's core audience, who might really enjoy it.)

(Another lesson here: So often we have classical music scholarship on our minds, not audience appeal. Which this CD ought to have!)

My wife's cousin just got back from Iraq. He's in the Marines; he was in combat for seven months.

And he came back with a DVD full of films about his unit there. He didn't make them; someone else (or maybe a couple of someone elses) in his unit did. The films were quite adept -- mixtures of stills and video, with music, little snippets of shoutss or conversations, explosions, gunfire, black-humor asides. And all with music running in the background, either the "O fortuna" opening of Carmina Burana, or else rock songs (acerbic rap/metal stuff).

There are lessons in this for us. Classical music lives in a media world. The audience we want to attract (I know I've said this before) is media savvy. They make their own DVDs. We can't approach them as if we know more than they do, or as if they have to be introduced like little children to the wonders of an art we not so secretly believe is far above them. They're smarter than we give them credit for.

And then we often hear that we're living in a visual age, and that people (younger people, anyway) can't listen to music without something to look at while the music's playing. We often say that as a criticism; people ought (or so we think) to be able to listen to music without any visual aid.

But these Marines DVDs suggest two things wrong with that. First, the people in this visual world are quite sophisticated. As I said, they make their own DVDs. And second, on these DVDs the video didn't seem like an accompaniment to music. In fact, it was the other way round. The music functioned as an accompaniment to the video -- something the Marines originally listened to on its own, and then adapted as a background for their films.

We theorize a lot, and we're quick to find reasons why the world has sunk beneath the standards that we think classical music represents. But we ought to check the facts before we theorize.

From Ian Moss, Development and Marketing Associate at the American Music Center, and a faithful correspondent:

I've known situations where someone brings a classical music newbie to a concert or whatever, they enjoy it or at least say they enjoy it, but that's it. There's no desire on their part to now seek out whatever that orchestra or ensemble is doing next, or to read up on the big issues in classical music, or this or that. They've put in their time and it was a fun night out and the next time they'll go see some comedy or a play or head out to a bar with friends. I'm just not sure that adult classical music newbies are the people that orchestras etc. should be spending the bulk of their energies reaching out to. I think they would be better served by going after the people who like classical music, but don't go to concerts. Like me, for example--I've been living in NYC for over two years, and I haven't been to a single NY Phil concert or an opera at the Met in all that time.

Ian isn't alone. I spoke to a Juilliard class a week or so ago (one other than my own), and the students -- responding to a question from another guest -- said they didn't go to concerts at the big NYC institutions. One woman said she'd been to the Met once. I asked how she liked it; she shrugged. "Maybe that's why you didn't want to go back," I suggested, while adding that of course any performing organization will have bad days now and then.

But the issue, I suggested, really is this: Do any of the New York classical music giants -- the Met, the Philharmonic, City Opera, Carnegie Hall -- give anyone the idea that anything exciting is going on? Anything you just have to be at? I'd say no, and the students certainly agreed. Notice that this situation (if we agree it's how things are) has two parts. First, is anything exciting going on? And second, do the institutions know how to make people think they're exciting? These two things are independent, at least to some extent. There could be exciting performances, and the institution might not know how to tell anyone (or at least not convincingly). Or the performances could be dull or even bad, and even so the institution (a master of marketing hype) creates some excitement.

The reality, I think, is that there isn't much excitement, and if there were, the institutions wouldn't know how to tell anyone. Creating a buzz is something classical music isn't good at. In my consulting work with a variety of groups, I've noticed a couple of things. One is that some institutions don't think of creating buzz because they don't believe anyone could ever care about them. And I've seen in one case a very capable institution make a long list of ways to increase their audience, and not even mention the possibility of creating a buzz in their city. It's as if classical music sits by itself in a little box, and the rest of the world seems very distant. (Which sounds like a sure plan for extinction.)

Ian, by the way, hit by chance on exactly how I'm going to start my book -- with stories of two people I know who briefly joined the classical music audience (one by buying CDs, the other by going to a concert), and how the classical music world doesn't know (and, too often, doesn't think of finding out) how to bring them back.

Looks like the first installment of my book will appear online two weeks from today, on Monday, October 25. In a week, there should be some publicity, with more details. As I've said, this will be the first draft of what eventually will be a published book. Comments will be welcome (and in fact I'll leave two weeks between installments, to give time for comments). They'll help me immeasurably.

But I still need a title. Any ideas? The subject, of course, is the future of classical music. And the contents will be arranged more or less like this (to repeat something I posted here earlier; the chapter titles are tentative):

From my faithful correspondent (and former student, and pianist, and movement teacher) Eric Barnhill comes this:

Your columns on City Opera reminded me of a nice opportunity I had several weeks ago to talk about City Opera's marketing with a couple of early-30s women who have no interest in opera, although as former dancers they both were very connected to the arts. One of them brought in the mail while I was over and they had a postcard from City Opera, that was in imitation of a personals ad section.

I thought it was cute and asked them what they thought. They agreed it was a good idea but said it "screams outreach". Ouch. That was due partly to the actual text on the "personals" part of the card, and partly to something on the other side of the card that really killed it - a slogan along the lines of "Classical can be fun!", which I have forgotten.

I commented at the time that though City Opera comes up with some clever ideas, they need someone to execute them who a) regards this not as "outreach marketing" but just "marketing" b) someone whose specialty is not opera, but hitting the audience they want to hit.

How often do classical music organizations test their marketing strategies? How often, when they want to talk to younger people, do they get younger people involved in the effort?

I've had the same experience Eric had. Some years ago, Gil Shaham made a music video, in which he played one of the "Winter" movements from Vivaldi's Seasons, mixed (oddly, I thought) with footage of winter in New York City. Deutsche Grammophon (who'd released a CD of Gil playing the piece with Orpheus) produced the video, which was directed by a guy who'd also made a video for R.E.M. As I remember, this effort eventually aired on the Weather Channel (I'm not making that up; DG couldn't place it elsewhere).

As a sidebar, so to speak, to the video, Gil was filmed talking about the music. Please don't take what I'm about to say as any criticism of him; he's just stellar in every way, and I've found him irresistible when he talks, live or on film or video or TV, about what he does. He picks up his fiddle, and it's like an extension of himself. When he plays to illustrate some point, it's just another way that he's speaking. And there's never anything remotely like a lecture in what he says.

But this sidebar to the weather video didn't quite come off, at least if it was intended to reach that new audience we always talk about. At one point, Gil quite naturally illustrated how Vivaldi depicts the winter cold, and the winter wind. I showed the video to a woman I was seeing at the time, a graphic designer in her 30s, and she said she was insulted. "I can hear that! Nobody has to tell me that!"

What happens, I think, is that we get a little carried away by the wonders of classical music, and then also we don't, many of us, have enough contact with people in what I can only call the outside world. So we imagine that classical music is so special that even something elementary -- Vivaldi making music imitate the wind -- needs to be explained and illustrated. We don't realize that the people we're talking to are smart, and have plenty of contact with music of other kinds, and with art and media generally. In fact, they're far more media-savvy than we are, and they know far more than we give them credit for. We have to meet them where they actually are, and not speak to them on the level either of a music education text of the 1940s, or else of the kind of hype they reject in four and a half seconds when it comes to them in normal advertising.

An ArtsJournal link on Monday took me to a Chicago Tribune story about the death of a Chicago chamber orchestra. The orchestra is the Concertante di Chicago, and the reasons given for its folding are very simple:

Maybe a month ago I mentioned I book I plan to write; I said I'd draft it online, and welcome comments from anyone who reads it. And since I mentioned it again in my previous post, I'd better give an update. The book is happening. I won't draft it on this blog, but on another, more public, site to be announced. I hope that I'll begin to post my draft sometime this month. Watch for announcements!

The plan, so far, is to post a new installment every two weeks, with time off for holidays, and maybe other breaks as well. Between installments, I'll welcome comments, and I'll post most of them. (Sorry -- I have to be the final, or, well, the only judge of what's worth posting. I don't want to get into useless arguments, though I'll welcome useful ones. Whether somebody agrees with me will not be how I decide which comments I decide to post.) My idea is that, if I'm writing about the future of classical music, I want to write it in collaboration (in a sense) with people in the field, the people whom the book is partly aimed at. I say partly because I want the book to make sense to people outside the classical music world as well, for whom (if all goes well) it just might serve as both an introduction to classical music, and an explanation of why they haven't yet found a way to get more into it.

The book won't be terribly long. I see it in four chapters:

1. We Have a Problem: an introduction to everything I want to say, including a look at the classical music world as it might appear to an outsider (and, more specifically, to that new audience we talk about attracting).

2. Facts, Figures, and Beyond: exactly what's wrong with classical music today. The financial problems (which, as I've often said here, are more serious than many people think), and also the artistic ones, which I think are even more important. Very likely they're the cause of the financial difficulties.

3. The World Around Us: what pop music means for the classical music world. And where all the arts fit in contemporary culture. This, as you might expect if you've been reading me, will include a rousing defense of pop music from anyone who thinks it's only entertainment.

4. A Contemporary Art: how classical music is changing (of course I'll have something about this in the first chapter, too), and what further changes will be needed before classical music can be healthy again. (Hint: they'll be large, and -- again no surprise to anyone who's been reading me -- will all be about turning classical music into what it used to be, a genuinely contemporary art.)

These chapter titles are tentative. Suggestions from improvements are welcome. As are suggestions for the title of the book. (And, of course, for its content.) Obvious ideas, like "The Future of Classical Music" or "Classical Music in an Age of Pop" (the title of my spring-semester Juilliard course, which I'll also be teaching at Eastman this spring), don't seem lively enough.

I might have seemed to take a hard line in my post on Dr. Atomic, in which I said the subject of the piece has been pondered endlessly elsewhere, for decades, and that therefore this work doesn’t do much to establish opera as an art form we might look to for illumination of our current lives.

But I stand by that, and I’ll even go further. Nixon in China (the first opera John Adams created with Peter Sellars, along with librettist Alice Hoffman) didn’t do much for the art form, either. I went to the New York premiere, two decades or so ago, and the comments I heard were notable. Music people were entranced. Someone I’ll call X, who ran what’s still a notable classical record label, and also someone I’ll call Y, who if anything is more eminent as a classical music scholar now than he was back then, both said: “This is wonderful! An opera that’s about something!”

Which, when you think of it, is damning the piece with very faint praise. Can we imagine anyone saying such a thing about a novel, or an August Wilson play, or a film? The comment also opens the piece to the remark Samuel Johnson (I think) so famously made about the possibility of a talking dog. After the surprise wears off, we begin to ask what the dog has to say. And precisely in that vein, people from other arts who were at the Nixon premiere weren’t so impressed. Someone I’ll call Q, who’s still an important theater critic, and someone else, R, an impressive dance critic, both said to me, “This is awful. What it says about Nixon is ridiculous.”

They went, in other words, straight for the content of the piece. They didn’t feel they had to make allowances for the terrific music, for the surprise of an opera that (God save the mark) actually had any content, or for the mere fact of a new opera, which people in then classical music business tend to support in principle, whether or not the piece is any good.

But let’s look at the content of classical music. Normally we say this isn’t any problem. It’s the presentation that causes problems, or the need to introduce the music to a larger audience, or (related to that, of course) the need to devise new ways of giving concerts, so more people can hear the music.

But I think that it’s precisely the content of what we do that’s our biggest problem. I’m not saying that the music, taken by itself, is anything to worry about. Who could say that there’s anything wrong with Beethoven, taken by himself? Of course he’s an important historical figure, who—if we still read novels from his time, and look at paintings that were created then—still might have a lot to say to us.

But we never encounter music “taken by itself.” We encounter performances—works of music played by particular people, on concert programs that are performed at some particular time and place. And these performances presumably have content, except that, far too often, we don’t know what that content is. Let’s say there’s a concert of Brahms chamber music, at Alice Tully Hall in New York. What’s that concert about? What do the musicians want to say to us? What do we get by going to it?

Most of the answers we might get to these questions aren’t even remotely adequate. Brahms is a great composer. The works are masterpieces. They exhibit the development of Brahms’s sense of structure. They influenced composers who came after him. The first two sentences, taken as reasons to listen to Brahms, are empty hype. What makes him great? What makes these pieces masterworks? And the second two sentences are far too scholarly. I won’t deny that somebody might care about what they say; I might, myself. But that’s because I already care about the music. For somebody who doesn’t yet care, what on earth could Brahms’s sense of structure mean? (Important clarification. It might mean something if we could explain it terms that anyone could understand, because structure, if it really matters, has easily audible effects. But in the ways it’s usually discussed in, for instance, concert program notes, it won’t mean a thing.)

And what does any of this mean to the musicians who play this concert? Why do they care enough to study their instruments for years, practice endlessly, rehearse for many hours just to play this concert, and then put themselves on the line on the Alice Tully stage? What are they saying to themselves about why they do all this? (Even if they never speak the words aloud; surely they have some inner sense of why they play the music.) And what do we say to ourselves about being in the audience?

I think that, far too often, a Brahms chamber concert registers as, generically, a classical music event, and, within that framework, a chamber music event. That it’s Brahms is incidental, except for those with special feelings about Brahms, either pro or con. For most people, it’s what the chamber group is playing that night. You go because you like chamber music.

But what about people who haven’t yet established any taste for chamber concerts? Why should they go? What are we telling them?

I fear we’re losing out—and have lost out for generations now—to other art forms, other media. That’s true even for a classical music freak like me. I realized, over the past few years, that film has in many ways made a deeper impression on me than music. Twenty years ago I wrote an essay for Opera News about the marvelous E major trio in the first act of Cosi fan tutte. I thought that I’d unearthed exactly what makes the piece so powerful, what makes it (and the entire opera) such a reservoir of buried passion.

I’m proud of this analysis. I think it’s right. But I also realize that I had to make the analysis to see the opera this way. I was never spontaneously stricken by the buried passion in it, or by any understanding that this is what the piece is all about, not even when I sang Gulgliemo in a production of it when I was in college. I came to Mozart because I loved music. Then I formed my impressions of his pieces within the shelter of that love.

Compare how I react to films. In high school, I was ravaged by Antonioni’s L’avventura, which also speaks of buried passion. But this was passion I could feel. I was just about struck dumb with feeling. In college, I saw the film a second time, and (I think) a third, along with every other film that Antonioni made. They all got to me that way. I bought the L’avventura DVD a year or so ago, and was stricken once again.

Same thing with Alan Rudolph’s Choose Me, and, just a month or so ago, Wang Karwai’s Fallen Angels. All these films show me buried passion, in people who don’t know what to do with it. This speaks to me, more than any opera I’ve ever seen (except maybe Lulu). At the same time, I have an unending love of opera, especially Verdi and Bellini, but that, again, seems to work its power deep inside a hidden box. It doesn’t much hit me as I go about my life in the world we all live in.

The films I mentioned do hit me in the world we share. They’re part of what I might (without going too deeply yet into the issues all this raises) call my real life. Please note that I’m not putting down anyone who gets real-life meaning from anything in classical music; I know this happens. It even happens to me. (And, in fact, I'm very interested in learning more about how classical music speaks to other people. I'd love to hear from anyone who wants to talk about this.) I’m just saying that I get more meaning from these films.

And I think the fault , in many ways, s classical music’s, not mine. Classical music just isn’t very good at speaking of (and in, and to) the present day. And thus, I think, it won’t be healthy until most of the pieces we hear at classical concerts are by living composers. And have some connection (as much new music never has) to the world we live in.

My thoughts about Cosi, L’avventura, Choose Me, and Fallen Angels will show up in the book I’m planning, at the start of the final chapter, which of course will be about where we go from here, how we solve the problems classical music has. My thoughts about the film are meant to set the stage for this discussion. Why doesn’t classical music make more impression on the world? What has to change before it does?

I haven't seen Dr. Atomic, the new John Adams/Peter Sellars opera. But I did notice something Sellars said about the piece, quoted from Tony Tommasini's New York Times review of the premiere:

But has there otherwise been any new opera that's as current, deep, and probing as The Sopranos? Or, in the realm of comedy, as Curb Your Enthusiasm? Or even the SciFi Channel's Battlestar Galactica, which is sometimes conventional TV, but sometimes also far beyond that, with wrenching sexual perversity only one of many things that emerge in the wake of a massively destructive terror attack. TV, it seems to me, is by any honest artistic measure miles ahead of just about any new work any opera house is offering. 

In the October Vanity Fair—the one with Paris Hilton on the cover, covering her breasts in a way that looks like a commercial provocation, not a sexual one—there’s a two-page spread on Franz Welser-Möst, music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. The photo, spread over the two pages, is wonderful, relaxed, friendly, a little impish, just as Franz is in real life.

Congrats to everyone involved in placing this lovely tribute. But also some questions:

• Franz, as I said, looks wonderfully informal in the photo. But anyone who goes to a Cleveland concert will find him in his penguin suit, along with the men in the orchestra wearing theirs (and the women more or less comparably formal). Does this mean that people attracted by the splash in the magazine will be disappointed? If you’re going to position yourself informally in the media, do you need to position yourself the same way in your performances? Or does everybody understand that classical music traditionally is formal, and that of course they’re not going to see informal Franz when they go to a concert? I don’t pretend to know the answer.
  
• The text in Vanity Fair, by New York Times critic Jeremy Eichler, talks about something reasonably well known, Franz’s work to change the way the Cleveland Orchestra plays, making them more fluid, more romantic. I’m not saying Jeremy shouldn’t write about this; it’s the current Cleveland news, and gives his brief evocation more heft than similar things in classical music usually have. (There is artistic news from Cleveland!) But at the same time, I can’t forget how much more substance something similar in pop might have. Pop people always stand for something—a point of view, ideas, at least a distinctive personality. Even if that’s not evoked in a short paragraph attached to a photo spread, everybody knows what the artist in the photo stands for. Which is yet another reason why pop has more resonance in our culture than classical music. It’s actually about something.  

Vanity Fair, by the way, highlights classical music reasonably often. I don’t often read the magazine, so I’m sure I’m missing a lot, but I’ve seen gorgeous photo spreads with Anna Netrebko and Juan Diego Florez, in one of Vanity Fair’s recent music issues, and something comparable to what they’ve now done with Franz, about Paul Kellogg, the departing director of the New York City Opera. And last month their online event guide touted several classical performances—the opening of the LA Philharmonic and LA opera seasons, and the City Opera Butterfly I wrote about here (apparently because Jeremy Irons was supposed to introduce the performance; in the end, Cynthia Nixon took his place). (There's nothing about classical music this month.)

On its website, Vanity Fair promotes a mix, in its words, of intellect and image. By paying attention to classical music, they might mean to demonstrate the brainy half of their mix.