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Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

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Archives for August 2007

Bostridge and me

August 20, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I'm in the July issue of Gramophone, the cheerful, energetic British classical CD magazine. That's old news by now, I guess, but they were late in sending me the issue, and I was late in looking at it. They like to reprint things they read in blogs, and they chose my "Boring Old Handel" post from this past April, which they cut very skillfully, to fill the space they had for it. My title, of course, was ironic. What I meant was that Handel, in his time, was anything but boring, and that his operas were unabashed spectacle, visual, vocal, and … [Read more...]

The end of hegemony

August 17, 2007 by Greg Sandow

Here's the second statement I promised, outlining where classical music currently is. It's from the extraordinary musicologist Robert Fink, who explodes with ideas, and connections between music and the rest of the world. (See, for instance, his book on minimalism, Repeating Ourselves). Here I'll quote from Robert's paper "Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon" American Music, Vol. 16, No. 2. (Summer, 1998), pp. 135-179). This paper was delivered to an audience of pop critics, and academics who … [Read more...]

Off the pedestal

August 15, 2007 by Greg Sandow

Our discussion of classical music and pop -- or vs. pop --seems to resonate very deeply for many people, and one reason has to be its larger context. We're in an era of great change. One long-term change has been the dethroning of classical music -- when I grew up in the 1950s, it reigned unchallenged as musical art, but for decades now, this hasn't been true. But I don't think we've caught up to this understanding yet (And by "we," I mean not only those of us who take part in this blog -- which I'm starting to think of as very much a … [Read more...]

Footnotes

August 12, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I've said before that the comments are often the most stimulating part of this blog. That's especially been true in the 19 posts (so far)  in response to my "Miniatures?" post, which itself was a response to a comment. Together, all this is a terrific discussion of the artistic merits of pop music, as opposed (or not opposed) to classical. Read it! * In an earlier post, I asked whether any classical music organizations buy carbon offsets, to undo (or at least make a gesture toward undoing) the environmental effect of their … [Read more...]

Miniatures?

August 6, 2007 by Greg Sandow

BP, in a comment to my last post, suggested we resume the debate about the artistic merits of pop music. I'd lain down a challenge -- can anyone argue the negative side (pop music doesn't have much artistic value, or at least less than classical music) with detailed reference to specific songs and albums from pop musicians widely accepted as serious? Bob Judd -- the executive director of the  American Musicological Society -- posted a comment to my  pre-vacation post, in which he didn't quite do this, but did raise an interesting and important … [Read more...]

Something good about classical music

August 3, 2007 by Greg Sandow

Here's something that seemed obvious, once it occurred to me. But I'd never thought of it before: classical music might be better for the environment than pop, because it (probably) has a lower carbon footprint. Or, more simply, it seems to use less electricity. This came to me when I was reading British press comment last month on the Live Earth event, comprising concerts in many countries, which were designed to draw attention to global warming. The British press (or at least the Guardian and the Independent, the two papers I read … [Read more...]

Hedgehogs

August 1, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I'm back from vacation, and (before getting back to all the serious stuff) I want to show you this little guy (or girl) -- a very young hedgehog, eating from a plate of food we put out on our driveway, during our month in England. The plate is four inches across, which should show you how tiny the hedgehog was. Hedgehogs -- adorable bristly animals -- aren't found in the US, but people in Britain (and elsewhere) go crazy for hem, and we've joined the cult. We had a family of them living under some bushes near our house, a mother and three … [Read more...]

Greg Sandow

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days involves the future of classical music -- defining classical music's problems, and finding solutions for them. Read More…

About The Blog

This started as a blog about the future of classical music, my specialty for many years. And largely the blog is still about that. But of course it gets involved with other things I do — composing music, and teaching at Juilliard (two courses, here … [Read More...]

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How to write a press release

As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here's a post I did in 2005 -- wow, 11 years ago! --  about how to make press releases better. My examples may seem fanciful, but on the other hand, they're almost … [Read More...]

The future of classical music

Here's a quick outline of what I think the future of classical music will be. Watch the blog for frequent updates! I Classical music is in trouble, and there are well-known reasons why. We have an aging audience, falling ticket sales, and — in part … [Read More...]

Timeline of the crisis

Here — to end my posts on the dates of the classical music crisis  — is a detailed crisis timeline. The information in it comes from many sources, including published reports, blog comments by people who saw the crisis develop in their professional … [Read More...]

Before the crisis

Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don't believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read More...]

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