This week in class…

In my Juilliard graduate course, that is, called “Classical

Music in an Age of Pop.” It’s about, guess what, the

future of classical music.

We were talking about how concerts might change, so they’d

be more likely to attract an audience (especially a new, young one). And, I

might add, so they’d be more interesting for the musicians playing them. That’s

something the students insisted on.

Greg Anderson, a pianist, described what sounds like a

stunning concert he gave in the Twin Cities. I’m not going to venture a

description myself. Maybe I’ll ask him to write it for the blog. But it

involved a great variety of music, much of it 20th century, including pieces by

Ligeti, Henry Cowell, and John

Corigliano. But also Liszt.

There were thematic ideas linking the pieces—on the first half, an insistence on

the note A, but in ways, as he described them, that

anyone could hear. And on the second half, an exploration of

love and death.

But what really got me, on top of everything in the last

paragraph, was audience participation. Two pieces required volunteers from the audience.

Greg, you should understand, is a very lively guy, and I can imagine that the

concert was great fun, and terrifically engaging. He’s going back there next

year, he says, so if you’re in the area, look out for him.

There was also lots of talk about quality of performance. Faithful

readers will know that I’ve chewed on that bone myself,

href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2005/12/do_orchestras_play_well_enough.html">here

and

href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2005/12/not_playing_well_enough_an_exa.html">here.

My students—and I guarantee I didn’t prompt them at all—said exactly what I’ve

been saying. Performances aren’t good enough. They’re not good enough to excite

the audience. They’re not good enough to excite the musicians. That even

extends, the students said, to how the musicians look. They were very harsh

(for instance) on orchestral players who, with nothing to play for a while,

look like they’re not remotely interested in what’s going on around them. Note

that they didn’t say that these musicians in fact aren’t interested, but that

they need to communicate in some way that they are.

I thought of two cases where how orchestral musicians look

could be dramatically improved. At the end of the Mahler First Symphony, some

conductors like the horns to stand up. (Is that in the score? I’ve forgotten,

and I don’t have the score with me to check.) So if that’s going to happen, the

horns (eight of them, right?) should work on how they look when they do it.

They all stand together, with as close as possible to whipcrack

unanimity.

And when the strings—maybe just the first violins, but in a

Tchaikovsky symphony maybe the seconds, the violas, and the cellos, too—all

join in on a big melody, presumably they bow it the same way. But why don’t

they (just like those horns) coordinate their bowing so it really looks

synchronized? So all the players are visibly joined together in a single act of musical expression.

Oh, I can imagine the horror if anyone tried to institute

these things. “Where does it say in the contract that you can tell me how I

should look?” Never mind that orchestras need to rebuild their audience. Never mind

that, in fact, whether you like it or not, when you’re playing in an orchestra

concert, you’re putting on a show. Never mind that there’s an audience out

there (which in fact is quite engrossed in what they see, as any conversation

with members of the orchestra audience will reveal). Never mind that eight

horns standing at once is a wonderfully dramatic event, which you don’t want

falling flat, any more than you’d want a dramatic musical entrance to fall

flat. Never mind that you could undercut the moment if it doesn’t look right.

Never mind that in absolutely any other kind of performance, everyone involved

would want this to look as good as it could. When are we going to grow up?

Finally, from Sanja

class=SpellE>Petrovic came something quiet and lovely.

class=SpellE>Sanja, a pianist, said she’d been involved in a performance

of Chopin nocturnes. Several pianists were involved. (Sanja,

I hope I’m remembering this exactly right!) The concert began at 11 PM. The

space was darkened. Candles were lit. Can you imagine a more beautiful—or more

suitable—setting for the nocturnes? No need for program notes. No need to

explain who Chopin was, or what a nocturne is, or what kind of unexpected

modulations might occur in measure 32. No need, God help us, for any education

(the very notion of which, I think, is killing classical music, but more on

that in another post). The setting of the concert clarified anything that

anyone would need to know. I wish I’d been there.

And of course people will say that not every concert can be

like this, that there isn’t always such an obvious theme or such a clear path

to an evocative setting. That’s true, of course. But Sanja

(and Greg, and others, too, of course) are pointing the way here to something

very important. Most classical concerts aren’t events at all. They’re musical

performances, defined by the names of the performers and by the repertoire they’re

playing. If that means something to you, fine. If it doesn’t, forget it. Why

would you go?

But that’s not good enough. We need to give people reasons

to attend. And the clearest reason would be that the concert is about

something. The staging, if that’s the word, doesn’t have to be as elaborate as

what Sanja described (though, really, it sounded

pretty simple). Maybe all you need to do—at, let’s say,

a piano recital—is put flowers on stage. Or say something interesting. Or play

your heart out, so fervently that nobody can miss it. But you have to create an

event. You have to give people a hook. You have to enable them to say, “I want

to go hear Sanja play because she’s going to…”

And you know what? That’s not just for the great unwashed

(who, in fact, are nothing of the sort: As I’ve said here in other contexts,

they’re smart, discriminating people who think that the presentation of

classical music is empty and dumb). It’s

for me, too. Why should I go to all the concerts I get invited to? I’m sure

that many, if not most of them, are pretty good. But why do I want to be there?

Why would it be better than going to a Mets game, or watching

style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Sopranos on TV?