August 2006 Archives

From a story in the New York Times business section two days ago, August 29 ("The Metropolitan Opera's New Stage," by Julie Bosman):

For 30 years, the Metropolitan Opera has wrinkled its elegant nose at advertising campaigns, preferring discreet sales tactics like direct mail and phone solicitations.

But next week, it is entering the mass marketing fray with ads in the most conventional places: telephone kiosks, lamp posts, subway entrances and the sides of city buses.

"It never needed to market itself because tickets were always sold out," said Peter Gelb, who became the new general manager of the Met on Aug. 1. But now the Met is finding it harder to fill its roughly 4,000 seats with people willing to purchase tickets that currently range from $15 to $320.

After acknowledging years of lagging ticket sales and an audience that, as Mr. Gelb delicately put it, has aged, the Met is spending $500,000 on an advertising campaign that will blanket street-level New York with images from "Madama Butterfly," the season opener on Sept. 25.

Like other orchestras and opera houses across the country whose ticket sales are on the wane, the Met is under pressure to lure younger audiences. The new ad campaign, scheduled to begin on Monday, is aimed at younger people who may find opera remote and intimidating.

So. Assuming this story is accurate, Peter Gelb openly says that the Met's audience is shrinking and getting older. Now, maybe he's said that before. A previous Times story, back in February, mentioned "declining attendance" along with "budget woes," but didn't explicitly credit Peter with talking about those things. And then the story went on to talk more generally about Peter's plans for the company.

All of which is maybe odd. Here we have glancing references to what ought to be a major arts story, and also a major New York story -- the Metropolitan Opera in trouble. Why doesn't the Times tackle that head-on? Why not a long and detailed front-page story in the Arts section? How serious has the decline in ticket sales been? How long has it been going on? What, in detail, does the financial picture look like? What are Peter's plans for turning things around? If this isn't a major New York (and national) arts story, what is?

And not only that. Allan Kozinn's notable "Arts & Leisure" piece this spring very prominently said that classical music's numbers were good, that ticket sales weren't declining. (For extensive debate and comment on what Allan wrote, see the comments to my post about the piece.) But on the other hand, the Times at least twice says in print that the Met Opera's numbers in fact aren't good, and a business story talks, as if the whole thing were common knowledge, about "orchestras and opera houses across the country whose ticket sales are on the wane." So which is it? Are ticket sales falling, or aren't they? I don't mean that the Times should speak only with a single voice. Of course there's room for many opinions. But shouldn't the Times pay some coherent attention to this subject (which a lot of people care very deeply about)? It really does seem odd to run a long, passionate essay (Allan's piece), saying that there isn't any decline in classical music ticket sales, and then at least twice mention elsewhere, but only in passing, that at our largest and most famous classical music institution, ticket sales in fact are falling.

And there's more. The American Symphony Orchestra League 'fesses up to some problems in its bold new strategic plan, unveiled at its annual conference in June. From the League's website, you can download the Executive Summary of the draft offered at the conference ("Supporting Orchestras in a New Era: A Strategic Direction for the American Symphony Orchestra League"). Here's an excerpt from the opening section, entitled "Landscape":

Through extensive consultation with the orchestra field, the planning process informed the League of the critical challenges and opportunities facing orchestras today. A variety of environmental changes are having a significant impact on the arts, including orchestras: shifts in community demographics, culture, values, and priorities; evolving technology; changing consumer patterns and tastes; and competition for philanthropic funds, leadership resources, and the ever-scarcer leisure time of audiences. These circumstances may indicate the end of a field-wide growth cycle and the emergence of a new one, yet to be fully defined.

The 1970s through the 1990s saw a period of major growth for orchestras--longer seasons, more concerts. During this time orchestras concentrated their efforts on delivering wonderful symphonic music onstage. As the supply of musical product increased, the audience was expected to consume more of it and, increasingly, to give enough money to cover the shortfall between earned income and growing expenses. They did both. Orchestras' standard of performance improved steadily; audiences filled the halls and loved what they heard.

Even as orchestras burgeoned in the 1970s, music education in the nation's public schools came under the budgetary knife, with inevitable consequences for classical-music institutions. In response, orchestras have exponentially increased their traditional commitment to education.

Meanwhile, signs of strain on the financial model appeared, though they were initially masked by the surging economy of the 1990s. Today, there is a pervasive sense of apprehension among orchestras about their future organizational and financial health. While the standard of today's orchestra performances is extremely high, concerns have surfaced about an overall loss of personality and electricity--concerns that are often cited alongside the routinization of performances, the homogenization of repertoire, and a gradual decline in attendance.

Note these phrases: "a pervasive sense of apprehension among orchestras about their future organizational and financial health"; "a gradual decline in attendance." The League, with rare honesty, is telling the world that orchestras really do have problems. Among those problems is a decline in attendance. I'm told that in a talk at the conference, the League's new board chair, Lowell Noteboom, was even more explicit. He said that attendance at orchestra events had been falling since 1996-97. (He also painted a fairly troubled picture in an article in the September-October issue of Symphony, the League's magazine.)

(I myself quoted those attendance figures some time ago in this blog, after the League provided them to me. And as I said at the time, the numbers arern't as informative as they might be. They measure attendance, not ticket sales, and include all kinds of free events, like concerts in city parks, and performances at schools. A much more sensitive measure might be ticket sales for orchestras' core classical concerts, and those, from private figures I've seen, have been declining more sharply and for a longer time than overall attendance at all orchestral events.)

So if the Metropolitan Opera and the American Symphony Orchestra League say that ticket sales (for the former) and attendance (for the latter) are down...well, then clearly the numbers are going down. Especially since other opera companies (the Chicago Lyric Opera, for one) are showing the same decline.

But here's something that's not realistic, and maybe not quite honest. Opera America -- which represents America's opera companies, and is to opera what the ASOL is to orchestras -- quotes all sorts of optimistic figures on its website. Here's a sample:

Opera attendance rose steadily from 1982 to 2002. The U.S. opera audience grew by 35% between 1982 and 1992. This trend continued through 2002, when the opera audience grew by an additional 8.2%, representing the largest increase of all performing arts disciplines. (Source: National Endowment for the Arts)

The boldface type is their own. And the problems with these numbers would go something like this. First, the 2002 figures from the National Endowment come from data gathered during the 2000 census. So they're six years old, going on seven! They may not represent the situation today (especially since as far as I know, both the Met and Chicago Lyric's declines in ticket sales took place after 2000).

And that 8.2% growth of the audience between 1992 and 2002 (really between 1990 and 2000) -- that's no higher than the rise in the American population during that period (and in fact a hair lower; between 1990 and 2000, the population went up 8.9%). Which means that opera audiences, measured as a proportion of the population, didn't rise at all.

Plus: what's with the 35% rise in one 10-year period, followed by only an 8.2% rise in the following 10 years? What caused the difference? We need some context here. Maybe there were a many more opera companies in 1992 than there were in 1982. Or has the growth of the opera audience been declining very sharply since 1982, to the point where maybe now it's negative? (Which would mean, that is, that the numbers are falling, rather than rising.)

Opera America ought to rethink all this.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a delightful time being interviewed on the phone by Chris Johnson from KUHF, Houston public radio, about my book, and more generally about the future of classical music. We talked for 35 minutes, he's since told me, and he thought he'd only be able to use a small part of that.

Which of course would be normal, and hardly a surprise to me. What did surprise me, though, was Chris's news this week. He'd talked to me for an arts magazine they broadcast, called "The Front Row," and the program's executive producer just loved the interview. So now they're broadcasting lots of it, over three days, starting today, as follows, with my remarks edited, and grouped into topics:

• today, Tuesday, 8/29: "The Classical Music Crisis is Real/How We Got Here"
• Wednesday: "All Kind of Changes Need to Occur. . ."
• Thursday: not yet determined, when last I heard, but they were expecting 10 to 12 minutes of me

I'm very flattered, needless to say. But what's most important is that this topic--the future of classical music, the crisis we're in, the changes that have to happen (and in fact are happening)--means a lot to many people. I think the classical music world is changing faster than any of us really know, something I'll post more about very soon.

"The Front Row" airs at 3:00 PM, on KUHF, 88.7 FM in Houston, with the broadcasts also available on the Web.

Many thanks for this Chris, and congrats on making it such a success.

(I'll also be on "Soundcheck"--the daily music talk show on WNYC, New York's public radio station--at 2 PM this Friday, discussing pop/classical crossovers. Subjects for discussion might include Sting's upcoming John Dowland CD, and a really absorbing disc of lieder, rendered--quite wonderfully--in jazz style by a sax and piano d uo.)

Yesterday I had business phone calls for most of the morning, and a business meeting in the afternoon. I guess fall is here, in spirit, if not on the calendar; I'm reentering my normal work life.

This is hard to do. I spent all of July tucked away in a rural spot in England (between Dent and Sedbergh in the Yorkshire Dales), part way up a hill overlooking a valley, surrounded by sheep. I'd get up at 8:15, compose till 1 or 2 PM, then lunch, then pleasure for the rest of the day. Not everyone, I guess, would start their vacation by getting up early, still jetlagged, to write music, but for me it was paradise, a chance to spend as much time as I liked on something I don't get enough time for in the rest of the year.

Add to this a very balanced and peaceful life -- long walks (two miles into Dent to buy The Independent and The Guardian on many afternoons); very little TV (the end of the World Cup, the end of Wimbledon, the news, and that's about it); lots of reading; peaceful home-cooked dinners. Much amusement from the dim, stubborn sheep.

So by the end of the month I felt calm and focused. I loved the music I'd written. (More on that later.) And, even better, I felt that I'd sorted out what really matters to me. My work year is full of distractions. I do so many things--teaching (in two places, last winter), consulting, public appearances, work with orchestras, this blog, my online book, endless discussions about the future of classical music, endless amounts of e-mail (including quite a lot from people I haven't known before, and whom I'm more than happy to hear from). It can all be pretty wonderful. As I said to my wife last night (after spending the morning talking on the phone about a composing commission, and having a high-level meeting in the afternoon about a possible TV show) I really do have an interesting life. But there's too much of it, and too often I end up feeling like I'm spinning in circles, not quite sure what to work on next.

July calmed all that. And now my job is to bring the calm forward into the fall; to keep the focus, to tame the clutter by prioritizing, figuring out when tasks ought to be done, and leaving free time for the things that matter most. Not exactly a remarkable plan; any busy professional has the same challenge, and is likely to meet it in the same way. All that's different, for me right now, is that I had a month in which balance came naturally. What I gained, in the end, is not a navigation plan for dealing with the year to come, but--so much more important, in the end--an almost tangible taste of how life feels when I'm living it right. To find my way in the months ahead, I just need to find that taste again, in every way I can. If I lose it, something's gone wrong. And if I can hold it close, even in the midst of clutter...

Many of you have had a problem posting comments; you got a blank screen in response to your entry, which understandably made you feel that your comment hadn't gone through. Thanks to ArtsJournal's reigning prince, Doug McClennan, this problem now has been fixed. Thanks, Doug! Comments now are properly acknowledged.

Ariel Davis (see my "Success Story" post, below) has a new blog. It's here, and includes all the contents of the old blog she mentioned in the e-mail I quoted. I've fixed the post to include this link; this present post is for anyone who read the earlier one, and wished they could see Ariel's blogging.

Here's something really heartening, from Ariel Davis, a student who found that her local orchestra was reading her blog -- and taking it seriously. She e-mailed all this to me, and I'm posting it with her permission (though we took out specifics about exactly who's involved, because the orchestra in question may not be expecting any public discussion of what they've done):

Greg,

I know you get tons of e-mails, and I've e-mailed you several times before (and made a few comments on the first version of your book). I don't mean to take up a lot of your time, but I wanted to tell you about something related to a comment you made months ago on your blog. (Right now, I'm the fine arts editor at my university's publication.)

I made a comment on your old book draft, and you plugged my old blog, "Writers Block" and suggested that many symphony orchestras should be listening to what I have to say, because I'm a 21 year old avid concert-goer. I was very flattered, but surprised. I didn't think that anyone would want to listen to what I had to say.

Fast forward to yesterday. I had plans to meet with the conductor of the small orchestra in my town. I was to interview him for a profile, but when I arrived at the offices, two of the marketing directors were there, and they had arranged (which I had no idea of until I arrived, but word was around that I was coming) for us to all sit down and start brainstorming ideas about getting young people to buy tickets to the symphony. So I was politely questioned for 45 minutes, and they took notes. At the end of the "meeting" they had found a way to utilize the charms of the composer in residence, (my suggestion, since he seems to attract women) for a orchestra sponsored party at my university campus, where he would DJ, etc. 

It turns out that the conductor, and many of the staff at the symphony had been reading "Writers Block" and found my concert comments to be very valuable. Orchestras are listening, and I never believed that before yesterday.

Ariel's new blog is :"he Stranger in Seat Twelve"; in it you'll find all the contents of "Writer's Block." And here's one of the fine comments Ariel posted about my book (or rather about one of the discussions one of the book episodes provoked):

I completely agree with the points you made above in your reply to Andrea la Rose, especially about new music in concert programs. In addition to making music sound like the music in the outside world, I think it brings something fresh to concert programs.

Many people I know don't attend concerts because they don't think they'll get anything new out of it than they will from listening to a recording. However, new music brings attendees that fresh experience that they are hoping for, and in that way, I think it might be a very effective way to attract patrons.

In addition, performers can also bring a "rarity" to concerts by, as you wrote, bringing their "individuality" to the performance. I'm not saying they should change a work so much that they stray too far from the original piece, but they should make it their own so that people are drawn to a performance because of this distinction, and recognize it's rarity because of it.

In addition, I wish performers still wrote original cadenzas. If three different orchestras and performers were doing the same concerto at the same time, on the same night, and one of them was performing it with their own original cadenza, I'd be much more apt to buy a ticket to that show than the others. Why? Because it's something new, different, fresh, and not too far removed from the original piece itself.

I enjoyed reading the section of Chapter 2 about the audience's response to music in the concert hall. I admit that I feel a little restricted listening to music in a concert hall, because I can't dance, I can't sway, I can't chatter to my friend about what to listen for next.

My father went to his first opera with me last year, and I hadn't schooled him on etiquette. He yelled and shouted and made faces and laughed loudly. I was embarrassed, but then I realized, "Why should I be?" Why can't watching an opera or listening to a concert be like watching a movie, more interactive and exciting?

I recently attended a concert, and at the start of the "William Tell Overture" the audience let out a collective "ah" in recognition of the familiar music. For the first time it hit me that I was experiencing the music with other people. Even though the show was sold out and the stage was filled with people, I didn't realize that I was sharing the musical experience with other people, and if I was how would I know? The orchestra looked staid, the audience looked even more unaffected.

I had a similar experience at a Yo-Yo Ma concert with the Mobile Symphony Orchestra, Ma came on stage for a few encores and said "Help me!" requesting help for what to play. Immediately everyone started shouting out titles of pieces, and it was incredible. I felt like some big ice barrier between everyone had been broken, and I didn't feel so restricted as I had before at concerts.

No matter how friendly everyone is, for me, personally as soon as I sit in a seat at concert hall, I enter this structured, environment where I'm very conscious of my actions--almost like being in school. I'm not comfortable, even if I've been millions of times, and I can see how new concert guests can be uncomfortable too.

More thoughts about hearing new music, this time from Nathan Botts, a terrific trumpet player who took my Juilliard course on the future of classical music two years ago. Posted of course with his permission:

I've never understood why "new music" is placed within the same taxonomic grouping as "classical music."  Perhaps they're of the same family, but certainly not the same genus and heaven forbid the same species.  Just because a whale, meerkat, antelope, and dairy cow are hairy and breastfeed their young, does that make them all very similar?.  Forgive the biology, but I think it applies.  While evolutionally these animals share a similar genetic ancestry, at this point in time their obvious differences are far greater than their similarities.  So with music we can go to great efforts to compare the breastfeeding of Boulez to that of Mozart, or the hair of Schoenburg to that of Haydn, but in the end we're still trying to compare the bohemith leviathan to a squeaky prairie rat! (I don't mean these animal designations to in any way reflect on the music of any of these composers... it's just for poeticism and humor).  Who goes out into nature and sees a herd of cows and thinks about their similarities to human beings?  Who goes to the zoo and sees the meerkats and thinks about their similarities to the antelope down the way?  I certainly don't.  I chuckle when the cows go "moooooo", and I laugh at the squeaky little meerkats.

So it is with a concert.  Who needs to go to a concert and listen to Boulez and think about all of its wonderful similarities to Bach?  For those of us whose craft it is to know these things certainly, but how much does an audience really need to know to enjoy the piece?  As a listener I could often care less.  I savor the iciness and clarity.  I revel in the complicated simultaneity.  But more than anything I relish the inventive and uncommon sounds.  The cow goes "mooooo" and I laugh, the meerkat squeaks I and chuckle.

As one who performs a large sampling of music, from a wide variety of places in the world and an even wider variety of periods in history, I've never understood the purpose our the taxonomic grouping of "classical" music, except as it applies to the music of composers contemporary with Haydn and Mozart.  But Birtwhistle on the record shelf next to Beethoven?  Cage next to Chopin?  This is all "classical music"?  Give me a $%#$& break!!  In masterclasses I've taken to explaining this away as a corporate record store conspiracy -- the liitle old lady who's buying her record of Tony Bennet doesn't want to have to stand next to that "scary" looking young man with looking through the selection of Boulez -- so they segregate everybody into differerent rooms (and search engines... arghh!).

For my own part I've had some success going a different route... slightly broader and less discriminatory.  With a bit of laughter, some simple explanation, and a very unassuming air, it's been my experience that I can perform almost anything for anyone willing to listen, no matter how wild OR relatively conservative it may be.  So what's in the simple explanation?  Usually a very brief bit of history... just as an author or would do in setting a scene, a bit of benign humor, and then only in the most aurally difficult cases do I bother to "explain the music."  I would reiterate that I do this no matter how wild OR relatively conservative the piece may be... yes, even Beethoven gets the brief explanation.  I find that with good programming and common sense, the flow of a recital can continue uninterrupted.  And most importantly, the more recently composed pieces on the program aren't immediately set up for failure by a sudden condescending explanation.

So like a trip to the zoo, you get some giraffe, some water buffalo, some songbirds, a snake or two, and the ever popular monkeys.  Musically, that might mean some Duke Ellington, some Bach, some Corelli, some Haydn, some Carter, some Hoagy Carmichael and even something I may have created (is there a place at the zoo for an animal with the head of a fish and the body of goat?)

(See also my recent "Hearing New Music" post, and the comments on it.)

Mark Simpson, 17 years old, was named the BBC's Young Musician of the Year in Britain this summer. He's a clarinetist, and also a composer; is principal clarinet with the National Youth Orchestra in Britain; played the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto at the major Sage Gateshead concert hall. And he's working on some major compositions, including one for the new music group of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

And here's how he was quoted, when I read about him in The Guardian on July 17:

I've stood in front of audiences, including at the Sage, and you just see a sea of white hair. When I watched the final [of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition] on TV, I could see only a few people who were my age -- and they were mostly my friends. It annoys me so much that classical music is pigeonholed as something aristocratic and uptight, snobby and above itself. Ultimately things will have to change, because once the current group of concertgoers are dead, no one will be listening.

So. This supports reports I've heard about a survey of young British classical musicians, who said they didn't want to go to classical concerts. Too many older people, they said, not enough younger ones.

And it also supports my own idea, which I've certainly talked about in this blog and in my online book, that classical music education won't bring young people into the classical concert hall. The problem, I've argued, isn't the music; it's the atmosphere. Even if you love the music, you still have to buy into the ambience of classical concerts. Mark Simpson might be living proof of this. He loves classical music, obviously. But he seems to have major problems with the classical concert hall. And if he -- a top teen classical musician -- has problems, other people his age, without his commitment to the music, must feel the problems even more strongly.

We could and should violate the orderly logic and discipline of the story, but we must never ever violate what constitutes the exclusive and essential character of a person, that is, his personality, his way of being, his own, unmistakable nature.

This is from José Saramago's novel The Cave. One meaning it has for me is that art is relentless. Every artwork develops (in the course of its creation) its own exclusive and essential character, its own personality, its own way of being, its own, unmistakable nature. If it doesn't have that, what's the point?

The artist then must be true to everything that's in the work of art. If someone in a novel -- a character the readers like (and whom the novelist may like as well) -- has to die, then that character must die. If a composer hoped a piece of music would be pretty, and suddenly it isn't, (because of how its inner nature suddenly developed), then the music won't be pretty. Novelists often describe what this is like by saying that their characters develop lives of their own, but it's true for every art, music most definitely not excepted.

Weak art either doesn't have its own, unmistakable nature, or else isn't true to the essential character it starts with. A small example: the movie version of The Devil Wears Prada, a film so disarming, so entertaining, that it hardly needs criticism. But at the end, it tries to have its cake and also eat it, to be realistic about something not exactly pleasant, but also show a happier alternative. The world of fashion, depicted in the film, is a snakepit. The naïve heroine succeeds in that world, discovers that she's lost her soul, quits, and then finds her truer self by working for a newspaper.

But that won't work. The newspaper, the "New York Mirror," is of course a major metropolitan daily. In real life, a place like that might be just as much a snakepit as any major fashion magazine. So a fully artful movie would have shown the woman tested once again. Art (as opposed to fairy tales, which also have their place) should be relentless. Happy endings should be realistic, earned, and just a bit provisional.

Today I got very thoughtful e-mail about my last post, from someone in the business who'd prefer not to be identified. I have the sender's permission to reproduce it here:

Your blog got me thinking about how I've experienced new music (or NOT experienced it) over the years.

I have always found that the people (not including music academia) who get the most out of "new" music are often painters, architects, poets, or simply people with a love of jazz (your mention of Ornette Coleman seemed very apt).

Sadly, even as a composer, I never quite got how to listen to a lot of serial/atonal/new (whatever label you want to give it) -- and over time, my lack of comfort became an increasing embarrassment. However, I'm not sure that there is a way to "teach someone" to listen to complex new music? I certainly don't find all serial music unfathomable; but a lot of it, I do. Do I want Boulez on my computer or IPod (if I had one), probably not. Why, I can't tell you. There are other (probably much earlier) serial composers whose music I adore. But you are right, those who are able to feel the "out there" aspect of it, do much better with a lot of complex music then those of us with our heads up our "conservatory butts" (or those people who buy tickets to the NY Philharmonic).

The best analogy I can come up with describing my personal frustration with listening and appreciating certain music is rather like the difficulty a lot of people have with vocal training. The art or science of vocal technique --if you will allow me a bit of latitude here -- can be rather murky. Some teachers give very specific, physiological instructions as to how to produce a certain sound; other teachers will position your mouth, tongue, and body and tell you to "internalize the feeling"; others tell you to visualize something. Many use a combination of approaches. However, there is no signpost for correctness. It often takes a willingness to try different approaches and teachers in order to come up with a way of singing that works for you. I suspect one has to listen to certain music with that kind of openness as well as a willingness to NOT understand a note of it, but simply take it as face value: either it works for you or it doesn't.

Oftentimes, I think some neophytes are able to listen to something as "a thing in itself" and not concern themselves with the fact they have no clue (nor do they care) how it is put together. In my case, I become enraged (at myself, mind you) that I do not understand the process. To me, it should be automatic: I should be able to listen to complex music and be able to enjoy it (at least on some level) because there is some audible process that I can identify (a repeated motive, rhythm, etc). When my ears fail me (which sadly seems to be far too often), I become annoyed. Even as just a listener, I want to be able to grasp something aural that stays with me.

Several years back, I attended a Julliard Quartet concert on which they performed one of Elliott Carter's string quartets (I no longer remember which one). He was there and got up, before the performance, and had each member of the quartet play certain passages. He briefly explained to the audience what they would hear during the course of the work. It was a short explanation, but it really helped. I certainly heard a lot more and I think the rest of the audience did as well.

Perhaps, if someone found a way to help people "listen" to certain music, it would help larger audiences (including your conservative concertgoer) get the "out there" aspect of it.

Unfortunately, many "academic composers" do want to exclude and intimidate people (or simply don't care), at least I think so.

If you've read the first version of my online book (the second link goes to the current version), you might remember "Mark," a jazz fan who sometimes buys classical CDs -- especially piano music -- and gets baffled by what he sees in the Tower Records classical department. (He goes to the downtown Tower branch in New York.)

Last week, he told me he'd bought two classical CDs: Maurizio Pollini playing Chopin, and playing Debussy and Boulez. (Probably the DG CD of Debussy études and the Boulez Second Sonata.) Mark doesn't know anything about new classical music, but he told me with a big smile that he loved the Boulez piece. "It's really out!" he said.

That's a wonderful reaction. "Out" means "really wild, not ordinary, goes way beyond the things music usually does." Mark didn't have any trouble with that. As I said to him, "You're already used to music that sounds like that, because you've listened to Cecil Taylor and Ornette." He readily agreed.

But many (most?) classical listeners get thrown by Boulez, because they don't have a category like "out" in their minds, and wouldn't enjoy "out" music even if they did. This is another example of the walls classical music builds to keep out the outside world.

And here's something even more troublesome -- even the people who like Boulez and other atonal/serial new music don't have the "out" category in their minds. Just look at how Boulez has been written about (along with Milton Babbitt, and so many others). He writes Important music, which has to be heard soberly. You can't say, "Hey, that's wild!" Even though Boulez's idiom is pretty far from everyday musical experience.

But then this is generally true about the sober, orthodox, supportive reaction to almost any atonal music. Schoenberg, for instance, is touted as a disciplined composer whose atonal idiom evolved in the inevitable course of history. It's not fashionable, to put it mildly, to ask what aesthetic the idiom might embody, what the sheer sound of the music might mean. And so the mainstream classical audience says, "Yuck! Dissonance!" and the intellectual in-crowd says, "Oh, no, it's limpid and wonderful" -- and no one, just possibly, talks about how this music really sounds.

I've gotten e-mail from Alexander Mills, a student in London, with some questions he'd love answers to. He hopes to get some from readers of this blog, so with his permission, I've simply copied his e-mail here. I've edited just a little, to keep it focused on the questions.

Before I begin, I would just like to say how fascinating I have found your blog. I stumbled across it earlier whilst doing research and have put it straight to the top of my favourites list.

Particularly interesting were the discussions about MUSO magazine, and the associated comments about popular culture. I am studying lifestyle journalism in art college in London, but I am also a classical pianist. For my final year, beginning next month, I have to produce a magazine, a new title, my own concept. I am going to produce a classical magazine for young people, recognizing the niche in the market the MUSO has began to gnaw successfully away at.

True, MUSO have beaten me to it to some extent, but I see them as being 'the first' to do it, and I want to take on board what they have done but also try to improve upon it.

My questions are a.) What, fundamentally, do you think a classical music magazine for young people should include? (Should it be purely about young, pretty musicians? classical music performed by young people? The content of more conservative classical magazines but in a more upbeat, targeted and 'young' presentation and angle?)

And b.) - After congratulating MUSO for what they are achieving, what do you think MUSO could improve on? Is there a gap in the publication's content? Are there still strings to MUSO's bow that need to be played? Do you think it is too 'pretty' and too 'fashion'?

ESSENTIALLY - what do you think a classical music magazine for young people should be like???

I am very very keen on getting as much feedback as possible on this, particularly from viewers of your blog. I hate to intrude, or risk being cheeky, but do you think you could ask your readers the same question? i.e. "what do you think a classical music magazine for young people should be like???"

It would be such a great help!

Speaking only for myself, I'm most interested in what prospective readers of the magazine might think. My ideas might or might not be good, but it's the readers, ultimately, who make a magazine succeed or fail. (And in fact it's like this in many questions affecting the future of classical music. Many of us have ideas, not least me, but what actually works is more interesting, ultimately, than any ideas we might get attached to.)

But what do others think? What should this magazine be like? Post your thoughts as a comment to this blog entry, and Alex and I will be very grateful.

Back from vacation. A month in a quiet place in England, composing. Much to say about that, about how few mammals there are in the British isles (quite seriously), and about what I've learned about my daily routines by living without them for a month. And then there's the piece I worked on, which might get me excommunicated from classical music.

But later for much of this. I thought I'd jump back in with something about the classical music world. I didn't much keep in touch while I was gone, and neglected my e-mail happily. But I did check out the news reports from Seattle, where the Gerard Schwarz situation, festering for so many years, heated up like a soap opera. The musicians do a survey, which shows they don't like the man! The board says the survey wasn't properly conducted! (Which evidently it wasn't, though I'm sure its conclusions are correct.) The executive director resigns!

And much more. But there was things missing--major things, I'm afraid--from the coverage. As follows:

1. What kind of conductor is Schwarz? A really bad one, some people say; or maybe quite a good one. Depends on who you talk to. But quite apart from thumbs up or thumbs down, what are his strengths and weaknesses? At a time when the guy's whole career seems to hang in the balance, it's quite depressing to read almost nothing that tries to come to grips with his musicmaking. Maybe something appeared, and I missed it. But in what I read, the writers seemed to say "well, on one hand, and on the other hand, but we do remember some powerful performances." Powerful how? What's Schwarz good at, and what's he bad at? There's no disrespect in asking those questions. And in fact they're essential, if you want to evaluate any musician. Hardly anyone is good at everything. You don't see Pierre Boulez conducting Beethoven (and his stiff, almost scary recording of the Fifth Symphony from his Philharmonic days shows why). Mariss Jansons, who swept me away in Berlioz and Shostakovich, and in a Rossini overture I heard him do with his former Oslo orchestra, made a mess of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments.

Schwarz? My sense is that he can lay out the shape of big pieces, maybe a little crudely, but with reasonable force. In music that needs grace and delicacy, he's out of his depth. Which made it strange that for so many years he was music director of the Mostly Mozart festival in Lincoln Center, but that gets me to question two.

2, What's his reputation outside Seattle? The Seattle writers left no doubt that many Seattle Symphony musicians don't like Schwarz. But then some apparently do. So in the end we got more "on one hand, on the other hand," with final recourse to a piece of conventional wisdom, the notions that no conductors are universally loved, and that music directors who stay with an orchestra for many years may lose some support.

But it's easy (or at least easy in principle) to find out how Schwarz stands in the music world. Just see how he's looked at elsewhere. You can check that objectively--see where he guest-conducts. Does he show up at the Salzburg Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic (where you might think he'd be welcomed, since he's a New York boy who used to be the Philharmonic's wunderkind principal trumpet)? Or does he mostly show up in smaller places?

And then there's the subjective measure. What's his reputation, in places where he's appeared, or where he's talked about? Very low, I'm afraid. The prevailing view in the orchestra world, from what I've observed, is that he's not well thought of. There are issues with his conducting, and issues with his personality. Often this gets expressed rather strongly. Certainly this puts the Seattle situation in perspective--the Seattle musicians who don't like Schwarz appear (at least in my experience) to be reflecting the dominant view of him inside the business. Surely that's important for journalists to report.

Though to report it, you of course have to find it out. And that seems to be a problem. Very few classical music journalists, as far as I can see, seem to have extensive sources inside the classical music business. In part this is because the business is national, but appears before the public for the most part regionally. That is, if you're a critic in Seattle, the Seattle classical music scene is what you deal with, and where you're likely to know people. But the judgments that affect a conductor's career are being made--and shared--all over the country, and something like a national consensus will often emerge. How are you, the Seattle critic, going to know about that? It's going to be hard for you to get on the phone and start talking to orchestra artistic administrators (let's say) in Detroit and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. These are people you'll normally have no chance to meet. How can you cultivate them? How can you get their trust so they'll talk to you, at least off the record?

I'll admit this is difficult. Music business insiders have to watch what they say. Nobody who hires conductors can afford to have his or her uncensored views about them showing up in the media. But still it can't be impossible to find out what's going on. Classical music isn't the Pentagon, or the CIA. People in the business talk freely to each other, and to their friends, and I've known a very few critics, including myself (in the past, when I was a critic), who not just heard this talk, but took part in it. Journalists who cover politics normally know the inside stories of the politicians they cover. I'd suggest an experiment. Find a good regional newspaper, from a substantial city. Sit down with the classical music critic, and then with the reporters who cover the city and state governments. The political reporters, from everything I've seen, know where all the bodies are buried. The classical music critics don't. Why is that?

Full disclosure: I wrote a very negative piece about Schwarz for The Wall Street Journal in 1998. After it appeared, I got phone calls from three Seattle Symphony musicians I'd never met or spoken to, people whose names I'd never even heard. They all wanted to thank me. Nothing like that happened to me before or since, not even when I created a storm with a negative piece about Seiji Ozawa in his last years at the BSO, a piece that was widely discussed (the Boston Globe even did a story about it), and which expressed views that many BSO musicians strongly agreed with. So, yes, not every Seattle musician hates Gerard Schwarz, and yes, every long-serving music director etc. etc. But the Seattle musicians who do hate Schwarz certainly hate him with a vehemence I haven't found elsewhere.