October 2006 Archives

There's a new episode -- the 13th - of my in-progress book on the future of classical music online. Or my in-progress improvised draft of a book. But whatever I call it, the response has been wonderfully warm, quite enthusiastic, really, from all kinds of people who e-mail me. Or who talk to me out in the physical world. I'll refrain from quoting any of the reactions, so this blog won't read like a movie ad, but I'm warmly grateful. (And now I'm going to be precise, and say that this is the 13th episode of the second version of the book, since there was also a first version, which I abandoned after six episodes that I decided weren't going in the right direction. It's fun to write in the glare of public light, and yes, I really mean that.)

This new episode continues a section of the book that might be called, "How Classical Music Got That Way." Which means, "where did the classical music world as we know it today come from?" And the answer is, or at least my answer is: It came from three things, from the emergence of the very concept of classical music early in the 19th century (or in other words the concept of supreme musical works, written by supreme creators, and requiring utter devout silence from anyone listening to them); from the emergence of modernism, early in the 20th century (which helped put new classical music beyond the reach of ordinary mortals -- but note that I'm not saying that modernist music is in itself bad); and finally from the emergence of current pop culture, that (with rock and jazz) created a musical soundtrack for contemporary life that's really far from classical music.

The new episode starts the second part of this, the part about modernism. And what I try to show is that in the1890s, before modernism appeared, new music wasn't considered at all remarkable just because it was new. By that point (because people really believed in the idea of classical music), far more music by dead composers was played than music by new composers (exactly the pattern we have now). But the new music was taken in stride, welcomed, and often loved. We need to get back to that place today.

All the old episodes are still online, by the way. Including even the six episodes of the old version. Just go to the main book site, and you'll see them listed in a box on the left.

Subscribers to the book got a bonus. They got two revealing anecdotes, one about the first part of the 19th century, when classical music -- highbrow works by serious composers -- was fighting with popular music, otherwise known as opera and recitals by flashy virtuosos. Mendelssohn was a classical composer, a high priest of a tradition that, as people saw it then, began with Haydn, Mozart, and especially Beethoven. Donizetti, a prolific, theatrical opera composer, was a prime example of popular music. But when Mendelssohn's friends attacked Donizetti, Mendelssohn (bless the man) defended him. And not even as a guilty pleasure -- he just loved the music. Now, of course, we think Italian opera is as classical as Mendelssohn, which is just one way that our classical music world blurs (to put it mildly) any distinction between the many kinds of work that "classical" composers have written.

The other anecdote for subscribers was an early taste of something that'll be in the next episode of the book -- how, in 1913, Saint-Saens (at that point the dean of established Parisian composers) reacted (with utterly deadpan derision and disbelief) to Stravinksy's Rite of Spring. It's a priceless story, which I found in the memoirs of Alfredo Casella (an Italian neoclassicist), and which I haven't seen printed anywhere else.

To subscribe to the book -- which above all means you'll get e-mail notification of all new episodes -- just click here, and write "subscribe to the book" in the subject line of the blank e-mail form that will appear. And I'd be grateful if you'd tell me a little about yourself. My subscribers (bless them all) are a varied and delightful group, from several countries. Some are classical music professionals (some of these high-ranking), some very thoughtful music students, some are equally thoughtful teachers at universities or music schools, and some are just plain listeners. I like knowing who they are, and I've learned a lot from them.

Last week -- as regular readers know from the schedule of my travels that I posted a while ago -- my wife Anne Midgette and I were at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. This was a happy visit. The two of us were in residence, thanks to the Dorothy E. and DuWayne H. Hansen Musical Arts Series Fund, which brings people in the arts to Bowling Green to work with students -- and, as it turned out, faculty as well -- at the university's college of musical arts.

So here are the headlines. We met with students in four classes, one in music, one about popular culture (Bowling Green was one of the first universities to establish a popular culture department), and two in journalism. (Anne writes about music for The New York Times, as of course I've mentioned here before.) We heard concerts in Bowling Green's annual new music festival, including a really striking performance (more on this below) by the student orchestra. I had pieces performed on two of these concerts, with (I won't be modest) enormous success.

We were quite honored to be asked to address the first meeting of a new interdisciplinary committee of arts faculty, brought together to develop a new approach to arts courses aimed at the entire student body. This was an honor, as we saw it, because we wouldn't have thought we'd have anything obviously useful to say to these people. They're the ones immersed in arts education, not us. But they felt otherwise, and I think we at least got their discussion going in a productive way. In return, we learned a lot from them.

Then, last but not least, we led two panel discussions, one on the role of the arts in the community, the other on music criticism, and finally gave a presentation ourselves on the future of classical music. This turned out to be a particular pleasure. The subject, obviously, is my specialty, not Anne's, but she has quite a lot to say about it, and it was really fun to stand on stage together -- they decided to hold this discussion in their large concert hall -- and hold forth jointly.

One more thing. I took advantage of a free moment to hear a rehearsal of the school's gamelan ensemble. Not every music school has an ensemble of gamelan instruments, or someone to teach the students to play them. I thought these students were really lucky to have this chance to get inside another culture's music, which they did with a lot of uncomplicated enthusiasm. By "uncomplicated," I mean that there didn't seem to be much concern about any deep meaning in the cultural blending. They just took their shoes off (which I take to be a traditional expression of respect), and played the music, under the warm encouragement of David Harnish, an ethnomusicology professor. This was a special treat for me, because it was something I hadn't experienced before. And the instruments are very beautiful, both to look at and to hear.

More details. The student orchestra -- the Bowling Green Philharmonia -- was amazing. They played four not at all easy pieces by Robert Beaser, Avner Dorman, Michael Daugherty, and Timothy Stulman (he's a Bowling Green DMA student, and his piece had a nicely relaxed and lovely ending, with a lot of surprising unison writing for the orchestra). So what was amazing? Most of the students had never even heard music like this, let alone played it. (We're talking about complex harmony, complex rhythms, complex textures, and much more.) And in spite of that they dug in, and reached the musical heart of each piece. Gigantic credit goes to Emily Freeman Brown, Bowling Green's Director of Orchestral Activities, who conducted.

The Bowling Green Wind Symphony (the university's top concert band) followed the Philharmonia on the same program, with Bruce Moss conducting, and also did wonderfully. If I favor the orchestra here, it's because the strings posed more of a challenge than the wind and brass. I'm told that every string player in the college of music took part, including some students who might not be particularly advanced. Obviously the music challenged them, but they rose to the challenge. Credit again goes to Emily.

I could say lots more. The students in a class on feature writing asked especially acute questions. They'd been asked to read something I wrote in the '90s about Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, and they probed it sharply, exploring every possible weakness in my reporting. For the panel on the arts I'd prepared some comments on popular culture, and how I think it's as artistic as anything in the officially labeled arts, and I recycled these in the faculty committee meeting. But they were way ahead of me. They'd already dropped those barriers, and were prepared to plan courses that touched on every known kind of artistic creation, from science fiction to hiphop to La traviata.

The people we met welcomed us very warmly. As we went from one event to another (our schedules were really packed), we'd meet new people, but also often encounter people we'd met before. Eventually we felt that we'd been welcomed into a community we loved being part of. And we can't say enough good about Dorothy and DuWayne Hansen, who turned out to be the kind of smart and caring people who do good wherever they go. We were thrown together with them quite a bit, and found ourselves talking to them about everything from baseball to theology. They care passionately about music, and DuWayne has some intriguing, advanced ideas about how to bring a chamber music series he's involved with into classical music's evolving future.

I realize that all this may sound like gushing. I guess I'm stuck with that; everything really was the way I'm describing it. Our private conversations about our visit are pretty much what you're reading here.

I've saved this for a separate post.

Bowling Green programmed two pieces, both by chance world premieres. One was a fiendish little sonatina for clarinet and piano, just four and a half minutes long, and bristling with difficulty. The first two movements have the clarinet and piano playing separate pieces at the same time, with independent forms, independent phrase shapes, and bar lines and constantly changing time signatures that rarely intersect. The challenge is to forget your normal ensemble instincts, and keep the two parts independent. Then the third movement brings the players together in some tumultuous unison craziness, modeled on a jazz solo, which goes as fast as it can be played, involves jagged, irregular rhythms, and also features cruel leaps in the clarinet part (as well as giving the clarinetist no time to breathe).

This got aced by Kevin Schempf (who had the very smart idea to play the first movement, which goes very high, on E flat clarinet), and Robert Satterlee. When they'd finished, the large audience erupted in whoops and cheers, which didn't exactly make me unhappy. Then, the next day, a student with piercings who worked at the town's used bookstore told me she'd loved the piece. Small towns are wonderful!

The other piece was a group of five songs for soprano and piano, based on women's monologues from Shakespeare. This also isn't easy music, ranging very high and low in the soprano part, and also featuring some tricky, knotted rhythms and emotions that sometimes get fairly intense. The first song, on top of that, lives in ambiguous territory midway between melody and declamation; I'm not sure the balance of the two is easy to get right.

I hadn't had a chance to work with the people who did these songs, soprano Ann Corrigan and pianist I-Chen Yeh. So when I sat down in the concert hall to hear them, I had no idea what to expect. To my delight, the songs emerged exactly as I'd conceived them, including some finely detailed nuances. All these were carefully notated in the score, I'd hoped, but you never quite know how clearly a score is going to speak to the people bringing it to life. In this case, there didn't seem to be any problems. Ann projected the drama and emotions of each song, with lots of informed sympathy; I-Chen stood out for her firm and joyful precision (which was really welcome in the tangled rhythms).

For anyone curious, I've put the scores of both pieces online, along with computer realizations of the music. (When I get recordings from Bowling Green, I'll put those online, too.) Here are the links.

Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano

Score (which I'm revising, to include the E flat clarinet in the first movement)

Music

Shakespeare Songs

Score

Music

I'm going to be busy at Bowling Green State University -- where my wife and I will be in residence -- for the rest of this week. So I might not have time to post the comments some of you might make to my blog posts. But I'll get to them Monday for sure. Which means that I want you to fire off all the comments you like. I love reading them, and they often lead to lively discussions. Just be patient with me till I approve the comments, and they appear on the site.

(I have to approve every comment, because an amazing number of spam comments show up, and have to be blocked.)

My wonderful wife, for those who might not know, is Anne Midgette, who writes about classical music for The New York Times. We'll be speaking on public panels at Bowling Green, and showing up at music and journalism classes. There will also be performances of my music. For details, go to my blog post about this visit, or to the page about Anne and me on Bowling Green's website.

I went to a Broadway show (The Drowsy Chaperone, a wise and delightful musical), and noticed that the Metropolitan Opera had an ad in the playbill. If I remember correctly, they didn't use the word "opera" at all. Instead, they listed the directors from stage and screen who'll be doing new productions this year, and encouraged everyone to come to the opera house to see some theater.

Then there was an ad in the Times, featuring the singer who's playing the devil in Faust, looking superbly theatrical. And then earlier this week, there was another ad, urging all of us to see the new production of The Barber of Seville, again not using the word "opera," but instead stressing music-theater, and also making sure we know that the director of the production also directed The Light in the Piazza at the Lincoln Center Theater.

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. Certainly it brings the Met into a new era -- one in which people might not have patience with old-fashioned opera, and in which opera therefore has to compete with movies, TV, and stage productions, all of which come off far better (in terms of acting, directing, and mise en scene) than opera mostly has.

But now I have to ask: Can the Met live up to its advertising? Will enough of its productions really be engrossing theater, as the opening-night Butterfly was? But note the kind of challenge this is. The company, in effect, might be forcing itself to get better artistically, in order to meet its marketing goals!

Which makes sense. Ultimately, marketing isn't the answer, for opera or for anything else in classical music. The answer lies in what kind of performances we put on. If we can engage and excite people, classical music will flourish. If not, classical music will die. And let's not think that the performances we already do -- good as they might be in traditional classical-music terms -- are going to do the job. It's a whole new world out there, an evolving new culture, and classical music as we've known it simply isn't probing, current, or smart enough to fit in.

(Footnote: the singing at the Met is yet another story. It, too, ought to be better, but there's a shortage worldwide of people who can really deliver the standard operas. Even the opening Butterfly suffered from that. The performance got an ovation, but -- or so I thought -- a curiously short one. If the singers had been more compelling, the cheers would surely have gone through the roof.)

And about The Drowsy Chaperone! There's one lyric I can't resist quoting:

I'm an accident waiting to happen
A mishap about to ensue

Literacy, I'm thrilled to say, is clearly not dead. And I might almost believe that Cole Porter had come back to life.

I've been exchanging e-mail with Raghu Tambe about Indian classical music. Among other things, I asked him what the status of this great art might be in India today, and here's the thoughtful, informative, and encouraging answer he sent (posted with his permission):

The status of and outlook for Indian classical music is, in my experience, pretty good despite a number of our senior performers thinking otherwise and predicting its down fall. I suspect their fears arise from the usual problem of the older generation predicting the down fall in standards of the newer generations in most if not all fields. In addition to this, their above perception may be due to a big change in the ways classical music is taught/learnt these day. The traditional and admittedly the well proven system of "Gurukul" for the "Guru-Shishya Parampara" ( the tradition of desciples living in the homes of and with their Gurus) to teach/learn Classical music is virtually unsustainable today. In the modern pace and style of life, specially in Urban India where, for commercial reasons most if not all Gurus live, it is hardly possible. Further, the modern would-be performer is better educated, faster on the up-take and less mindful of the traditional Gharana (literally, Clan) purity by which great store is put by the Classicists.

Having said that, there is a large crop of young singers and instrumentalists who are indeed very serious, practise for a large number of hours daily as required and are indeed blossoming out into first class artists. Admittedly, I am not qualified to be a competent judge of the finest points of classical music performance, but do feel that there is no real danger to this "Ganga" of India flowing on into the distant future.

There is no dearth of young ones learning music and dance because it is a common practise in educated families to send their children-specially girls- to special coaching classes for this. Of course most of them do not take this up as their professions despite attaining fairly advanced levels.

Besides, it is not necessary to "know" anything about Classical music to enjoy it. As an example, I started going to musical concerts with m u mother back in the mid-1930s since I was 5/6 years old and have been enjoying it passionately. ( I am now almost 76). I have no training at all but am ever in its thrall. Further, there is very little music that is "Indian" which can be said to have no roots in Classical music. Hence the transition of a listener from one who likes film, or light, or light classical to Classical music is not a very big step for most people. These aspects are to my lay mind also supportive of my view above. In India, Classical music is considered "high brow", not old fashioned. You may find it interesting that the Indian nouveau riche adopt Classical music as a symbol of their arrival. (Perhaps same in your neck of the woods?)

I'm not sure that happens in the west -- not sure that the nouveau riche adopt classical music to show they've arrived. That used to happen, a generation or more ago, but probably not now. But I'm glad to know that Indian classical music is healthy. Thanks to Raghu, I've begun to learn about Indian vocal music. He correctly guessed that my knowledge was limited to instrumentalists like Ravi Shankar who've made a reputation in the west, and gently urged me to explore more widely.

(This is a revised version of what I originally posted. I didn’t think my original made its point very well.)

Headline on a music review in today’s New York Times:

A Song-and-Dance Salute to the Sun King

Now, I know that Times critics don’t write headlines, and I also know that headlines are often written in a hurry, not always with deep thought about their implications. But a salute to the Sun King? Why is anybody saluting Louis XIV?

Of course, the concert being reviewed featured music from Louis XIV’s court, but that’s not the same as celebrating the king himself. The review, I should quickly say, didn’t celebrate the king, and in fact the critic (Vivien Schweitzer) didn’t even like the most Louis-at-his-court-in-Versailles part of the performance, which seemed to be the presence of two dancers dressed in Vresailles-era costumes. Schweitzer was much happier with the instrumentalists, who were dressed in stylish black, and played their concert in an entirely contemporary setting, the Time Warner Center in New York.

So why should I care about the headline? Because I think it underscores something about the classical music world. Classical music events don’t have much content. We play the music, with perhaps a few comments on its historical meaning. But we don’t engage with that history. We don’t take a stand on it. Compare the new Sophia Coppola Marie Antoinette film. I haven’t seen it — though I’m looking forward to doing that — but I’ve read about it. Coppola has ideas about Marie Antoinette, and that’s why she made the film. Whereas we in classical music just play the repertoire. It doesn’t matter — or at least not very crucially — where the stuff came from, or how or why it was written. It’s great music; therefore we play it.

So into that vacuum the headline comes. The concert didn’t have any content, and the music, which the musicians clearly loved, came from the court at Versailles. So why shouldn’t the concert be a celebration of Louis XIV? Was there anything else that it claimed to be?

(None of this would matter, of course, if classical music hadn’t so decisively moved away from current culture. And yes, I know it’s harder to find living history in music, let alone take a stand on that history, than it is to take a stand on the history shown in a film. You can’t very well make a feature film about any historical figure without having some view of who that person was. But this only means we have to work harder to put some context — some cultural meaning — into classical performances. And if we don’t — if we don’t ourselves know why we’re giving the performances, apart, of course, from our love of the music — why should anybody come to them?)

That's what one of the people at the cash register was telling customers last week, in the classical department of the Tower Records store near Lincoln Center in New York. "Please come back and see us. We'll be open for 11 more weeks." Tower Records, which had flirted with bankruptcy for years, is now formally bankrupt. All that's left is to liquidate the stock (to raise cash), and then every Tower store will close.

And maybe now it'll happen before 11 weeks. This past weekend, Tower put up "Going Out of Business" signs at its stores. I read about this in the New York Daily News (once again, a tabloid scoops the New York Times), and saw it myself, as I drove past the Tower store on Route 17 in New Jersey, north of Paramus. Not only were there signs on the store -- there were also flyers stuck up on the opposite side of the highway, where I was driving, just in case anyone might want to turn around and pick up some bargains.

I'm bereft. When Tower closes, New York won't have a fully stocked classical music store, for the first time since I started buying classical records, back in the 1950s. In the '50s, you could buy classical LPs at Sam Goody's (no relation to the current chain with that name), or at The Record Hunter. The Record Hunter stayed in business for many years. In the '90s, at the height of the CD era, there were five serious classical CD departments in New York: at the two Tower branches, at two branches of HMV, and at J&R Music World. J&R downsized its classical department; HMV closed its stores; now Tower is going out of business.

Why am I bereft? Of course I can buy any classical CD I want online. But sometimes I wanted something in a hurry, maybe something to play for one of my Juilliard classes. I could look for it before class at Tower. And I loved browsing in the classical department. I saw what was available, especially from indie labels. I saw how classical labels were marketing themselves, what they featured, what they thought people might want to buy, what was on the CD covers. The covers were slowly starting to improve. How will I keep up with that now? And will covers even matter, if most of the CDs can't be seen in any store?

Tower also flew the flag for classical music. At a time when the classical music business is going through so many changes, here were two big classical departments open for business in New York City, showing that at least here -- in the center of the classical music business in the USA -- classical CD retail wasn't dead. And now it will be, right here in the national center of the classical music business. That's an ugly omen.

And I doubt any private parties will step into the breach. We can dream about a beautifully stocked, beautifully run classical CD store, with clerks who know classical records and are devoted to helping their customers. But the numbers make that unlikely, if not impossible. First there's the cost of real estate in New York, which makes any store expensive to run. And then there's the state of the CD retail business generally -- profit margins are very low, even when you're selling pop hits. Gross sales are falling; more and more people are buying CDs online. And what happens to stores when downloads take over?

All might not be lost, though, at least in New York. Two non-profit institutions -- Juilliard and the Metropolitan Opera -- have stores that sell classical CDs. The Met, as you'd expect, sells only opera (maybe other vocal music, too; I've forgotten). But their store is wonderfully full, as fully stocked as Tower used to be, maybe even more fully stocked. Juilliard concentrates on opera and historical instrumental recordings, with a small stock of current non-operatic CDs.

Both stores have one important thing going for them -- I assume that real estate costs aren't what they'd be for a private company, unaffiliated with a major institution that has its own building. The Juilliard store may also be expanding, since Juilliard is building a new building.

So here's a suggestion. We need a full-service classical CD store in New York, at least while CDs still are sold anywhere. And to give us something approaching that, the two stores I've mentioned ought to cooperate. The Met should keep on selling opera, and Juilliard should eliminate its opera stock, and sell instrumental music instead. That way, the two stores together could add up to what we need.

I'll make some inquiries. Maybe this could happen!

I've finished the Richard Powers book I talked about earlier, The Time of Our Singing. And what I could only guess at (because I hadn't finished the book) in my earlier post turns out to be true -- this is a long and serious novel (by a MacArthur prizewinner, yet) one of whose themes is the future of classical music. Or, rather...

!!!! WARNING !!!!

SPOILER AHEAD -- DON'T READ WHAT FOLOWS IF YOU'RE GOING TO READ THE BOOK, AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS

...or rather classical music's lack of a future. Because classical music loses in the end. The character most identified with it dies unhappily, and the characters who give it up are the ones who prosper. Powers has a very strong vision of what's wrong with classical music -- it's too European, too white, too far away from contemporary life and especially from nonwhite culture. It's also, in the modern world, a little artificial, a little precious, a little forced. Note that he says this even though he himself seems to love classical music, even though he offers some of the most vivid and accurate writing about it that I've ever read, and even though he creates unforgettable characters of an older generation whose love for classical music goes to the marrow of their bones.

Nobody, in other words, can accuse him of taking cheap shots at classical music, or of not knowing the power of something that, in the end, he thinks is inadequate. What Powers offers in place of classical music, at the end of the book, is a vision of music that's completely participatory -- music created by anyone and everyone, music that everyone can join in with, music that doesn't require composers, music schools, or hierarchies of talent. This music sounds like a blend of African-American music and the kind of free improvisation that goes on in new music circles, though by saying this I cheapen Powers's vision a little, and certainly bring down his excitement, by tethering him to existing musical genres that don't fully offer the exhilaration or discovery or wonderful freedom that the music he imagines does.

Powers's vision is very much in tune with Christopher Small's notion of musicking (in his book of that name) according to which music should be defined as an activity, and not as an object (exemplified, as the western classical tradition insists, by a notated musical work). The novel could also almost be a commentary on Small's first book, Music of the Common Tongue, which in alternating chapters contrasts classical music with African-American music. Or, on the other hand, Music of the Common Tongue could be a take on Powers's novel.

Not that you need any prior knowledge to read Power's book. (Though -- paradoxically -- the more you know about classical music, the more you might like it.) It's lively, powerful, and profound, and it throws a challenge to classical music that classical music had better figure out how to answer.

The new episode of my book is now online. It's about the conflict between classical and popular music in the 19th century. Popular music was Rossini and Paganini; classical music was Beethoven and Schumann. Eventually the two worlds came together, which is why we now think The Barber of Seville is classical music, and put the aura of art around it, something that never would have been done when the piece was new.

The next episode -- in which I'll start to explore the effect modernism had on the current state of classical music -- will be out two weeks from today, on October 25. If you want to be notified when new episodes appear, please subscribe (as of course I've urged before). Just type "subscribe to the book" in the subject line of the e-mail form that appears when you click the link. And, if you would, tell me a little about yourself, since I'm eager to know who my subscribers are, and why they're interested.

The next episode of my online book on the future of classical music --scheduled for Monday, October 9 -- will appear on Wednesday instead. This is due to scheduling and workload issues beyond my control. The new episode continues with the historical background to the problems we have now. I've been describing how three things helped establish the current isolation of classical music from contemporary life: the rise of the very concept of classical music (as something removed from everyday life), which dates from the early 19th century; the rise of modernism (which created an expectation that new classical music would be far removed from everyday life); and the rise of popular culture (which created artistic alternatives to classical music, and of course to every other kind of high art).

The book episode after this one will also appear on a Wednesday, instead of the usual Monday, in this case on October 25. I may want to move all future episodes to Wednesdays, and if I decide to do that, I'll post a notice here in my blog. But -- no matter which day I choose-- episodes will continue to appear ever two weeks. If you want to be notified by e-mail when each new episode appears, please subscribe to the book! Various extra goodies (small but tasty) come along with your subscription.

To subscribe, click here to send me e-mail, and put "subscribe to the book" in the subject line. I'd love it if you'd tell me a little about yourself -- the subscription list is very varied, and I'm eager to know who my subscribers are. Many, of course, are from various corners of the classical music business.

I apologize for the delay, but the Wednesday posting will help me a lot, at least for the next two episodes.

This comes from my friend Christopher Stager, an expert marketing and audience development consultant, who works with arts organizations, especially orchestras. He also knows music in genuine, enthusiastic depth.

Chris and I were talking over lunch, and the subject of orchestra programming came up -- not gigantic questions, like how much new music an orchestra can dare to do, but something smaller, the way sometimes there's a panic about one piece on a proposed program, something maybe a little obscure, which (or so it's feared) will stop people from buying tickets.

Here's Chris's comment, not describing any specific orchestra, but instead summarizing things he's found in many places: "Their marketing isn't ready on time, neither is their advertising. They haven't figured out any message to communicate, and their call center isn't functioning right. Why do they worry about programming?" Fix these very basic things, Chris suggests, and then find out what effect a change in programming might have.

One thing my friendship with Chris has taught me -- anyone with tickets to sell should make sure they're doing the basics right before they try any new marketing ideas. Maybe that seems odd, coming from me, since I'm always urging new ways of doing things (and certainly classical music institutions need to try something new if they want to reach the wider audience they so badly need). But still, the truth is the truth -- the first thing to fix is your basic operation. If you're not selling enough tickets, maybe you'll sell more if you do the standard marketing things better. And if your basic marketing isn't working right, your new marketing ideas won't stand a chance.

New York magazine has a feature called "Party Lines," about events where celebrities are spotted. This week they feature the Metropolitan Opera opening, along with the premiere of The Departed (the new Martin Scorcese film), and a gala for New Yorkers for Children.

Each entry features a quote. The Met's quote comes from model Maggie Rizer, who says:

You know, I've never been to the opera before. [She's asked why not.] I never really hear anybody talking about it. It seems to me that it's a very traditional thing for older people. If it was brought up more, I think I'd go more.

Bingo. See why it's so good that the Met keeps getting in the news?

For those who might want to find me in the real world, here are places I'm going to be this month:

October 6 and 8 -- in Pittsburgh, doing a multimedia presentation on Shostakovich before two Pittsburgh Symphony concerts. It's an all-Shos program, excerpts from The Bolt ballet suite, the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Fifth Symphony. Feltsman is the pianist, Sinaisky the conductor. I'll post more on my thoughts about Shostakovich.

October 18-22 -- at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. I and my wife Anne Midgette (the New York Times critic) will be guests of the College of Musical Arts, thanks to the Dorothy E. and DuWayne H. Hansen Musical Arts Series Fund, which brings "significant representatives of the musical arts to share their talents with undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Musical Arts and with residents of the community." (That's from Bowling Green's website.) Anne and I will be there in conjunction with the university's annual new music and art festival, and we feel honored to be chosen, especially together. (We love making joint appearances.) We'll be speaking to classes, and also speaking in public. There'll also be performances of two pieces of mine, my Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano, and my Shakespeare Songs, for soprano and piano. Here's part of the schedule:

October 18: Arts Criticism Panel. 7:30-9 p.m., Bryan Recital Hall.

October 19: A Community Forum: The Role of the Arts in Our Society. 4:30-6 p.m., Wood County Public Library, 251 N. Main Street, Bowling Green. (Presented in conjunction with the Wood County Public Library.)

October 20: Panel Discussion. 11:30 a.m., Bryan Recital Hall. (Part of the 27th Annual New Music & Art Festival.) The Future of Classical Music and "What do I do with my music degree?" 3:45-5 p.m., Kobacker Hall.

My music will be played on concerts scheduled for 10:30 AM and 2:30 PM on October 20, in Bryan Recital Hall.

October 27-28 -- in New Orleans to help judge a composers' competition for the Louisiana Philharmonic. I'll be at their concerts on the 27th and 28th.

As always, any blog reader who's at these events should come up and say hello. I'd be delighted to meet you.