October 2008 Archives
An obvious, crucial, and (on this blog) overdue question -- how will the economic mess affect classical music?
In the short run, it won't be pretty. Yesterday I recorded a short broadcast for the BBC, about the state of the arts in the US, on the eve of the election. This was a discussion -- me, Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment, and Karen Stone, who used to run the Dallas Opera, and now runs a company in Germany, along with a BBC radio host.
We all agreed the economic downturn would hurt. Maybe in the long run, it'll help arts institutions be more entrepreneurial (because they'll have to be), but in the short run -- big trouble. If you want to know which candidate would be better for the arts, their arts policy (or whatever hint they've given of it) counts a lot less than their economic policy.
And the immediate problem, at least for big institutions may not be completely obvious, except of course to people who regularly think about with big-institution arts budgets. It' s not that donations and ticket sales will very likely fall, though they probably will. It's that endowments have already declined. If you're a major orchestra, you have an endowment that might well top $200 million (as it does, for instance, in the case of the Chicago Symphony). Or at least it used to be at that level. Now, because most of it is invested in securities, it's taken a hit. When the stock market falls, endowments fall.
And major institutions take money every year from their endowments' earnings, and put that into their operating budget. A six percent endowment draw would be, on the average, considered reasonable. Your endowment earns dividends, and you also -- historically -- can expect its value to rise. So you take perhaps six percent of it each year for your operating budget.
But now? Maybe your endowment has fallen thirty percent! So you take 30% less for your operating budget. That's a major hit. One classical music institution I know of feels that it's lucky, because its endowment fell less than the stock market did. But still it fell, so that's an immediate hit for this year's budget. Worse still, they'd planned future budgets on the assumption that their endowment would grow. So the hit for future budgets will be even more than the decline this year. For next year, they'd figured that their endowment would be larger than it used to be; now it very likely will be smaller. They have to revise their future plans.
Who will this affect? Every large institution, but those already in financial trouble, or in the midst of large expansions, may be hard hit. I'll give two examples I know about, at least from the outside. First, the New York City Opera, which appears to be reeling financially (laid off 11 staff members; had to borrow recently to make its payroll, and even then had its staff work two days without pay; promised Mortier, its incoming director, a large budget increase, and now, reportedly, has decided it can't go ahead with that). They could be facing a real disaster.
And also the Metropolitan Opera, which has a large endowment, and a generous board. But it's no secret in the business that Peter Gelb's stunning innovations have been expensive, and will continue to cost a lot. He can keep ahead of that, in the short to medium run, with larger than usual endowment draws, and generous contributions from his board. But when the endowment takes a hit, he's got to run even faster just to stay where he is.
Everyone, I'm sure, is facing budget cuts. How bad will they be?
In the short run, it won't be pretty. Yesterday I recorded a short broadcast for the BBC, about the state of the arts in the US, on the eve of the election. This was a discussion -- me, Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment, and Karen Stone, who used to run the Dallas Opera, and now runs a company in Germany, along with a BBC radio host.
We all agreed the economic downturn would hurt. Maybe in the long run, it'll help arts institutions be more entrepreneurial (because they'll have to be), but in the short run -- big trouble. If you want to know which candidate would be better for the arts, their arts policy (or whatever hint they've given of it) counts a lot less than their economic policy.
And the immediate problem, at least for big institutions may not be completely obvious, except of course to people who regularly think about with big-institution arts budgets. It' s not that donations and ticket sales will very likely fall, though they probably will. It's that endowments have already declined. If you're a major orchestra, you have an endowment that might well top $200 million (as it does, for instance, in the case of the Chicago Symphony). Or at least it used to be at that level. Now, because most of it is invested in securities, it's taken a hit. When the stock market falls, endowments fall.
And major institutions take money every year from their endowments' earnings, and put that into their operating budget. A six percent endowment draw would be, on the average, considered reasonable. Your endowment earns dividends, and you also -- historically -- can expect its value to rise. So you take perhaps six percent of it each year for your operating budget.
But now? Maybe your endowment has fallen thirty percent! So you take 30% less for your operating budget. That's a major hit. One classical music institution I know of feels that it's lucky, because its endowment fell less than the stock market did. But still it fell, so that's an immediate hit for this year's budget. Worse still, they'd planned future budgets on the assumption that their endowment would grow. So the hit for future budgets will be even more than the decline this year. For next year, they'd figured that their endowment would be larger than it used to be; now it very likely will be smaller. They have to revise their future plans.
Who will this affect? Every large institution, but those already in financial trouble, or in the midst of large expansions, may be hard hit. I'll give two examples I know about, at least from the outside. First, the New York City Opera, which appears to be reeling financially (laid off 11 staff members; had to borrow recently to make its payroll, and even then had its staff work two days without pay; promised Mortier, its incoming director, a large budget increase, and now, reportedly, has decided it can't go ahead with that). They could be facing a real disaster.
And also the Metropolitan Opera, which has a large endowment, and a generous board. But it's no secret in the business that Peter Gelb's stunning innovations have been expensive, and will continue to cost a lot. He can keep ahead of that, in the short to medium run, with larger than usual endowment draws, and generous contributions from his board. But when the endowment takes a hit, he's got to run even faster just to stay where he is.
Everyone, I'm sure, is facing budget cuts. How bad will they be?
1956. London. British theater is very conservative, audiences are old.
Then comes the premiere of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Things change. One observer writes:
Three years later, when Osborne's play had spawned a whole new trend in theater -- leading to plays like Billy Liar and A Taste of Honey -- the theater critic for the Spectator looks back at Look Back in Anger, and writes:
(All this from Dominic Sandbrook's very thick and very lively study, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles.)
Then comes the premiere of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Things change. One observer writes:
It is a matter for special remark that Mr. Osborne alone should have captured the young imagination and with it the fisher-sweatered noctambules from Espresso-land [here follows a rather mannered list of hipster types from the era]...Almost the worst thing about the English theatre is that it has lacked for so long the support of the young intelligentsia. Audiences are apt to look as discreetly silver-haired as if they had been furnished by a casting agency themselves.The play causes a sensation. Part of it is shown on the BBC. Then all of it is shown on ITV, Britain's newly-established commercial TV channel. Lawrence Olivier -- feeling that he's growing too old to play romantic leads, and that his career might be fading away -- asks Osborne to write a play for him. Osborne writes his second big hit, The Entertainer, and Olivier's career is triumphantly revived.
Three years later, when Osborne's play had spawned a whole new trend in theater -- leading to plays like Billy Liar and A Taste of Honey -- the theater critic for the Spectator looks back at Look Back in Anger, and writes:
The basic kick of the whole moveoment has been the feeling that the play was written last weekend, the exhilaration of listening to talk alive with images from the newspapers, the advertisements, the entertainments of today.So if this could happen to British theater in 1956, why can't it happen to American classical music today?
(All this from Dominic Sandbrook's very thick and very lively study, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles.)
On the value of social networking, consider this, sent to me via Facebook, from a new friend there, Charles Brooks. He's a cellist from New Zealand who's now in Taiwan:
(Many readers understand this already. This post is for those who are even newer to social networking than I am.)
As a musician who travels (auditions) a lot Facebook has been a life saver. I have reconnected with hundreds of old friends from New Zealand and Australia, mostly musicians from the various universities that I studied at. I have found old acquaintances scattered throughout Prague, Malta, Shanghai, Taipei, Malaysia, Seoul, Shenzhen, Moscow, Hyogo, Tokyo, Oslo etc that I had no idea were there. Needless to say this has saved me a LOT in accommodation! It also offers new (or formerly-old-and-lost) opportunities to perform in parts of the world I'd never considered. Facebook really can be a musician's best friend.Thanks, Charles, for giving me permission to post this here.
(Many readers understand this already. This post is for those who are even newer to social networking than I am.)
(We could also call this "Solutions 3," another in an occasional series of posts -- here and here -- that offer solutions to classical music problems.)
Another happy memory of my wife's and my visit to Florida State.
I mentioned in my earlier FSU post that we helped a faculty chamber ensemble plan an upcoming New York concert. Here's what we did. This ensemble will make its New York debut in a respectable venue late this spring. They wanted to know how to get reviewed, especially in the New York Times. Anne and I had to tell them the sad truth. There's almost no way they can get reviewed. There are just too many concerts in New York. Doesn't matter how good they are, doesn't matter whether they play a piece by a notable living composer, as they thought they might do. Maybe an entire program of new music might raise at least a little interest, but basically they're swimming upstream against an all but invincible current.
So what else could they do to generate interest? They're not worried about attracting an audience, they said. FSU alumni will come to the concert. They want the review for all the understandable reasons that anyone would want it -- for prestige, for validation on a high professional level, and for use in future publicity and in efforts to get more concerts. What could they do that might generate at least some of the same benefits?
Here's what Anne and I thought of. They first should arrange to have their concert streamed on the Internet, as an audio stream, at the very least, but preferably with video. Then they should organize a group of listeners back home in Tallahassee, who'd gather to watch the concert streaming live.
Then they should start a blog, in which they'd talk about their preparation for the concert. Ideally this, too, would involve audio and video, and one of its key subjects might be rehearsing the program they're going to play in New York. More broadly, they might discuss how they prepare all the repertory for their combination of instruments. They should go into great musical detail, as professionals talking to other professionals, and to advanced students. This is something younger ensembles might find very helpful, not to mention students at schools all over the world.
And menwhile they should contact friends and colleagues at other schools, people whom they said would readily book them for concerts. They should get these friends and colleagues interested in the blog, and get them to recommend it to their students. With any luck, the ensemble now would be developing a national, and very likely international community of students and professionals who follow what they do. They could consider live chats, live streams of rehearsals, even master classes conducted via Internet 2, or even with Skype. (I've heard of people using Skype for this. How reliable is it? Does anyone know?)
Once all this is happening, they should ask their colleagues at other schools -- and anyone else interested -- to organize listening parties to watch the live stream of the concert, just like the one at FSU. Now they'd have a national audience for the event, which conceivably could be brought into the New York concert in some way. The ensemble could say a few words, greeting their audience in other places, and naming what some of the places are. Or they could go a little further (if this wouldn't be too hokey), and arrange for some of the people watching the concert elsewhere to say hello to the New York audience.
Now they have a serious event, something much more substantial than an unadorned New York concert. They can publicize it. Get it written about, and talked about. Maybe now they really will get reviewed! Maybe now the concert stands out from other events. Maybe now it's a story that even the New York Times might want to tell.
Would this work? I'd love to know. Has anyone tried something similar? I understand that not every chamber group would feel comfortable doing all these things. Many musicians, after all, didn't sign up to make themselves so widely visible, doing more things than playing music. Many musicians don't have the urge or will to publicize themselves so fiercely. But still it all sounds like a good idea, at least to Anne and me, and if any particular ensemble doesn't have the stomach to arrange it all themselves (which would be completely honorable), they still might find others who'd do the work and networking and promotion for them.
Anne then had one other good idea. At FSU we'd met a student who'd made video documentaries. So why shouldn't he make a documentary about the group doing all the things we talked about, or at least about them preparing for the concert?
Comments?
(If anyone likes this idea, and wants my help in implementing it -- or something like it -- in their own situation, I could be available.)
Another happy memory of my wife's and my visit to Florida State.
I mentioned in my earlier FSU post that we helped a faculty chamber ensemble plan an upcoming New York concert. Here's what we did. This ensemble will make its New York debut in a respectable venue late this spring. They wanted to know how to get reviewed, especially in the New York Times. Anne and I had to tell them the sad truth. There's almost no way they can get reviewed. There are just too many concerts in New York. Doesn't matter how good they are, doesn't matter whether they play a piece by a notable living composer, as they thought they might do. Maybe an entire program of new music might raise at least a little interest, but basically they're swimming upstream against an all but invincible current.
So what else could they do to generate interest? They're not worried about attracting an audience, they said. FSU alumni will come to the concert. They want the review for all the understandable reasons that anyone would want it -- for prestige, for validation on a high professional level, and for use in future publicity and in efforts to get more concerts. What could they do that might generate at least some of the same benefits?
Here's what Anne and I thought of. They first should arrange to have their concert streamed on the Internet, as an audio stream, at the very least, but preferably with video. Then they should organize a group of listeners back home in Tallahassee, who'd gather to watch the concert streaming live.
Then they should start a blog, in which they'd talk about their preparation for the concert. Ideally this, too, would involve audio and video, and one of its key subjects might be rehearsing the program they're going to play in New York. More broadly, they might discuss how they prepare all the repertory for their combination of instruments. They should go into great musical detail, as professionals talking to other professionals, and to advanced students. This is something younger ensembles might find very helpful, not to mention students at schools all over the world.
And menwhile they should contact friends and colleagues at other schools, people whom they said would readily book them for concerts. They should get these friends and colleagues interested in the blog, and get them to recommend it to their students. With any luck, the ensemble now would be developing a national, and very likely international community of students and professionals who follow what they do. They could consider live chats, live streams of rehearsals, even master classes conducted via Internet 2, or even with Skype. (I've heard of people using Skype for this. How reliable is it? Does anyone know?)
Once all this is happening, they should ask their colleagues at other schools -- and anyone else interested -- to organize listening parties to watch the live stream of the concert, just like the one at FSU. Now they'd have a national audience for the event, which conceivably could be brought into the New York concert in some way. The ensemble could say a few words, greeting their audience in other places, and naming what some of the places are. Or they could go a little further (if this wouldn't be too hokey), and arrange for some of the people watching the concert elsewhere to say hello to the New York audience.
Now they have a serious event, something much more substantial than an unadorned New York concert. They can publicize it. Get it written about, and talked about. Maybe now they really will get reviewed! Maybe now the concert stands out from other events. Maybe now it's a story that even the New York Times might want to tell.
Would this work? I'd love to know. Has anyone tried something similar? I understand that not every chamber group would feel comfortable doing all these things. Many musicians, after all, didn't sign up to make themselves so widely visible, doing more things than playing music. Many musicians don't have the urge or will to publicize themselves so fiercely. But still it all sounds like a good idea, at least to Anne and me, and if any particular ensemble doesn't have the stomach to arrange it all themselves (which would be completely honorable), they still might find others who'd do the work and networking and promotion for them.
Anne then had one other good idea. At FSU we'd met a student who'd made video documentaries. So why shouldn't he make a documentary about the group doing all the things we talked about, or at least about them preparing for the concert?
Comments?
(If anyone likes this idea, and wants my help in implementing it -- or something like it -- in their own situation, I could be available.)
Whetstone, in a comment on my last post, pointed out that I didn't link to Twitter in the best way. i linked to the main site, not to my own page, so people who want to follow me have to search for me. Which only underlines my point about how much many of us have to learn about the new online world.
You can reach me directly on Twitter right here.
[Added later:] And thanks, everyone, for the lovely small explosion of Twitter followers and friend requests on Facebook!
Also note, in the comments to my last post, the people who say they first got turned on to classical music on YouTube.
You can reach me directly on Twitter right here.
[Added later:] And thanks, everyone, for the lovely small explosion of Twitter followers and friend requests on Facebook!
Also note, in the comments to my last post, the people who say they first got turned on to classical music on YouTube.
First I should say that you can find me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter. If you're on Facebook yourself, I'd be happy to be your friend. Just look for me, and friend me.
I like what I've learned about social networking. I've made friends, reconnected with old friends, and done some useful networking. And the communications we all set up are a lot quicker, a lot more direct, and also a lot more fun than plain old e-mail. In at least one professional situation, I've strengthened contacts with some of the younger people involved much more quickly than could have happened in any other way. Plus, it's fun -- and, I think, even professionally helpful -- to give people a fuller picture of myself than they'd get from my in-need-of-updating website, or from this blog. By being on Facebook, I think I advertise myself as available for informal contact, in a way that wouldn't happen in any Web 1.0 way, through an e-mail list, a website, or even a blog.
So in the midst of all that, I was fascinated to see that the New York Times and the Washington Post both have Twitter streams, and in fact many of them. I looked at the Post's streams, and signed up for one of them. Some are for news stories -- I signed up for politics, and get maybe four to six links each day to politics stories in the Post. But I could also follow Post personalities, columnists and bloggers, which I'm sure would be much more fun.
Obviously these newspapers use Twitter to connect with younger people. So I was interested to see whether big classical music institutions do the same. I couldn't check dozens of them, but I did look for the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera, both of which have made efforts to reach a younger audience. (Yes, even the Philharmonic, with what looks like success. Check out the search page on the Philharmonic's website, and see from the word cloud of search terms that "student discount" and "student rush tickets" -- and other student-related things -- are among the most frequent searches.)
But neither the Met nor the Philharmonic currently use Twitter. That's a mistake, I think, though I believe both institutions will be using it before too long. What concerns me, though, is that I don't think either is using Facebook very well. They've both got lots of Facebook friends, but they don't communicate with their friends often enough, or in the right way. The Philharmonic, for instance, mostly sends what amount to press releases. Yes, they're livelier than normal press releases, which is a good thing. But what's missing is any kind of personal touch, any sense that there are people involved in each institution who'd be interested in making contact with others outside.
Which, after all, is how social networking works! That's why they call it social networking. If you ask me, the Met and the Philharmonic -- and any other classical music institution that uses Facebook -- should be sending out updates every day. Most of these updates should be something more than press releases, or attempts to get people to buy tickets, or participate in some other activity the institution has going on. Most of the updates should be more personal -- news tidbits, quick anecdotes, snapshots of something behind the scenes, or, best of all, communications from individuals.
Ideally musicians, singers, staff members, and others would send out updates in their own names. The Philharmonic and the Met could do what the Times and the Post do, and have many Twitter streams, some from the institution, and some from people involved with it. Maybe this violates some sense these institutions have of their proper dignity, but I promise them -- if they really do want to engage younger people, at some point they'll have to do what I suggest. The world is moving that way, and classical music can't afford to be left behind.
I'd love to hear from classical music people who use social networking the right way.
(And for an example of an organization that, I fear, doesn't quite get it, see the comment to my first new culture post, from someone with From the Top, the radio and TV show that presents young classical musicians. They're going to great lengths to get kids to participate, but if they were approaching kids in the right way to begin with, they wouldn't have to do all that. Nothing on their home page suggests that they want people to contact them.
(They have a Facebook presence, but they don't seem to take it seriously. They post just a few updates each month, all of them are press releases, and they have only 90-odd friends, many fewer than I have. For a show that's been around for years, and is all about younger people, that's not nearly enough. They don't seem to be on Twitter.)
I like what I've learned about social networking. I've made friends, reconnected with old friends, and done some useful networking. And the communications we all set up are a lot quicker, a lot more direct, and also a lot more fun than plain old e-mail. In at least one professional situation, I've strengthened contacts with some of the younger people involved much more quickly than could have happened in any other way. Plus, it's fun -- and, I think, even professionally helpful -- to give people a fuller picture of myself than they'd get from my in-need-of-updating website, or from this blog. By being on Facebook, I think I advertise myself as available for informal contact, in a way that wouldn't happen in any Web 1.0 way, through an e-mail list, a website, or even a blog.
So in the midst of all that, I was fascinated to see that the New York Times and the Washington Post both have Twitter streams, and in fact many of them. I looked at the Post's streams, and signed up for one of them. Some are for news stories -- I signed up for politics, and get maybe four to six links each day to politics stories in the Post. But I could also follow Post personalities, columnists and bloggers, which I'm sure would be much more fun.
Obviously these newspapers use Twitter to connect with younger people. So I was interested to see whether big classical music institutions do the same. I couldn't check dozens of them, but I did look for the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera, both of which have made efforts to reach a younger audience. (Yes, even the Philharmonic, with what looks like success. Check out the search page on the Philharmonic's website, and see from the word cloud of search terms that "student discount" and "student rush tickets" -- and other student-related things -- are among the most frequent searches.)
But neither the Met nor the Philharmonic currently use Twitter. That's a mistake, I think, though I believe both institutions will be using it before too long. What concerns me, though, is that I don't think either is using Facebook very well. They've both got lots of Facebook friends, but they don't communicate with their friends often enough, or in the right way. The Philharmonic, for instance, mostly sends what amount to press releases. Yes, they're livelier than normal press releases, which is a good thing. But what's missing is any kind of personal touch, any sense that there are people involved in each institution who'd be interested in making contact with others outside.
Which, after all, is how social networking works! That's why they call it social networking. If you ask me, the Met and the Philharmonic -- and any other classical music institution that uses Facebook -- should be sending out updates every day. Most of these updates should be something more than press releases, or attempts to get people to buy tickets, or participate in some other activity the institution has going on. Most of the updates should be more personal -- news tidbits, quick anecdotes, snapshots of something behind the scenes, or, best of all, communications from individuals.
Ideally musicians, singers, staff members, and others would send out updates in their own names. The Philharmonic and the Met could do what the Times and the Post do, and have many Twitter streams, some from the institution, and some from people involved with it. Maybe this violates some sense these institutions have of their proper dignity, but I promise them -- if they really do want to engage younger people, at some point they'll have to do what I suggest. The world is moving that way, and classical music can't afford to be left behind.
I'd love to hear from classical music people who use social networking the right way.
(And for an example of an organization that, I fear, doesn't quite get it, see the comment to my first new culture post, from someone with From the Top, the radio and TV show that presents young classical musicians. They're going to great lengths to get kids to participate, but if they were approaching kids in the right way to begin with, they wouldn't have to do all that. Nothing on their home page suggests that they want people to contact them.
(They have a Facebook presence, but they don't seem to take it seriously. They post just a few updates each month, all of them are press releases, and they have only 90-odd friends, many fewer than I have. For a show that's been around for years, and is all about younger people, that's not nearly enough. They don't seem to be on Twitter.)
Yesterday I was running errands in my car, and listening to Soundcheck, the really fine afternoon music talk show on WNYC (the public radio station in New York). They were marking a milestone in music video -- the cancellation of the only remaining show on MTV that still showed music videos.
So what was the state of music videos now? Here's what I learned. Music videos have largely migrated to YouTube. They aren't pushed to music fans by any central provider. Fans seek them out on their own.
And often the best and best-known videos aren't made by top-hit bands. They're made by far less popular indie bands. Often fans make videos on their own. Often bands make videos designed to be remixed, so to speak -- to have ttheir visuals altered -- by fans.
Just another day, in other words, in the ongoing life of Web 2.0, the current version of the Internet, which encourages participation by people who use it. As opposed to Web 1.0, the old way we did things, where information was pushed down to users from organizations with things to sell, or things they wanted us to know.
So where does classical music stand in all of this? Sorry to say, we're for the most part rooted back in Web 1.0. How do we ever think we'll attract younger people? And why, exactly, should they be interested in us? In a world that increasingly highlights individual creativity, what chance to be creative do we offer anyone?
So what was the state of music videos now? Here's what I learned. Music videos have largely migrated to YouTube. They aren't pushed to music fans by any central provider. Fans seek them out on their own.
And often the best and best-known videos aren't made by top-hit bands. They're made by far less popular indie bands. Often fans make videos on their own. Often bands make videos designed to be remixed, so to speak -- to have ttheir visuals altered -- by fans.
Just another day, in other words, in the ongoing life of Web 2.0, the current version of the Internet, which encourages participation by people who use it. As opposed to Web 1.0, the old way we did things, where information was pushed down to users from organizations with things to sell, or things they wanted us to know.
So where does classical music stand in all of this? Sorry to say, we're for the most part rooted back in Web 1.0. How do we ever think we'll attract younger people? And why, exactly, should they be interested in us? In a world that increasingly highlights individual creativity, what chance to be creative do we offer anyone?
Here's a very sweet opera translation. Not quite English, but very honest, and supremely true to the spirit (if not the literacy) of the original. (Go here and here for previous posts, with terrific comments, about opera translations.)
This is from liner notes to an aria recital album by the soprano Fabiana Bravo. It's an English (sort of) version of the first lines of that wonderful operatic chestnut, "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana," from Catalani's La Wally (otherwise known as the aria from the film Diva):
This is from liner notes to an aria recital album by the soprano Fabiana Bravo. It's an English (sort of) version of the first lines of that wonderful operatic chestnut, "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana," from Catalani's La Wally (otherwise known as the aria from the film Diva):
Ebben? Ne andrò lontana,(These liner notes are written by an eager enthusiast, who doesn't let the shackles of mere language restrict him. In a plot summary of Verdi's Il corsaro, he writes this enduring wonder: "Her mood becomes gloomy, resulting in a foreboding that one day he may never return.")
Come va l'eco della pia campagna...
Là, fra le neve bianca!
Là, fra i nubi d'ôr!
Laddove la speranza, la speranza,
È rimpianto, è rimpianto è dolor!
Ah well then! I shall go far away
Like the echo of the pious church bell goes away
There somewhere in the white snow,
There amongst the clouds of gold,
There where hope, hope
Is regret, is regret, is sorrow!
A week ago three little pieces of mine were played in Washington, DC -- or actually the first three I've written from a projected longer set. They're for piano, and the pianist also plays a drum. They're based on prose poems by Anne Carson, her Short Talks. Somehow I think there will be 11 of them in all, which is one of those artist's intuitions that's based on pure instinct. It's not as if I've gone through the poetry, and picked eight more texts. No, the number eleven just asserts itself, inside my mind.
The pianist -- the pianist-drummer -- was the wonderful Jenny Lin, who did a spectacular job. Among other things, she had to develop a drum technique, though the pieces are tricky enough without that. And she had to coordinate the piano and drum. And she and I had to decide what drum to use, and where it should stand or sit while she played. She and I (but mostly she) chose a small hand drum, and she went to the trouble -- all composers should be grateful for a collaborator so devoted -- of building a small stand for the drum, so it could be raised off whatever surface it would be placed on. It had to be raised, so as not to muffle its resonance.
I'll have recordings soon enough of Jenny's performance. But for now, here's a link to the score, and to computer demos of the three pieces:
Short Talk on Ovid
Short Talk on Defloration
Short Talk on Rectification
Anne Carson, I'm very happy to say, has given me permission to use her poetry. For me, no small thing, since she's one of the most distinguished living poets, and (closer to the bone for me) one of my artistic touchstones.
In my next posts: something about the very nice concert on which these pieces were played, and something about the process of composing, which I think is very little written about. Much of the writing on composing comes from non-composers, who analyze composers' scores, and make comments on what they think is notable. Too often, I think, they hit on niceties of harmony or form that the composer was almost surely unaware of.
Or else they cite things that probably were sheer inspiration, things that (like the number 11 for me) just jumped up in the composer's mind. (Or in -- digression here -- the composer's boots. I once asked Little Richard what he thought of Freddy Jackson, the late-'80s R&B star, and he said, "He makes the big toe jump up in my boot!" Inspiration can be like that.)
What analysts often miss (or mostly miss), I think, is the things that composers have to work out -- all the many details that (unless you're Bach or Mozart) can take endless time and patience. In future posts, I'll comment on some of those in my own music.
For now: there's a small discrepancy in one of the Short Talks, between the score and the computer demo. What is it? Why is it there? What silly mistake did I make?
The pianist -- the pianist-drummer -- was the wonderful Jenny Lin, who did a spectacular job. Among other things, she had to develop a drum technique, though the pieces are tricky enough without that. And she had to coordinate the piano and drum. And she and I had to decide what drum to use, and where it should stand or sit while she played. She and I (but mostly she) chose a small hand drum, and she went to the trouble -- all composers should be grateful for a collaborator so devoted -- of building a small stand for the drum, so it could be raised off whatever surface it would be placed on. It had to be raised, so as not to muffle its resonance.
I'll have recordings soon enough of Jenny's performance. But for now, here's a link to the score, and to computer demos of the three pieces:
Short Talk on Ovid
Short Talk on Defloration
Short Talk on Rectification
Anne Carson, I'm very happy to say, has given me permission to use her poetry. For me, no small thing, since she's one of the most distinguished living poets, and (closer to the bone for me) one of my artistic touchstones.
In my next posts: something about the very nice concert on which these pieces were played, and something about the process of composing, which I think is very little written about. Much of the writing on composing comes from non-composers, who analyze composers' scores, and make comments on what they think is notable. Too often, I think, they hit on niceties of harmony or form that the composer was almost surely unaware of.
Or else they cite things that probably were sheer inspiration, things that (like the number 11 for me) just jumped up in the composer's mind. (Or in -- digression here -- the composer's boots. I once asked Little Richard what he thought of Freddy Jackson, the late-'80s R&B star, and he said, "He makes the big toe jump up in my boot!" Inspiration can be like that.)
What analysts often miss (or mostly miss), I think, is the things that composers have to work out -- all the many details that (unless you're Bach or Mozart) can take endless time and patience. In future posts, I'll comment on some of those in my own music.
For now: there's a small discrepancy in one of the Short Talks, between the score and the computer demo. What is it? Why is it there? What silly mistake did I make?
My Wall Street Journal piece on Lukas Ligeti and Gabriel Kahane is out. Follow the link to read it.
It's about two composers with mainstream classical fathers, but who write music that isn't wholly classical. In this, they're very much citizens of our new culture. Younger people (which by now means people 40 or younger, and maybe even many people older than that) don't make distinctions between high and popular culture, or at least not distinctions of value. That includes what used to be thought of as high culture values, like being thoughtful, noncommercial, deep, or (more simply) serious. [Added later:] Stress "used to be thought of," here, because so-called commercial culture these days can easiliy be thoughtful, deep, and serious.
People in the older culture can ignore this, or try to fight it, but that's dangerous for them. They simply cut themselves off, not just from contemporary life, but from a lot of thoughtful,noncommercial, deep, and serious art. And if they're trying to make converts for high culture, than they lose bigtime, because their case won't seem plausible to the people they're trying to reach. It's a very bad strategy -- obviously!-- to go to smart, educated people, and say, "Listen to our music, because yours is trash."
It's about two composers with mainstream classical fathers, but who write music that isn't wholly classical. In this, they're very much citizens of our new culture. Younger people (which by now means people 40 or younger, and maybe even many people older than that) don't make distinctions between high and popular culture, or at least not distinctions of value. That includes what used to be thought of as high culture values, like being thoughtful, noncommercial, deep, or (more simply) serious. [Added later:] Stress "used to be thought of," here, because so-called commercial culture these days can easiliy be thoughtful, deep, and serious.
People in the older culture can ignore this, or try to fight it, but that's dangerous for them. They simply cut themselves off, not just from contemporary life, but from a lot of thoughtful,
Tomorrow -- Saturday, October 18 -- I'll have a review in the Wall Street Journal, about CDs I like a lot, Lukas Ligeti's "Afrikan Machinery," and a self-titled debut from Gabriel Kahane.
What ties these CDs together is an intriguing back story, about the emergence of a new generation of classical musicians, with new ideas. Both the artists I reviewed have famous fathers, Ligeti's being the Ligeti we all know, and Kahane's being Jeffrey Kahane, the pianist and conductor who's music director of the Colorado Symphony. And both artists combine classical music with non-classical styles, in Kahane's case a healthy dose of pop. In fact, I don't know any music that sits on the knife-edge between classical and pop as much as Kahane's does. Which contributes to its artistic strength.
If the Journal puts my review on its free website (as opposed to the one you have to pay for), I'll link to it.
What ties these CDs together is an intriguing back story, about the emergence of a new generation of classical musicians, with new ideas. Both the artists I reviewed have famous fathers, Ligeti's being the Ligeti we all know, and Kahane's being Jeffrey Kahane, the pianist and conductor who's music director of the Colorado Symphony. And both artists combine classical music with non-classical styles, in Kahane's case a healthy dose of pop. In fact, I don't know any music that sits on the knife-edge between classical and pop as much as Kahane's does. Which contributes to its artistic strength.
If the Journal puts my review on its free website (as opposed to the one you have to pay for), I'll link to it.
Amazing, heartening followup to my recent post, about my students' ideas for what should have happened in Cleveland. I'm told that the Detroit Free Press, back in the '80s, actually did what my students recommended.
Their critic back then gave bad reviews to the music director of the Detroit Symphony, who at that time was Gunther Herbig. That wasn't a comfortable situation, and symphony supporters made a fuss to the newspaper's publisher. But instead of caving in, the paper did something wonderfully smart and honorable. It brought in three critics from other cities, from the Philadelphia Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and (ironically, given what happened this fall), the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Each reviewed two of Herbig's concerts, and these reviews ran along with what the Detroit critic wrote.
The result? The guest critics agreed with the local one, and the outcry stopped. What a triumph for decency, good sense, and smart handling of a tricky situation, above all because it cost the Detroit paper money, since they had to pay to bring the outside critics in. Maybe newspapers today, since they're losing money, would hesitate to spend anything on a project like this, but still -- what the Detroit Free Press did in the '80s makes the Cleveland Plain Dealer look very, very shabby.
Their critic back then gave bad reviews to the music director of the Detroit Symphony, who at that time was Gunther Herbig. That wasn't a comfortable situation, and symphony supporters made a fuss to the newspaper's publisher. But instead of caving in, the paper did something wonderfully smart and honorable. It brought in three critics from other cities, from the Philadelphia Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and (ironically, given what happened this fall), the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Each reviewed two of Herbig's concerts, and these reviews ran along with what the Detroit critic wrote.
The result? The guest critics agreed with the local one, and the outcry stopped. What a triumph for decency, good sense, and smart handling of a tricky situation, above all because it cost the Detroit paper money, since they had to pay to bring the outside critics in. Maybe newspapers today, since they're losing money, would hesitate to spend anything on a project like this, but still -- what the Detroit Free Press did in the '80s makes the Cleveland Plain Dealer look very, very shabby.
Yesterday, in my Juilliard class on music criticism, we talked about the critic mess in Cleveland. And two of my students, Vanessa Fralick and Ethan van Winkle, had really good ideas.
They noted, as we all did, that it's really disgraceful for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to demote Don Rosenberg, its respected classical music critic, just because they're uncomfortable with his negative reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra's music director. The fullest, most plausible defense of what they did is in a column by Ted Diadiun, the paper's reader representative. He wrote:
Enter Ethan and Vanessa. They had the best ideas I've yet seen, for other ways to resolve the problem, certainly better than my ideas (in a piece I wrote for the Wall Street Journal). I'm happy to post them here, with Ethan and Vanessa's permission.
They had two ideas. First, the paper could have addressed the situation publicly, and recruited other critics, even from other cities, to contribute guest reviews that would run along with Don's. They've already appointed another critic, Zachary Lewis, to take Don's place, and review the Cleveland Orchestra, but the thought here was to put Don in a national perspective, and show Cleveland readers where his reviews might fit on some kind of national spectrum. Lewis, of course, could be one of the other critics.
The Plain Dealer wouldn't be likely to do this, and not just because so much public self-examination by a newspaper -- or any other institution -- is (to put it mildly) rare. Newspapers are losing circulation, and losing money. Classical music isn't popular with the younger readers they want to attract. So why would they devote more space to it? And pay more money?
In this case, there's an answer. They'd attract a lot of attention by such a bold, honest, and also provocative move. And at least in the short run, they'd also attract readers. How long they'd continue would be something to decide as time went on, but they could always put additional reviews on their website, freeing space in the printed paper.
Second idea, less dramatic, but much simpler: Don't demote Don, but simply alternate him and Zachary Lewis, when the music director conducts. After Don reviews a concert, Lewis reviews the next one. That way, you protect Don's honor -- and your own -- while giving readers more varied opinions.
These are terrific ideas. Thanks for them, Vanessa and Ethan. And thanks for letting me put them in the blog. I'm going to e-mail Ted Diadiun, and see what he thinks.
They noted, as we all did, that it's really disgraceful for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to demote Don Rosenberg, its respected classical music critic, just because they're uncomfortable with his negative reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra's music director. The fullest, most plausible defense of what they did is in a column by Ted Diadiun, the paper's reader representative. He wrote:
[The music director's] contract extends to 2018. Rosenberg has made it clear, over and over, that he believes the conductor routinely fails to get the most out of the orchestra, a view he seems unlikely to change or mute. It is fair to wonder, then, whose interests would be served by 10 more years of unrelenting criticism on the same point. Just as we would not assign a book review to a critic who is already on the record as loathing a certain author's style or genre, is it reasonable to continue assigning a music critic to review performances by a conductor whose leadership he is unlikely ever to approve?Leaving aside what I think is an idealistic view of book reviewing, this isn't unreasonable. Though we could just as well conclude that, yes, it's perfectly appropriate for the critic to continue, if his views are responsibly expressed, and not out of line with mainstream opinion (which they're not). And, again, it's disgraceful not just to look for alternate opinions, but to demote the critic. An uncomfortable situation, which certainly existed, is one thing, but to blame the critic for it -- which is the message sent by a demotion -- is just about scandalous. (Especially when your paper's publisher sits on the orchestra's board.)
Enter Ethan and Vanessa. They had the best ideas I've yet seen, for other ways to resolve the problem, certainly better than my ideas (in a piece I wrote for the Wall Street Journal). I'm happy to post them here, with Ethan and Vanessa's permission.
They had two ideas. First, the paper could have addressed the situation publicly, and recruited other critics, even from other cities, to contribute guest reviews that would run along with Don's. They've already appointed another critic, Zachary Lewis, to take Don's place, and review the Cleveland Orchestra, but the thought here was to put Don in a national perspective, and show Cleveland readers where his reviews might fit on some kind of national spectrum. Lewis, of course, could be one of the other critics.
The Plain Dealer wouldn't be likely to do this, and not just because so much public self-examination by a newspaper -- or any other institution -- is (to put it mildly) rare. Newspapers are losing circulation, and losing money. Classical music isn't popular with the younger readers they want to attract. So why would they devote more space to it? And pay more money?
In this case, there's an answer. They'd attract a lot of attention by such a bold, honest, and also provocative move. And at least in the short run, they'd also attract readers. How long they'd continue would be something to decide as time went on, but they could always put additional reviews on their website, freeing space in the printed paper.
Second idea, less dramatic, but much simpler: Don't demote Don, but simply alternate him and Zachary Lewis, when the music director conducts. After Don reviews a concert, Lewis reviews the next one. That way, you protect Don's honor -- and your own -- while giving readers more varied opinions.
These are terrific ideas. Thanks for them, Vanessa and Ethan. And thanks for letting me put them in the blog. I'm going to e-mail Ted Diadiun, and see what he thinks.
A week ago Saturday, October 5, the Wall Street Journal ran an essay by Leon Botstein, college president and conductor. Title? "The Unsung Success of Live Classical Music." Theme? Classical music is healthy, and not at all declining. Content? One myth after another.
I couldn't post about this here, because I didn't have time. But the myths have to be exploded. For instance:
But has the audience always been the same age it is now? (Which in fact means older than middle-aged.) This is a persistent myth. I used to believe it, since music biz veterans repeated it so confidently. Then I started asking for data, and found that there wasn't any. Then I started finding data that exploded the myth.
I've written about all of that here, more than once. Studies from 1937, 1955, and 1966 show an audience with a median age in its thirties, and in the first two studies in its early thirties. Studies done in the 1970s, which I haven't talked about here, show an audience older than that, but nowhere near as old as it is now. Studies by the National Endowment for the Arts show the audience growing older between 1982 and 2002.
I've linked to much of this in the in-progress "Resources" sidebar on this blog. There's also voluminous anecdotal evidence for a younger audience. This includes stories about the women in their teens and twenties who were Geraldine Farrar's screaming "Gerryflapper" fans at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1920s. And also the famous passage about Beethoven's Fifth in E. M. Forster's novel Howard's End, depicting people in their teens and twenties attending a performance, without one word about how this would have been unusual. Because it wasn't.
Next, from Botsein:
First, there's no single baseline for all of Botstein's comparisons. He compares the present era with 40 years ago, with 30 years ago, and with 10 years ago, and then compares the 2005-06 season with 2004-05. That's not a sound use of statistics, especially since, from one decade to another, he's comparing different things -- the number of orchestras with the number of concerts with the size of ticket-sale income. He scrambles all of them together and comes up with a shiny, happy picture, which, superficially at least, seems to be a picture of enormous growth.
But he doesn't mention the decline in orchestra attendance and (at least for the largest orchestras) alsio in ticket sales between the 1990s and now. (Note that attendance and ticket sales aren't quite the same thing, since orchestras give both paid and free concerts -- free concerts, for instance, for schoolkids, or in a city park on the Fourth of July.) So maybe orchestras saw growth, even explosive growth, from 40 to 15 years ago, and then began to decline. (My figures come from data made public by the League of American Orchestras, and also from numbers I've been shown privately.)
In the last two years there's been an uptick in sales and attendance, but it hasn't come close, from what I've been told, to making up the long-term decline. And it's too early to say that the trend has been reversed. What happened, as far as I can see, is that orchestras -- seeing that they had a problem -- started using business marketing tools more intensively than they ever had before. As a result, they sold more tickets to their core audience, and to people much like their core audience.
This is a complex matter, which I'll have to discuss in more detail in another post, but you can't really say, if you know what's going on, that orchestras are still in any period of long-term expansion. (My data here comes largely from private sources, though in an obscure press release, not available online, the New York Philharmonic let slip some impressive gains.)
But back to Botstein. There's one other problem with his shiny, happy portrait. We don't know what all that explosive growth -- in the number of orchestras and the number of concerts they give, starting 40 years ago -- really means. Botstein doesn't explore this at all. Were there more orchestras because there was more demand for classical music? Or was there pent-up demand, in cities that didn't have orchestras, so that when orchestras appeared in those cities, ticket sales were more or less automatic?
And why did the orchestras appear? Because America grew richer, so more cities could afford an orchestra? Because our population increased, so more cities had whatever critical mass it takes to support an orchestra? And what's the relationship between the growth in the number of orchestras and the growth of our population? Do we have more orchestras per capita than we used to, or the same number, or fewer? It seems to be more -- just quickly using figures i have on my computer, I found that the population increased 73% from 1972 to 2002, while (using Botstein's figures) the number of orchestras more or less doubled. Adjusting for the increase in population, that's no more than a 9% rise.
And orchestras aren't the whole story. If we look at established chamber music series over the past 20 years, we'd almost certainly see a drop in ticket sales. I say "almost certainly" because I don't know if anyone has collected any data, but in many conversations with people who run chamber music series, I hear about the audience declining. One venerable institution that I know about has lost from 10 to 20 subscribers, approximately, each year for the past decade. That doesn't sound like much, until you add up the numbers. This group has around 700 subscribers now, and they used to have 800. That's a 9% drop over 10 years, and there's no sign that it's ending.
I guess I'm not refuting myths here. I'm just supplying the kind of data that everyone ought to have before joining this discussion.
But here are more myths:
But this isn't the most important issue, when we talk about classical music's finances, and neither is any question of whether classical music ever had or ever needs a mass audience. Porsche stays in business selling cars very few people buy. The only question is whether classical music can support itself.
And here the numbers are sobering. The percent of income classical music institutions make from ticket sales has been declining for nearly a century, and maybe for longer. In 1937, when there was a major study of American orchestras (which is why we know the age of the audience back then), orchestras made from 70% to 90% of their income from ticket sales. It's been declining ever since -- and not, by the way, simply because of the vast expansion in orchestra seasons made possible in the '60 by Ford Foundation funding, which went along with a nice bump in musicians' salaries. The decline in the percentage of income coming from ticket sales had begun before that, and continued afterward. You can blame Baumol's Dilemma (aka the "cost disease"), or find some other explanation, but clearly there's long-term financial pressure on classical music institutions, which leads to repeated crises.
The behind the scenes financial picture at big orchestras and opera companies often isn't pretty, and blind optimism -- "we're not supposed to make money; we've always been supported by donors" -- doesn't begin to provide any answers. Where's the next generation of donors going to come from, if there might not be a next-generation audience?
I couldn't post about this here, because I didn't have time. But the myths have to be exploded. For instance:
...looking out at the audience at most classical music concerts in the United States, one sees a crowd that is largely middle-aged, verging on the geriatric. This has set off alarms within the music community, whose members are quick to blame the loss of a younger generation of listeners for the sorry state of classical music, waning ticket sales and a record market that has all but disappeared.Well, that last part is true. Conservatory enrollments are healthy. Younger people are playing classical music, though they're not going to classical concerts. (A provocative mystery.)
Memories are deceptive. Classical music has never been the passion of the young. It is an acquired taste that requires both encouragement and education, like voting or drinking Scotch. And in fact, more young people today are playing classical instruments than ever before, according to conservatory enrollments.
But has the audience always been the same age it is now? (Which in fact means older than middle-aged.) This is a persistent myth. I used to believe it, since music biz veterans repeated it so confidently. Then I started asking for data, and found that there wasn't any. Then I started finding data that exploded the myth.
I've written about all of that here, more than once. Studies from 1937, 1955, and 1966 show an audience with a median age in its thirties, and in the first two studies in its early thirties. Studies done in the 1970s, which I haven't talked about here, show an audience older than that, but nowhere near as old as it is now. Studies by the National Endowment for the Arts show the audience growing older between 1982 and 2002.
I've linked to much of this in the in-progress "Resources" sidebar on this blog. There's also voluminous anecdotal evidence for a younger audience. This includes stories about the women in their teens and twenties who were Geraldine Farrar's screaming "Gerryflapper" fans at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1920s. And also the famous passage about Beethoven's Fifth in E. M. Forster's novel Howard's End, depicting people in their teens and twenties attending a performance, without one word about how this would have been unusual. Because it wasn't.
Next, from Botsein:
The heralding of the demise of classical music is based on flimsy evidence. The number of concert venues, summer festivals, performing ensembles and overall performances in classical music and opera has increased exponentially over the last four decades. There are currently nearly 400 professional orchestras in America, according to the League of American Orchestras, while 30 years ago there were 203. There are up to 500 youth orchestras, up from 63 in 1990. The number of orchestra concerts performed annually in the U.S. has risen 24% in the past decade, to 37,000. Ticket-sale income from orchestra performances grew almost 18%, to $608 million, between the 2004-'05 and 2005-'06 seasons.I'm surprised, quite frankly, to read this, from a man with credentials as a scholar.
First, there's no single baseline for all of Botstein's comparisons. He compares the present era with 40 years ago, with 30 years ago, and with 10 years ago, and then compares the 2005-06 season with 2004-05. That's not a sound use of statistics, especially since, from one decade to another, he's comparing different things -- the number of orchestras with the number of concerts with the size of ticket-sale income. He scrambles all of them together and comes up with a shiny, happy picture, which, superficially at least, seems to be a picture of enormous growth.
But he doesn't mention the decline in orchestra attendance and (at least for the largest orchestras) alsio in ticket sales between the 1990s and now. (Note that attendance and ticket sales aren't quite the same thing, since orchestras give both paid and free concerts -- free concerts, for instance, for schoolkids, or in a city park on the Fourth of July.) So maybe orchestras saw growth, even explosive growth, from 40 to 15 years ago, and then began to decline. (My figures come from data made public by the League of American Orchestras, and also from numbers I've been shown privately.)
In the last two years there's been an uptick in sales and attendance, but it hasn't come close, from what I've been told, to making up the long-term decline. And it's too early to say that the trend has been reversed. What happened, as far as I can see, is that orchestras -- seeing that they had a problem -- started using business marketing tools more intensively than they ever had before. As a result, they sold more tickets to their core audience, and to people much like their core audience.
This is a complex matter, which I'll have to discuss in more detail in another post, but you can't really say, if you know what's going on, that orchestras are still in any period of long-term expansion. (My data here comes largely from private sources, though in an obscure press release, not available online, the New York Philharmonic let slip some impressive gains.)
But back to Botstein. There's one other problem with his shiny, happy portrait. We don't know what all that explosive growth -- in the number of orchestras and the number of concerts they give, starting 40 years ago -- really means. Botstein doesn't explore this at all. Were there more orchestras because there was more demand for classical music? Or was there pent-up demand, in cities that didn't have orchestras, so that when orchestras appeared in those cities, ticket sales were more or less automatic?
And why did the orchestras appear? Because America grew richer, so more cities could afford an orchestra? Because our population increased, so more cities had whatever critical mass it takes to support an orchestra? And what's the relationship between the growth in the number of orchestras and the growth of our population? Do we have more orchestras per capita than we used to, or the same number, or fewer? It seems to be more -- just quickly using figures i have on my computer, I found that the population increased 73% from 1972 to 2002, while (using Botstein's figures) the number of orchestras more or less doubled. Adjusting for the increase in population, that's no more than a 9% rise.
And orchestras aren't the whole story. If we look at established chamber music series over the past 20 years, we'd almost certainly see a drop in ticket sales. I say "almost certainly" because I don't know if anyone has collected any data, but in many conversations with people who run chamber music series, I hear about the audience declining. One venerable institution that I know about has lost from 10 to 20 subscribers, approximately, each year for the past decade. That doesn't sound like much, until you add up the numbers. This group has around 700 subscribers now, and they used to have 800. That's a 9% drop over 10 years, and there's no sign that it's ending.
I guess I'm not refuting myths here. I'm just supplying the kind of data that everyone ought to have before joining this discussion.
But here are more myths:
So why all the hand-wringing? Much of it stems from another false assumption: that classical music was once profitable, but is now failing financially. This distorted expectation is rooted in the peculiar experience of the last decades of the 19th century, after the rapid extension of literacy in Europe and America. Before recording became commercially viable in 1902, when the Columbia and Victor companies joined forces and issued discs, sales of instruments particularly the piano), concert tickets and sheet music were thriving businesses. With the advent of recorded music -- first the player piano, then the radio, the 78 rpm record, the long-playing record and the digital CD -- novel, albeit brief, opportunities for making money followed. These circumstances do not represent the broader historical norm. Classical music never held the promise that it could enlist a mass audience. From its birth as a secular and church-based art form, classical music has depended on patronage and philanthropy, not on income from sales either at the box office or in record stores.First, I think it's a myth that anyone -- or, cerhe tainly, any large number of people -- ever asserted what Botstein outlines here. I've never seen anyone do it. It's true that classical recording used to be profitable, and also true that for the most part it's not profitable now, but that doesn't tell us anything about the field at large. Of course concerts don't make a profit. Everybody knows that. If recordings now aren't profitable, I'd take that as one sign of classical music's decline -- classical recordings apparently sell many fewer copies than they used to, which would have to be one big reason why they don't make a profit. (I say "apparently" because, at least for now, all I have here is anecdotal numbers.)
But this isn't the most important issue, when we talk about classical music's finances, and neither is any question of whether classical music ever had or ever needs a mass audience. Porsche stays in business selling cars very few people buy. The only question is whether classical music can support itself.
And here the numbers are sobering. The percent of income classical music institutions make from ticket sales has been declining for nearly a century, and maybe for longer. In 1937, when there was a major study of American orchestras (which is why we know the age of the audience back then), orchestras made from 70% to 90% of their income from ticket sales. It's been declining ever since -- and not, by the way, simply because of the vast expansion in orchestra seasons made possible in the '60 by Ford Foundation funding, which went along with a nice bump in musicians' salaries. The decline in the percentage of income coming from ticket sales had begun before that, and continued afterward. You can blame Baumol's Dilemma (aka the "cost disease"), or find some other explanation, but clearly there's long-term financial pressure on classical music institutions, which leads to repeated crises.
The behind the scenes financial picture at big orchestras and opera companies often isn't pretty, and blind optimism -- "we're not supposed to make money; we've always been supported by donors" -- doesn't begin to provide any answers. Where's the next generation of donors going to come from, if there might not be a next-generation audience?
We're back -- my wife Anne Midgette and I have finished our whirlwind three-day residency at the College of Music at Florida State University. Anne, as of course I've said here many times, is the chief classical music critic at the Washington Post. We had a terrific time. And then, as soon as I got back, I conferred intently with people from a notable music school, and then had a performance of my music. But more on those things later.
What Anne and I (and in a couple of cases one of us separately) did at FSU:
• spoke to composition students
• spoke to students in the opera workshop
• spoke to a music history class, studying 20th century American music
• spoke to an arts management class
• spoke to conducting students
• spoke to student string players
• spoke at a panel discussion on the future of classical music
• gave informal career counseling to two students
• helped a faculty chamber ensemble plan an upcoming New York concert
• had dinner with a professor of contemporary media, or in other words "commercial music" (as it's often called at universities), a program not found at places like Juilliard
• met with the extraordinary piano technology program (more on that in another post)
• heard a really fine concert by the main student orchestra
And, of course, we also had more dinners, and lunches, with a variety of people from the FSU faculty and administration. To say we had a good time would be a gigantic understatement. The FSU College of Music seems to be a very warm, very constructive, and musically very serious place. It's not like the big Eastern music schools I've variously gone to, taught at, or worked with in some capacity. It's bigger, has countless students studying music education, and doesn't have the prestige of -- oh, you know the places I'd mention here. Which doesn't mean it's not in some ways their equal.
I'll outline a few things about our visit in a later post or two, but for now let me heap praise on the student orchestra, and its conductor, who also teaches conducting, Alexander Jiménez. Alex is one of a number of conductors at schools of music -- another is James Ross, at the University of Maryland -- who could perfectly well have careers in the professional world. On the program were the Barber First Essay for Orchestra, Ravel's Tombeau du Couperin, and the Brahms Violin Concerto, with an authoritative faculty soloist, Corinne Stillwell.
The Barber was led, again with authority, by Christopher Ocasek, a graduate student. Then Alex took over, and one thing that struck me -- delighted me, too -- was the first movement of the Ravel, taken at a good, fast pace, with all the string figuration easily flowing, not rushed, not hesitant, not at all fussy, perfectly in time (and in tune), and wonderfully musical. With a young student orchestra. That's an achievement, and a credit to Alex.
(And no, I'm not doing what critics sometimes do, overpraise a student orchestra and a university conductor, because I want to be nice, and not tell the truth about how they fell short. Of course this wasn't a professional group, and of course I could hear that. But what I'm saying about the Ravel is nothing more or less than the truth.
(I've had the good luck to hear two good student orchestras in the past few months, this one and the orchestra of the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland, with James Ross conducting. Both orchestras didn't quite get the size or strength or complex flow of Brahms, though at FSU the players started to pick up the right sound from Corinne. But both concerts were really good to hear, the standout in Maryland being a pungent performance of the Shostakovich First Symphony.
(I should note, by the way, that I'm speaking for myself here, and not necessarily reflecting what Anne might think. I'm not hinting that she'd disagree with anything I said, but of course we each have our own professional lives, and in anything we say in public, unless otherwise stated, we're each speaking for ourselves.)
What Anne and I (and in a couple of cases one of us separately) did at FSU:
• spoke to composition students
• spoke to students in the opera workshop
• spoke to a music history class, studying 20th century American music
• spoke to an arts management class
• spoke to conducting students
• spoke to student string players
• spoke at a panel discussion on the future of classical music
• gave informal career counseling to two students
• helped a faculty chamber ensemble plan an upcoming New York concert
• had dinner with a professor of contemporary media, or in other words "commercial music" (as it's often called at universities), a program not found at places like Juilliard
• met with the extraordinary piano technology program (more on that in another post)
• heard a really fine concert by the main student orchestra
And, of course, we also had more dinners, and lunches, with a variety of people from the FSU faculty and administration. To say we had a good time would be a gigantic understatement. The FSU College of Music seems to be a very warm, very constructive, and musically very serious place. It's not like the big Eastern music schools I've variously gone to, taught at, or worked with in some capacity. It's bigger, has countless students studying music education, and doesn't have the prestige of -- oh, you know the places I'd mention here. Which doesn't mean it's not in some ways their equal.
I'll outline a few things about our visit in a later post or two, but for now let me heap praise on the student orchestra, and its conductor, who also teaches conducting, Alexander Jiménez. Alex is one of a number of conductors at schools of music -- another is James Ross, at the University of Maryland -- who could perfectly well have careers in the professional world. On the program were the Barber First Essay for Orchestra, Ravel's Tombeau du Couperin, and the Brahms Violin Concerto, with an authoritative faculty soloist, Corinne Stillwell.
The Barber was led, again with authority, by Christopher Ocasek, a graduate student. Then Alex took over, and one thing that struck me -- delighted me, too -- was the first movement of the Ravel, taken at a good, fast pace, with all the string figuration easily flowing, not rushed, not hesitant, not at all fussy, perfectly in time (and in tune), and wonderfully musical. With a young student orchestra. That's an achievement, and a credit to Alex.
(And no, I'm not doing what critics sometimes do, overpraise a student orchestra and a university conductor, because I want to be nice, and not tell the truth about how they fell short. Of course this wasn't a professional group, and of course I could hear that. But what I'm saying about the Ravel is nothing more or less than the truth.
(I've had the good luck to hear two good student orchestras in the past few months, this one and the orchestra of the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland, with James Ross conducting. Both orchestras didn't quite get the size or strength or complex flow of Brahms, though at FSU the players started to pick up the right sound from Corinne. But both concerts were really good to hear, the standout in Maryland being a pungent performance of the Shostakovich First Symphony.
(I should note, by the way, that I'm speaking for myself here, and not necessarily reflecting what Anne might think. I'm not hinting that she'd disagree with anything I said, but of course we each have our own professional lives, and in anything we say in public, unless otherwise stated, we're each speaking for ourselves.)
I was listening to Il giuramento, an opera by Mercadante, the top dog among 19th century Italian opera composers whose work hasn't survived in the repertoire. He writes smooth melodies, whips up at least the appearance of drama, and expertly handles every aspect of the 19th century Italian style.
So what's missing? I'd put it this way -- his characters never grab you, singing (as a subtext to whatever their words are) "I am somebody!" (To borrow Jesse Jackson's phrase.) Listen, by contrast, to just about any Verdi aria. Verdi's characters are always somebody, so strongly so that we take it for granted, and imagine (or at least I do) that this is just how Italian opera is.
It's easy to mistake this for an achievement in musical composition. It isn't. It's an achievement of imagination, which composing serves. If you're blessed (or cursed) with dramatic imagination, you'll hack away at your music till it sounds like the people you imagine. And you don't need special composing talent to do that. You'll do it at whatever level you've reached as a composer. Look at Boito -- he had modest composing skills, but fabulous imagination. His music isn't very good, much of the time, but it's vividly dramatic. (Not that it wouldn't be more vividly so, if he wrote more vivid music.)
So what's missing? I'd put it this way -- his characters never grab you, singing (as a subtext to whatever their words are) "I am somebody!" (To borrow Jesse Jackson's phrase.) Listen, by contrast, to just about any Verdi aria. Verdi's characters are always somebody, so strongly so that we take it for granted, and imagine (or at least I do) that this is just how Italian opera is.
It's easy to mistake this for an achievement in musical composition. It isn't. It's an achievement of imagination, which composing serves. If you're blessed (or cursed) with dramatic imagination, you'll hack away at your music till it sounds like the people you imagine. And you don't need special composing talent to do that. You'll do it at whatever level you've reached as a composer. Look at Boito -- he had modest composing skills, but fabulous imagination. His music isn't very good, much of the time, but it's vividly dramatic. (Not that it wouldn't be more vividly so, if he wrote more vivid music.)
I loved the comments on my recent post on opera titles. They built a safety net under my limited Italian, provided wonderful examples of the things I was talking about, and took my ideas a lot further. And I want to sent a happy shout to Cori Ellison, who commented, who works professionally with titles, and provides a point of view that the rest of us don't have.
It all makes me want to state, or restate, some general points.
First, it strikes me that we tend to think of titles as purely explanatory, a neutral element in an opera performance. But I don't think that this is right. They're part of what reaches the audience from the stage. They're part of the artistic experience. So they should be planned together with every other artistic element in the production, and should be held to the same standard.
Secondly, I think that titles are meant to overcome difficulties in classical music, in this case the inconvenient fact that the standard operas are almost all (from the point of view of the English-speaking world) in foreign languages. And this meshes with an overall sense that classical music offers difficulties -- or, even worse, the perception that there are difficulties -- and that therefore it should be made simpler. So the titles are made lean, and purely functional. But again I don't think that's right. I think we underestimate how much our audience reads, how much they can appreciate literary things. And we especially underestimate the younger audience, which loves offbeat and unusual things, even things that are weird.
Finally, I want to repeat something I said in response to one of the comments. If I ever write another opera, and if it's performed in a place that offers Englilsh titles for English-language works, I want to specify the titles in the score. I want them to do more than overcome any diction problems, by communicating exactly what the characters are singing. I'd like them to be an artistic element in their own right, possibly (I haven't thought this out in much detail) by adding narration (with attitude), and by adding asides that the characters don't actually speak. I'd sometimes want titles when nobody is singing. I'd prefer, I think, a production with clear diction and no titles at all, but if we're going to have them, I want them to contribute something on their own.
It all makes me want to state, or restate, some general points.
First, it strikes me that we tend to think of titles as purely explanatory, a neutral element in an opera performance. But I don't think that this is right. They're part of what reaches the audience from the stage. They're part of the artistic experience. So they should be planned together with every other artistic element in the production, and should be held to the same standard.
Secondly, I think that titles are meant to overcome difficulties in classical music, in this case the inconvenient fact that the standard operas are almost all (from the point of view of the English-speaking world) in foreign languages. And this meshes with an overall sense that classical music offers difficulties -- or, even worse, the perception that there are difficulties -- and that therefore it should be made simpler. So the titles are made lean, and purely functional. But again I don't think that's right. I think we underestimate how much our audience reads, how much they can appreciate literary things. And we especially underestimate the younger audience, which loves offbeat and unusual things, even things that are weird.
Finally, I want to repeat something I said in response to one of the comments. If I ever write another opera, and if it's performed in a place that offers Englilsh titles for English-language works, I want to specify the titles in the score. I want them to do more than overcome any diction problems, by communicating exactly what the characters are singing. I'd like them to be an artistic element in their own right, possibly (I haven't thought this out in much detail) by adding narration (with attitude), and by adding asides that the characters don't actually speak. I'd sometimes want titles when nobody is singing. I'd prefer, I think, a production with clear diction and no titles at all, but if we're going to have them, I want them to contribute something on their own.
A New York Times story says today that the New York City Opera will lay off 11 full-time employees. That's 13% of their staff. The company, as quoted in the story, says it needs fewer staff members this year because, well, basically the company won't be giving any normal performances. And there's of course an economic factor, too. Says a spokesman, quoted by the Times, the company "believes that this
reorganization will position the opera to deal with current economic
conditions."
This leads to a cascade of questions.
Did the company need these 11 people when it put on normal seasons up to this past spring?
If so, why doesn't it need them now? And how can it say, as it's quoted as saying in the Times, that it has no plan to rehire them?
And most of all -- did the company see this coming? Long ago, when we first learned that this year's season would essentially be cancelled (the company is doing only a few small performances, scattered around New York), it was clear to any classical music professional that this would be expensive, more expensive, in some ways, than doing normal performances. That's because the company still has many of its normal expenses -- including its orchestra, its chorus, and its staff -- but loses much of its income. (No ticket sales.) I wasn't the only one who wondered if they'd prepared for the financial hit they'd be taking.
And now this. Did they expect it? I'm surprised the Times story didn't probe for that, especially since it very usefully mentioned that City Opera's fundraising has been hurting. Mthe eaybe "current economic conditions" jumped up and slapped City Opera in the face, but maybe they also hadn't prepared well enough for the financial impact of not performing, whatever the economy did.
What's going to happen next?
This leads to a cascade of questions.
Did the company need these 11 people when it put on normal seasons up to this past spring?
If so, why doesn't it need them now? And how can it say, as it's quoted as saying in the Times, that it has no plan to rehire them?
And most of all -- did the company see this coming? Long ago, when we first learned that this year's season would essentially be cancelled (the company is doing only a few small performances, scattered around New York), it was clear to any classical music professional that this would be expensive, more expensive, in some ways, than doing normal performances. That's because the company still has many of its normal expenses -- including its orchestra, its chorus, and its staff -- but loses much of its income. (No ticket sales.) I wasn't the only one who wondered if they'd prepared for the financial hit they'd be taking.
And now this. Did they expect it? I'm surprised the Times story didn't probe for that, especially since it very usefully mentioned that City Opera's fundraising has been hurting. Mthe eaybe "current economic conditions" jumped up and slapped City Opera in the face, but maybe they also hadn't prepared well enough for the financial impact of not performing, whatever the economy did.
What's going to happen next?
I have a piece on Berlioz's operas in the new issue of Opera News. You can read it online here. It was fun to write -- I didn't know Benvenuto Cellini well, and didn't know Béatrice et Bénédict at all. Was very surprised to find out that B&B is a dud, in spite of a ravishing duet at the end of the first act. (Which has nothing to do with the plot -- one sign of the things that make the opera a dud, at least for me.)
Among the many delights I had was listening to the first Colin Davis recording of Cellini, which I think is one of the great opera recordings of all time, even if the piece isn't one of the great operas. (Except for the second act finale, which combines, if you can believe this, Rossini with a foretaste of Petrushka.) One highlight of the recording is Nicolai Gedda, just about perfect in the title role, dashing and a little silly, with that fabulous voice and perfect control of amazing high notes, all the way up to D flat, which he plays with, the way somebody might stroke a kitten. (Well, after walking out on a ledge 500 feet above the ground; it's not easy to sing high D flat, or the C sharp, equally caressed, that Gedda sings in the love duet in the Davis recording of La damnation de Faust.
The second Davis Cellini, a live performance with the London Symphony, is negligible. The singing doesn't come within miles of the first recording.
Also perfect: Jules Bastin as Mephistopheles on the Faust CDs. Though overall the old Charles Munch recording, from the 1950s, is more powerful, with a better Marguerite and a tremendous Faust (David Poleri, a tenor who started out brilliantly and then fizzled). Though there are two disappointments. One is Martial Singher, the Mephistopheles, a reigning French baritone of the era, who should have been perfect, but was running a fever when the recording was made. And you can hear it. (He told me this himself, when I studied voice with him, while I was in high school.)
The other disappointment is the chorus. Munch, music director of the Boston Symphony back then, made Berlioz recordings in Boston -- Faust, the Requiem, and L'enfance du Christ -- using student choruses from Harvard, Radcliffe, and the New England Conservatory. I don't remember minding those choruses when those recordings were new, and I had them, but now the choral singing sounds thin, and just won't wash, in an era when recordings are mostly made with professional choristers.
Ssee how much I love classical music, when I'm not fed up with the classical music business? My criticisms, I've come to understand, are the complaints of a lover who wants his beloved to be better.
Among the many delights I had was listening to the first Colin Davis recording of Cellini, which I think is one of the great opera recordings of all time, even if the piece isn't one of the great operas. (Except for the second act finale, which combines, if you can believe this, Rossini with a foretaste of Petrushka.) One highlight of the recording is Nicolai Gedda, just about perfect in the title role, dashing and a little silly, with that fabulous voice and perfect control of amazing high notes, all the way up to D flat, which he plays with, the way somebody might stroke a kitten. (Well, after walking out on a ledge 500 feet above the ground; it's not easy to sing high D flat, or the C sharp, equally caressed, that Gedda sings in the love duet in the Davis recording of La damnation de Faust.
The second Davis Cellini, a live performance with the London Symphony, is negligible. The singing doesn't come within miles of the first recording.
Also perfect: Jules Bastin as Mephistopheles on the Faust CDs. Though overall the old Charles Munch recording, from the 1950s, is more powerful, with a better Marguerite and a tremendous Faust (David Poleri, a tenor who started out brilliantly and then fizzled). Though there are two disappointments. One is Martial Singher, the Mephistopheles, a reigning French baritone of the era, who should have been perfect, but was running a fever when the recording was made. And you can hear it. (He told me this himself, when I studied voice with him, while I was in high school.)
The other disappointment is the chorus. Munch, music director of the Boston Symphony back then, made Berlioz recordings in Boston -- Faust, the Requiem, and L'enfance du Christ -- using student choruses from Harvard, Radcliffe, and the New England Conservatory. I don't remember minding those choruses when those recordings were new, and I had them, but now the choral singing sounds thin, and just won't wash, in an era when recordings are mostly made with professional choristers.
Ssee how much I love classical music, when I'm not fed up with the classical music business? My criticisms, I've come to understand, are the complaints of a lover who wants his beloved to be better.
From one of my wife Anne Midgette's terrific pieces on Christoph Eschenbach in the Washington Post:
(Anne's other Eschenbach piece is here.)
Added later: I searched online in vain for photos of the orchestra in its designer wear. But I did find this, from a British review last month:
He has long ago discarded the standard tailsuit in favor of a crisp Nehru jacket; at the Orchestre de Paris, where he is music director...a fashion house was brought in to design an alternative to the players' traditional formal dress.So it can be done, unless the players and audience in Paris just hate what they're wearing now. Any word on that?
(Anne's other Eschenbach piece is here.)
Added later: I searched online in vain for photos of the orchestra in its designer wear. But I did find this, from a British review last month:
If nothing else, the Orchestre de Paris wins the Best-Dressed Musicians at the Proms award. They looked wonderfully chic in their natty tunics. I wish my colleagues on the fashion desk had been there to give you a more expert description.The critic then goes on to trash the way the orchestra played.
Followup to my post about the language of Italian opera, and how it's never rendered properly in opera-house translations.
I was listening again to Il Trovatore, and came to the moment when the baritone realizes that the gypsy he's captured is not only the woman who burned his infant brother alive, but is also his hated rival's mother. The rival is named Manrico, and, as I listened, I heard the baritone labelling the gypsy with these words: "Di Manrico genitrice."
Which is very fancy, to the point of silliness. First, it's backwards poetic phrasing: "Of Manrico the mother." Except the word used isn't mother, but something wildly stilted: "Of Manrico the parent," or (because "genitrice" is far more stiff than that) "of Manrico the begetter."
But I'm sure it'll be translated at the opera house, in the titles, as "Manrico's mother." When I saw La Gioconda at the Met, there were countless examples of that. The libretto (written by Verdi's great librettist Boito, under an assumed name) is highly literary. In the last act, the baritone, skulking as usual, observes that night is falling.
Except he doesn't put it that way. He sings, "Il ciel s'oscura" -- "the heavens are darkening," or something like that. I've taken my Italian about as far as it can go, but I know that the normal word for "sky" is "cielo," not "ciel," and "s'oscura," to the best of my knowledge, isn't common usage. Put the baritone's words into Google Translate, and it can't find an English rendering at all.
But the translation on the seat in front of me just said "Night is falling," which robs the opera of all its melodramatic flair. At least try "The sky is darkening," like this English translation available online. (You'll have to scroll far down into Act IV to find the line.)
I was listening again to Il Trovatore, and came to the moment when the baritone realizes that the gypsy he's captured is not only the woman who burned his infant brother alive, but is also his hated rival's mother. The rival is named Manrico, and, as I listened, I heard the baritone labelling the gypsy with these words: "Di Manrico genitrice."
Which is very fancy, to the point of silliness. First, it's backwards poetic phrasing: "Of Manrico the mother." Except the word used isn't mother, but something wildly stilted: "Of Manrico the parent," or (because "genitrice" is far more stiff than that) "of Manrico the begetter."
But I'm sure it'll be translated at the opera house, in the titles, as "Manrico's mother." When I saw La Gioconda at the Met, there were countless examples of that. The libretto (written by Verdi's great librettist Boito, under an assumed name) is highly literary. In the last act, the baritone, skulking as usual, observes that night is falling.
Except he doesn't put it that way. He sings, "Il ciel s'oscura" -- "the heavens are darkening," or something like that. I've taken my Italian about as far as it can go, but I know that the normal word for "sky" is "cielo," not "ciel," and "s'oscura," to the best of my knowledge, isn't common usage. Put the baritone's words into Google Translate, and it can't find an English rendering at all.
But the translation on the seat in front of me just said "Night is falling," which robs the opera of all its melodramatic flair. At least try "The sky is darkening," like this English translation available online. (You'll have to scroll far down into Act IV to find the line.)
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Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
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Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
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For immediate release: the arts are marketable
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No genre is the new genre
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Paul Levy measures the Angles
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Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
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Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
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Martha Bayles on Film...
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Fresh ideas on building arts communities
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Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
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Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
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Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
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Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
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Kyle Gann on music after the fact
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Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
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Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
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Jerome Weeks on Books
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Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
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Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
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John Perreault's art diary
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