March 2007 Archives

And now for a word from our guest blogger. This is Anne Midgette, finally getting to fulfill my long-held desire to blog, but for an unfortunate reason. Greg broke his leg on Sunday (he slipped on the ice on our front steps in New York), is going into surgery today (Tuesday), and will be out of commission for a few days (it was a nasty break). He wanted me to let everyone know why he won't be able to post or respond to comments for a while. I guess one could say that this week, for the purposes of this blog, the future of classical music is - on ice.

About why I think the Pittsburgh Symphony things I described are so good...

I talked about a pre-concert happening, in which people in the audience could find musicians scattered in various places in the concert hall, playing excerpts from a Jennifer Higdon piece on the program that night. The listeners could talk to the musicians, ask them questions, get to know them.

I said that would energize the audience, and make them more excited about the concert. But not simply because they now knew something about the piece! It's a classical music myth -- part of what I'm calling the Classical Music Ideology -- that you have to know something about classical music before you can enjoy it. (In the High Church version of this myth, the essence of classical music lies in its structure, and so if you don't follow the form of a piece as it evolves -- and, for some people (see Julian Johnson's book Who Needs Classical Music?), if you don't follow every note of the piece, from beginning to end -- then you haven't listened to it at all.)

Thus arose the idea that people have to be educated to enjoy classical music, and that the best preparation for a concert would be some kind of educational event, a lecture, traditionally, or (in more contemporary versions of this practice) some kind of participatory event, in which people who go through a series of activities designed to teach them the wonders of what they're about to hear.

But I do think the idea behind this is a myth. I think people are perfectly ready to enjoy classical music, most of which doesn't pose any great difficulty to anyone disposed to enjoy it. (I say this after coming from a concert last night in which some pretty difficult music, including a piece by Pierre Boulez, was played for a group of teenagers, who liked it just fine.) Once people like the music, then many of them will want to learn more about it, which of course is a simple human thing, not anything specifically linked to this art form of ours.

But what makes people disposed to sit through a classical concert? The present concert world -- or maybe I should say the traditional one, because the present one is changing -- isn't much of a turn on. You have to sit there silently, absorbing Great Art as it's fed to you, as if you were a little bird being fed by its mother. There's no chance for you to interact. Nobody's going to ask you what you think, or what you'd like to know. In fact, the traditional concert ambience suggests just the opposite -- that your role is to sit humbly, and take what you're given.

The Pittsburgh event I described changes that. You come by early, and you meet the musicians. If you like them -- and why wouldn't you? the Pittsburgh Symphony is full of terrific people -- then of course you're interested in what they're going to play, especially if you've just heard some of it, and talked to the musicians about how it strikes them.

So what we have here isn't an educational event. Instead, it's a variant of what I think is sometimes called the "halo effect." Because people like the experience of being in the concert hall, quite apart from the music, they like the music more. They'll also typically like other things as well -- they'll like the parking facilities better, and they'll have a happier view of their experience with the ushers in the hall, and with the box office or the ticket-buying page on the website. Similarly, in one case I know of, someone running a chamber music series at a university was having trouble selling tickets. Finally she got the idea of e-mailing everybody on the faculty, and giving them a free membership in the chamber music series. This meant that they now could buy tickets at a discount. Suddenly her ticket sales soared, not simply because the tickets now were cheaper, but above all because the people who got the e-mail felt cared about. The series had reached out to them, and they responded.

That's what seems to be happening in Pittsburgh. The orchestra reaches out to its audience. The people in the audience feel that the orchestra cares about them. So they're more enthusiastic about concerts, and more likely to buy tickets, and even to subscribe. That's a lesson all institutions should learn -- and then learn how to extend the caring to people who aren't buying tickets yet.

From one of my Eastman students, Jennifer Turbes, a violist. Like Erika Lange (whose comments I posted earlier), she wrote this in response to some questions I asked on a take-home exam. I'm posting it with her permission:

I was recently detained in New York City in the midst of my DMA audition tour. A fine city to spend a few extra days but my experience was stressful rather than invigorating and relaxing. The one satisfying thing I did with my time was attend a symphony orchestra concert--the Minnesota Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. I'm a Minnesotan by birth and heart so nostalgia and pride would have satisfied my urges perhaps, but this was a fantastic concert. The orchestra and their leader, Osmo Vanska, played the famous Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven and two lesser-known works by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The performances were spectacular, most notably for some amazing pianissimo passages--the Sibelius overture ended with barely audible timpani notes--and the enthusiasm of the musicians. Moral is, I was stressed to the max--I even broke out with shingles at the end of my trip!--but for two hours in a concert hall I was relaxed, at home, and able to process my emotions.

Because I can't possibly believe I'm the only one who feels this way about such concerts, I don't believe we will have to do away with the concert hall presentations of works from long ago. There are still plenty of people willing and excited to attend them and I'm not ready to give up on the recruitment process to grow that group. Take the couple I attended the Minnesota Orchestra concert with. They're 25 years old, newly married, and truly excited to attend classical music events. They're not musicians, and they're not rich. They are elementary school teachers who deem classical music a worthy recipient of their earnings and free time.

Things are going to need to get wilder and friendlier, however, if we're going to attract the size of audience that we need to support the growing numbers of aspiring musicians. I think programming is going to continue to go in new directions and not one singular direction for that matter. Pieces will get newer, programs will get more exploratory, ensembles will be more flexible in size and shape, concert locations will move into more venues. In short, things are going to diversify. This is an age of independence. Not the leaving-home-and-having-a-go-of-it-independence but rather all-the-technology-one-can-dream-of-independence, allowing each of us to create a sound and visual world of our own choosing. In order to attract these connoisseurs of self-created aesthetics, concert offerings will have to be in more places, doing more things, and advertising hard core.

***

Classical music should be performed personally, with integrity, and genuine interest in both the music and the audience. If a person or group cannot do that then they should not be in the business. That said, it really doesn't matter how music is presented as long as it conveys those key aspects. The easiest way to do so, I think, is by talking to your audience during a performance. A genuinely delivered verbal introduction to a peace can do wonders for a listener's level of experience. First, it shows them that you care about the piece and their experience of it. A few words about why you choose the work, what you've learned about it along the way, or perhaps a short demo of something cool in it gives the listener an insider view and a reason beyond mere formality to pay attention. Second, talking breaks down the barrier between stage and house, giving the feeling that instead standing on a pedestal for worship you're simply standing in front of the audience with something to share. This assumes, of course, that the words will give a feeling of community and not be something like, "watch as I do something none of you could possibly understand!"

As far as dress, wear whatever you want! I don't think something radical like performance in the nude is necessary, or appropriate unless it is really informed by the sounds and concepts of a piece. Nor do I want concert black to go by the wayside. Music is sound, and especially with a large orchestra it's sound over individual virtuosity. I don't want to see one second violinist wearing a bright pink cocktail dress. Attitude, yes. Distraction, that too. There's something to be said about the visual unity lent by a prescribed wardrobe. BUT, the musicians should be allowed to play in individual ways. That way, audience members who thrive off visual stimulation can enjoy picking out orchestra members for the way they physically make music not because they're wearing an outlandish costume. And if the concert is on a Saturday afternoon, dress down a little. If it's a Hawaiian theme, wear those awful floral shirts. If it's a small chamber group, choose something fun--rainbow colors, all pastels, jeans and t-shirts, whatever! Most importantly, let the dress compliment the music not distract from it.

Location, location, location. I think musicians are all too concerned about this one and for all the wrong reasons. Yes, it's thrilling to play in a hall with great acoustics and beautiful decorations. But this isn't where the newest recruits to the music scene are found nor is it the most practical place to play nor the place where we often encounter our most appreciative audiences. There are only so many great halls in this world and even fewer people who understand how to make them. Therefore, we should consider ourselves lucky when presented with one but learn not to let acoustics dictate the success of a performance. I'll take an enthusiastic audience and orchestra in a conference room over a boring performance and audience in a great hall any day. Or a boomy church sanctuary for that matter. I had the opportunity to tour with the St. Olaf College Orchestra for four years. No matter how small the town, we had great audiences; I honestly can't remember a scantily populated audience space. And we played everywhere! Auditoriums, churches, gymnasiums, and even one venue that could best be described as an airline hanger where we performed from a shabby platform while sitting on ancient folding chairs. That audience, however, was amazing! I remember an old woman in one of the front rows who just wouldn't stop smiling. Cheesy as ever, but that one person made the entire tour worthwhile for me. Another concert brought us to a church in Lincoln, NE where our wind section was joined (read: interrupted) by a stationary, marble alter and the sound was so live that we had to shorten every note to miniscule lengths and watch like mad to maintain any semblance of ensemble. The show was sold out. The tuba concerto a hit, and the church members banded together to host all 89 of us in their homes. I venture to say that the experiences we had on tour brought music beyond its meaning as mere art and into a much bigger, societal view.

As far as what should be played, everything! I talked about this [earlier]--we're going to need to diversify to maintain audiences. Spread out, satisfy all the self-created aesthetics out there. Musicians themselves, in fact, will need diversification as we are not exempt from the effects of technology and the accompanying ease of access to any thing we could dream of. Interests within our own community are ever expanding with those of society at large.

I don't have a problem with musicians taking more freedoms in their performances. In fact, I believe the average faithful concert-goer would be glad to hear such risks taken. If they are going more for image than enjoyment as many argue, hearing a concerto played slightly differently or a Beethoven symphony with more extreme dynamics should make them shift in their seats because they will know, at least unconsciously, that they have heard something new or somehow exciting. Also, musicians should have fun with their reproitoire. As a classical girl, I often feel a bit jealous and even incompetent when listening to jazz or folk performers who are familiar enough with the language of their craft to improvise on the spot. I'd love to be able to jam on Beethoven quartet in C with a group of musicians but it's simply not a skill I've developed or been encouraged to develop.

In sum, we classical musicians need to lighten up. We're musicians first and superstars only if we're lucky. The point should be to bring music to the world not fame to ourselves or to garner a complimentary review from one of the handful of critics out there. We should use our incredible luck to be doing something others consider fun for a living to read society, find the holes and to learn which ones our individual talents can fill. Personality, integrity and genuine interest are the keys.

In answers to a comment a few posts ago, I made the mistake of saying I'd seen half-full houses at the Pittsburgh Symphony. That was true, but it happened a few seasons ago, and the orchestra is doing much better now. As I should have noted! I was both discourteous and inaccurate.

The growth in both total audience and subscriptions in Pittsburgh has been pretty dramatic in the past couple of years, in fact. We could argue about whether this reverses the trend in the industry, since Pittsburgh is recovering from a larger drop in sales and subscriptions than most orchestras have seen. If they can raise their subscription rate above the industry average, which is around 60%, and keep raising it, then there's no argument.

And -- even if some people in the industry (reflecting the current conventional wisdom) might think that's improbable -- the orchestra does have one thing going for it, which is a change in the way it gives some of its concerts. It's tried to create what it calls "entry points," for both new and old listeners, meaning special things that go on before, during, or after concerts, which give people in the audience a way to grasp something about the music, and then hang onto it. I haven't seen any of these in operation (if I don't count a pre-concert multimedia presentation I gave in the fall on Shostakovich), but I've been told about some ideas that seem (and apparently really were) quite exciting.

My favorite is something they did when they played a Jennifer Higdon piece, and may do again for new or modern repertoire. Before the concert, musicians from the orchestra could be found in various parts of the hall, demonstrating some of the music in the piece. Everyone from the audience could walk around and listen, and -- most important -- also talk to the musicians, and ask questions, in that way both learning some of the music in the piece, and building at least the start of a relationship with the musicians playing it. No one can tell me people in the audience won't feel more connected to the music, if they look at the stage from their seats, and say, "There's Cindy, the principal oboist. I really loved talking to her! Now she's playing that passage she showed us, the one she likes, but said was so tricky to manage."

In the future, I'm told, the orchestra wants the musicians available after the performance, as well as before, to give people a chance to build on their listening experience, by talking again to the players after the performance.

Here, I detect a delightful resemblance to something I imagined in my blog entry about the Apple Store. There I wrote that

if you have a chamber group...you could open the house an hour before your concert (or however early might be practical), and let people come and hang out with you onstage. You can talk with them, answer questions, play a little to demonstrate.

I didn't dare to imagine that an orchestra could do some version of this, which puts the Pittsburgh Symphony way ahead of me. It's interesting, though, and wonderfully encouraging, to see similar ideas surfacing in many places at once. As, for instance, has happened with the idea -- tremendously successful, in many places where it's been tried -- of putting classical music in clubs. What this means, I think, is that many of us are looking at the classical music world, and seeing the same problems. So it's hardly a surprise that we'd propose similar solutions. Which means, as I've said before, that we're evolving our future, and that it's a future that seems to work. Maybe the Pittsburgh Symphony will sell more tickets than conventional wisdom would expect.

I think we’re really on a roll here, meaning not just me, but readers, too, to judge from the comments I’ve been posting. Posts about good things — real changes happening — are heartening to write, and also seem to be heartening to read.

So I’m really sorry that I have to call a brief halt. I’m going away for a short vacation in the sun, as I do around this time every year. While I’m gone, I won’t be going near computers or e-mail, so I won’t be posting, and won’t be able to post comments, either. I’ll be back next Wednesday, and then I’ll pick up where we left off. I have more posts planned about new events and new ideas, including something about Wordless Music in New York, and thoughts from another one of my Eastman students. Not to mention the Pittsburgh Symphony, which (among other things) is planning something so uncannily like one of my ideas suggested by the Apple Store, that you’d think their staff and I had been reading each others’ minds. And then I’m sure many of you will take my ideas a lot further, as you always do.

So a word to readers who haven’t looked at the comments to my posts — please do. You won’t regret it. Just click on the “comments” link, below. You’ll find some of the best writing done on this blog.

The good news, from a Playbill Arts piece linked on ArtsJournal today: the Baltimore Symphony’s reduced-price subscription plan seems to be working, maybe even spectacularly.

The Baltimore Sun reports that when the box office opened last Saturday morning (March 3), about 150 people were already in line at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, ready to snap up the tickets [writes Vivien Schweitzer, who also reviews music for The New York Times]. Music director-designate Marin Alsop was on hand to give out doughnuts to the eager subscribers.…

Charles Shubow, an administrative judge, told the Sun that he hadn't subscribed to the Symphony for years, but Alsop's appointment prompted his return.

Lawyer Brendan Hurson, 29, said, "I wouldn't be a subscriber if not for the deal. If you do the math, it's amazing."…

Paul Meecham, Baltimore Symphony president and chief executive, told the Sun that subscription renewals have increased, and those who have renewed so far have purchased close to 16 tickets each this year, up 25 percent from this time last year. Despite the decrease in price, subscription revenue is five times higher than this time last year.

The bad news:

According to the Sun, Meecham would not commit to offering the deal next year, however. The new pricing was made possible by a $1 million grant from the PNC Foundation, the charitable arm of Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group.

So here we have this exciting initiative, which could energize this or any other orchestra (not to mention bring happiness to a lot of people who’d love to hear the music). And it’s only possible with a large shot of outside funding. (Apparently the five-times-higher-revenue is a very preliminary measure; apparently the orchestra expects to bring in less money overall, hence the need for funding. Orchestra marketing people have often told me that, even if they sell more tickets by lowering prices, their overall revenue will go down.)

This is heartbreaking. Baltimore can only continue this initiative with $1 million each year in special funding? A million dollars is a lot of money. If the economy sags, as eventually it will, this program could go right out the window, even if it continues next year or the year after that.

This makes me think of the stats I presented earlier, about the declining proportion of orchestra income that comes from ticket sales, a decline that’s been going on for around 70 years. As time goes on, orchestras have had to raise more and more money, simply to stay alive.

And now we might be at a new stage in this impasse. Ticket prices are too high. Everybody says this, and the results of lowering them can be dramatic. But if you lower prices, you lose money. So what happens if orchestras decide they don’t have any choice — if they find they have to lower prices, in order to redevelop their audience? (And re-energize their relationship to their communities.) The proportion of their budget that comes from ticket sales will fall still more. It approached 100 percent (at least at some of the biggest orchestras) in the 1930s. It dropped, in the 1960s and 1970s, to 50-odd percent, then 40-odd percent, and more recently to something like 25 to 30 percent.

What would it fall to now, if orchestras decide they have to lower ticket prices? 20 percent? 15 percent? Once again, orchestras will have to find new sources of money, just to stay alive.

It’s enough to break your heart.

My Eastman students (here’s a link to the course I taught) have been writing some terrific final papers. Here’s part of one by Erika Lange, posted of course with her permission. A delight to read, and important as yet another example of how classical music’s future is already here (or, maybe in this case, coming very fast):

As a performer of classical music, one would think that I would feel completely at home in a classical concert, but this is not always the case. At times even I feel uncomfortable in the stuffy atmosphere of the concert hall and sometimes I wish I could just go to a concert in jeans and a sweatshirt instead of feeling like I need to dress up for the event. I think it would be fantastic if some orchestras experimented with talking to the audience, having question and answer time and even ask the audience to respond during the piece when they hear something they like. Less formal attire for musicians would not only make us more comfortable when we’re playing, but I think it would also let the audience feel more relaxed. Throw in some pop/rock lighting experiments and I think we might be talking about real entertainment.

I went to a recital performed by my teacher John Marcellus and the trumpet professor Jim Thompson earlier this week. During the recital they interacted with the audience, allowed themselves to show their strange but hilarious personalities and got the audience involved in their performance. Suddenly their ‘serious’ classical music was not so serious anymore. We laughed, we were entertained and most importantly, we talked about it to our friends the next day. When was the last time a faculty recital caused such hype?

 Changing the general setup of a classical concert would also be a step in the right direction in terms of audience involvement. I was involved in the performance of an improvisatory piece by Globakov recently, which was to be performed in a circle. At points, we were supposed to turn towards the audience and give loud interjections. Being a trombone player, I knew that it would be appropriate for my loud interjection to be performed on my instrument instead of vocally. I turned toward the audience and played one extremely loud note and not surprisingly, a woman in the front of the hall jumped about two feet out of her chair. How often can typical classical music concerts affect an audience member so directly? Whether or not I gave her a heart condition, you can bet that she’ll never forget her experience that night!

New music needs to take a bigger role in classical music concerts. All of the classical music that we play over and over again today was at one point new and vogue, whether it was accepted or not. When was the last time a new ballet caused a riot as in the first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring? The composers of new music should also take a greater hand in how they want music to be performed. It is always amazing to have the composer of a work present at the rehearsal giving specifications for staging and performance. What if the composer also specified that the woodwinds should stand and the lighting should be blue during the second movement? Spotlighting on soloists is also a direction that might be interesting in concerts especially for children who are just learning the instruments. Along the same lines, composers could even denote attire for the soloists. I would love to see the trombone soloist in Mahler’s Third Symphony wearing a bright pink shirt. These are just some of my ideas and they might be impossible to reproduce, but classical music needs to change somehow so why not add some spice.

The future of classical music is already here. New ways of doing things are springing up everywhere. It’s exciting, and tremendously hopeful. Many of these new things have proved themselves. They’re no longer experiments; they’re a concrete look at the future.

But one problem is that not enough people know about them. These things sprout up individually. There isn’t anywhere you can go — no website, no institution, not even any individual — to find out about them. Information spreads by word of mouth. Often enough, even the people doing these new things don’t know what others are doing.

I’ve talked a lot about the problems classical music has, and I’ll do that more. But I want to start devoting more space to the terrific changes that are going on. And for today, that’s Greg Anderson and his website. Greg is a pianist, who took my Juilliard course on the future of classical music last year. (For this year’s course, with links to the assignments, go here. For a week by week account of how I taught the course in the past, go here. This account, by the way, was printed some years ago in the Journal of Popular Music Studies.)

But back to Greg. He’s one of the most enterprising and optimistic people I’ve ever known. And his website just overflows with his spirit, his sense of fun, his love of music, and his real interest in his audience. Among the highlights:

Greg’s very hot video of himself playing a Ligeti etude. This is also on his MySpace page, and on YouTube. No, wait — it’s not on MySpace. On that page there’s another video, of Greg and another pianist he works with in a fine duo-piano team, Elizabeth Roe. (Who also took my Juilliard course.) Here’s the Ligeti video:

Comments from site visitors about what they like in a performance.

Greg’s own comments on what to do when you’re in the audience. Some of these are worth quoting:

 Clap when you feel so inclined. Return any boorish looks you get for doing so with proud defiance.

If people take it up with you during intermission, quote the Boston Daily Advertiser from the 22nd of May in 1873: “Every passage [of Rubinstein’s concerto] was warmly applauded.” Or mention that Hans von Bülow would brag to his colleagues about the applause he routinely received after the opening cadenza of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto. Or tell them about Mozart: Mozart wrote letters to his father boasting of how frequently (during a piece) an audience would clap. Philosophize with your perturbed audience members as well - by applauding midway through a work, it helps to keep the listener an active participant in the concert, entailing both knowledge and attention.

 In other words, don’t be AFRAID to applaud - between movements, at the end, or when it simply feels right. Nothing is worse than hesitant applause.

***

Turn off the excessive chatter in your mind. Who cares about tomorrow’s dinner? Who cares if you have loads of homework to finish? Enjoy the music!

·         listen to it’s beauty

·         think about how it makes you feel

·         ask yourself, "does this remind me of any moment in my life?"

·         conceptualize its color or texture

·         create a storyline

·         find relationships among pieces or movements on the program

·         ask yourself, "where is this music going next?" Can you predict the direction it will take, or is it something more ambiguous?

Two recent signs of Greg’s success. Greg recently released a CD, and he’s made a profit from it, thanks to sales on his site, from MySpace, and at concerts. And one notable classical music organization is looking at the site, which was recommended by someone on the staff as a good example of how a performer can get enthusiastic attention.

This came in an e-mail from John Steinmetz, who’s often made comments on blog posts. John had trouble posting it as a comment (sorry, John), and I thought it might as well be a post by itself. I love its good sense, good cheer, and also the necessary dose of realism.

Maybe there used to be a sense that there was One Right Way to present classical music—one right repertory, one right standard of quality, and one right way to be an audience member—but there is no longer one right anything. Shifts like this are happening all over our culture. This may be a source of sadness or frustration for people who loved the old one right way of presenting and organizing classical music, but we now have the possibility of multiple right ways—including the old one—suited to different people's different enthusiasms. (Why did we ever think that all the music between Bach and Bartok belonged in one bucket anyway, or that those musics should be separated from all other musics?) Sure, there are problems, not least that nobody knows what will happen to the tons of money that used to follow the one right way. But this is a huge set of opportunities, too.

 Underlying some of the arguments about classical music is an assumption that the old one right way will be replaced by another one right way, so of course people argue for their preferences. Fear not!

There is not going to be one right or wrong way. The road ahead splits into multiple paths, and people are free to follow more than one.

 

Faithful readers know I’ve said a lot in this blog — here, here, and here, for instance — about the drastic problems that the mainstream classical music world is likely to face in the not so distant future.

But I’m always looking for a shorter way to say it. Especially when I’m speaking in public, or semi-public (to a conservatory class, for instance) — not many people want to hear complex statistics. It’s better to cut to the chase.

And at last I’ve come up with something. Here it is:

The classical music audience is going to shrink, and most likely shrink a lot. I don’t mean that nobody will listen to classical music in the future, but that the audience as we know it today will shrink, and maybe even disappear. This audience goes to classical music performances, simply because they’re classical music. I don’t mean to say that the people in this audience don’t have their preferences. Of course they do. Some like opera best, some like orchestras, some like chamber music. And they’ll all have their favorite composers and favorite soloists.

 But, that said, they’re relatively undemanding. If there’s classical music in their area, they’ll go. If they like chamber music, and there’s a chamber music series, they’ll go to it. Likewise for orchestras, and opera. And yes, if the performances are really bad, or if they consistently hate the music that’s being played, then they might stop going. But how often are performances bad enough to drive people away? How often do programmers plan entire concerts — or worse, entire seasons — full of music that the mainstream audience will hate?

So the mainstream audience keeps showing up, just because the concerts are there. That’s the key to what I’m saying — to attract these people, you don’t have to do anything special. If you’re a prominent classical music institution in any community, you just give concerts.

And this, I’m afraid, is what’s going to change. This audience is vanishing. It’s getting older, and the younger people who might like to hear classical music think in a very different way. They won’t go to classical concerts simply because the concerts are there. They want to know what they’re getting. Why this concert instead of that one? Why should I go tonight? Exactly what will happen? What will I feel? Will I be surprised? Will I have anything to think about? Will the evening be not just a concert, but an event? Will all my friends be talking about it? If I can’t go at 8 PM, is there something I can hear earlier, or later? Can I just drop in, if I’m passing by on the street? Who are the people who’ll be playing? What are they like? What do they want to say to me?

And so on, through an almost endless series of questions, which, if you think about it carefully, amount to a new audience that wants classical concerts to be freer, more flexible, more engrossing, and above all smarter. Don’t just tell me to sit there and listen. Don’t try to educate me. Don’t tell me the music is beautiful — tell me what kind of beauty you’re talking about. Does it have an edge? Will it lull me, or wake me up? Will it shock me? Please stimulate me, surprise me, make me think, entertain me, give me something to talk about with everyone I know. Let me speak to the musicians. Give me music that sounds and feels like the world I live in.

If you can’t do that, you won’t have an audience. People, in the future, will not come just because you’re playing great classical masterworks.

Here's something I'm told (by a highly reliable source) that Peter Gelb said, at the press conference last week, at which he announced what the Met will do next season. He said that when he started his job, the Met's subscribers were 65 years old -- and that this age this age had shot up from 60 in the five years before that. This, Peter said, he took as a wakeup call. The audience was aging, rapidly; something had to be done.

For those who are finicky about statistics (as we all should be) I don't know whether Peter was talking about the average age, or the median age. Nor, of course, did he confirm what I've been saying here, that in past generations the classical audience used to be drastically younger. But he did give us this -- the experience of seeing someone who runs the biggest classical music institution in America say that his audience has been getting older, fast, and that this is a serious problem. Bravo, Peter. Especially since he's really doing something about it.

***

As a further footnote, I might say that I continue to be amazed when people take the old line, and confidently state the audience has always been the same age it is now. This is the conventional wisdom, I know, and conventional wisdom is hard to change. But there isn't any data supporting it! Or at least none that I've found, or that anyone has been able to find for me, even the people who say the conventional thing most strongly. So I'm going to post a challenge to everyone who still says the audience has always been the same age. Either support what you say, with solid data, or stop saying it.

And of course if anyone has such data -- please let me know! I'll post it here immediately.

***

About the distant past, by which I mean everything up through the 1950s...there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that the audience used to be younger. Just recently, for instance, in the first of Geraldine Farrar's two autobiographies (Geraldine Farrar: The Story of an American Singer, published in 1916), I came across a very satisfying story -- satisfying to herself, I mean --about how in her early days, when she became a big star in Berlin, young men flocked to the opera house to see her. Would they have done this, if they weren't going to the opera anyway? They came more often when she was singing -- but they were there in any case.

And the same must be true of the "gerryflappers," the girls who came to scream for Farrar later on, when she sang at the Met. They can't have been the only young women in the opera house. Could we imagine such a thing today? The Metropolitan Opera, full of 65 year-old subscribers, and suddenly, when Cecilia Bartoli comes on stage, the house is full of women in their 20s, shrieking? That just doesn't compute. The gerryflappers weren't the only women their age at the Met; they just were more than usually enthusiastic.

To these stories I could add E. M Forster's famous account of Beethoven's Fifth, in Howard's End, in which he describes the reactions of six people who hear the symphony, five of whom are in their 20s. He was imagining a concert given at the time he wrote the novel, in the early years of the last century. Would the people he describes have been the only people their age at the concert? Forster doesn't even hint that their presence was unusual.

These examples could be multiplied. (If anyone has more of them, please tell me.) And they pose yet another problem for people who believe the classical audience has always been middle-aged. If it was younger than that in the 1900s, and the 1910s, and the 1920, when did it get older? There's absolutely no account, at least that I've ever seen, of such a thing happening. Compared, for instance, to right now, when the painful absence of younger people is so widely lamented.