Not connecting (toward a second draft)

All y'all have been writing about the arcana of performance practice, nomenclature, audience norms, etc. But there are other measures of how little classical music connects with the larger culture.

People often rant about how students in K-12 schools don't learn to play classical music anymore and that's obviously a problem. But what I think is far more of a problem is that this isolates the activities of the relatively few students who are studying classical music. They aren't part of day to day life at most schools, so few non-performers know peers who are excited by classical music. If you don't know kids who are involved in the music, you have less chance of caring about it.

Consider, too, how rare it is that a fictional character in a movie, TV show or book is someone who regularly listens to classical music. Sure, there are infrequent "uplifting" stories about classical musicians as professionals and or teachers. But there are almost no stories about people who aren't part of the classical music world who listen to the music because they like it. When there are exceptions, these characters are usually aging immigrants for whom classical music is used as a metaphor of what they left behind.

Invariably when I mention this idea, someone brings up Fraser as a pop culture figure who was deeply connected to classical music. But Fraser was treated as a crank who was sort of likeable despite all of his oddities, not as an ordinary person who just happened to like an uncommon artform.

More importantly, classical music was almost never heard on Fraser. Some episodes revolved around Fraser and/or his brother going to some kind of high-toned event, but the audience only saw them in their apartment, at work or at the coffee shop on their way to or from that event. Even the incidental music for the program was standard issue TV theme music.

I'm not suggesting that it would have been effective for 5-10 minutes of the program to be spent portraying Fraser's reaction to listening to a whole movement of some classical work, but something besides the jokes that his father or co-workers didn't know what he was talking about might have helped some.

Think about the active presence of jazz on the Cosby show. There were pictures of musicians, transitions into or out of scenes where Cosby is listening to jazz, etc. The music and performers weren't just referred to as the subject of a joke or two, they were a real part of the program.

In the '60s and even the '70s, it was possible for someone who dealt with some aspect of "high" culture to be part of a variety show or to be a guest on a talk show. Some of the clips are available on YouTube. There were a number of relatively early performances on Saturday Night Live by Ornette Coleman, Philip Glass, Sun Ra and a few other non-pop musicians; just as the show used to have hosts who weren't the star of some new movie or TV show. Now that a beer company sponsors the musical guests for the show and ads for the impending movie starring the guest host are an important part of the revenue for the show, those days are gone. & it's very difficult to imagine what it would take for, say, David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, or some other talk show host being willing, or able, to carry on a conversation with a classical musician (or a serious author, painter, etc).

So, yeah, you've listed a lot of things that are wrong with the culture of classical music. But the main thing, only inferred in some of these comments, is that classical music hasn't been part of the general culture we live in for decades. Classical music is so isolated from the lives of most Americans, that you might as well be talking about the lack of reception and understanding for ragas or gamelan.

About the stuffy atmosphere of concert halls, no talking between works, etc.: whenever I've suggested to classical music organizations that they might try venues where a younger audience is comfortable, like a bar or club, the answer is, It would be disrespectful to the musicians.

I'd like to know how the musicians will feel when there's no audience left for them. (And I realize, this may just be a timid staff projecting -- maybe the musicians would embrace the idea. We'll never know if we don't have that conversation.)

That's a classic. Mindblowing. Musicians are already appearing in clubs on their own. If a classical music organization deals with any large number of musicians, some of those musicians are already playing in clubs. And would be happy to do it again. The Concert Artists Guild, which gives classical ensembles awards every year, encourages club performance. Etc., etc., etc. The organizations you've been talking to are seriously behind the times.

whenever I've suggested to classical music organizations that they might try venues where a younger audience is comfortable, like a bar or club, the answer is, It would be disrespectful to the musicians.

There's a huge amount of interest in exactly this kind of thing here in Portland, but it's certainly not coming from what I call the status quo organizations. Instead, local groups like Classical Revolution Portland and the Portland Cello Project are taking music to clubs and bars and connecting with people in new and exciting ways. And I can tell you that everyone involved loves that this is happening.

Can we expect to see Murray Perahia or the Emerson String Quartet in these sorts of venues? Probably not. But there are other classically-trained performers--the cellist Matt Haimovitz comes to mind immediately--who are more than happy to reach out to younger audiences.

I think one of the biggest barriers for me is the generally sixty-dollar price tag, often applied to an event that I have already payed for through taxes, and then I pay again through ad-views. At that point I feel like what I am being presented should be more satisfying than anything in this world really is. This is especially frustrating when I find videos on YouTube of Paul Potts making Simon Cowell cry, or Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel, that speak to me far more than anything I have yet seen in a concert hall.

I actually think that there is a solution lurking in the video of Paul Potts' first performance.
- It is short, short enough that it is easy to get friends to watch it
- It is free.
- They give Paul's background. He's just a guy.
- He makes the audience burst into spontaneous applause, and THEY ARE ALLOWED TO DO SO

You probably covered the (Pulitzer Prize winning!?!) Joshua Bell - Washington subway story when it happened, but a perfect example of not connecting. And if there's not a connection, it must be the audience's fault! (they are in fact, 'swine' to writer Gene Weingarten).

Very good example. Thanks for bringing it up.

The reason Josh didn't connect, as a few people pointed out, was that he didn't know how to play in the subway. Didn't know the best times and places, and didn't know how to make eye contact with the people passing by.

"And if there's not a connection, it must be the audience's fault! (they are in fact, 'swine' to writer Gene Weingarten)."

Bill: You say this sarcastically(?), and I completely understand where the sentiment comes from. Too many in the Classical Music establishment seem to think that if the audience doesn't get something, it's the audience's fault and not something inherent in the way the industry functions, or presents itself.

Nonetheless, whatever re-evaluation of Classical Music that we do must include better cultivating a smart audience. Boulez once quoted Jean Cocteau saying something along the lines that an orchestra can be talented or not talented and the same thing can be said of the audience. There are just audiences that are naturally smarter musically. "Not connecting" might not always be the musician's fault. It's a two-way street and frankly...part of the problem is not just the fact that the Classical Music world can't present itself in a relevant way in 2008, it's also because there's actually a part of the audience (who regularly shows up) that actually have little understanding for the music. It may indeed be a situation where the audience we want isn't coming and the audience we don't want is (not everyone currently...but certainly a good number).

Very well said, Eric. For a variety of reasons, mainstream classical concerts are likely to strike smart younger people as dumb. Middlebrow and dumb. The sooner the classical world realizes this, the better. We've got a world now in which large numbers of people want challenging music, and classical music -- with all its marketing appeals to beauty, and the worship of beloved masterworks -- seems to be presenting anything but.

Eric - Yes, I was being sarcastic at the end there. To imply, as the author did, that people are sub-human because they don't stop and listen to Joshua Bell is deplorable.
I can't agree with your '...cultivating a smart audience' statement. I think audiences are just fine, in fact many successful rock and roll bands speak on a very deep level to their audience and would never, for a second, feel that they should be 'smarter'.
Your assumption that audiences are not smart enough is based on what?

I would like to see concert halls become less stuffy and more inviting places for all.

At the same time, we shouldn't forget how some of the conventions have arisen:
* classical works tend to be long – it makes sense to be able to sit down for the duration;
* many classical works require a certain amount of concentration – it makes sense if disruptions are kept to a minimum;
* classical music covers a huge dynamic range (it's not pretty much all loud, as with dance music in a club; and it's not pretty much all soft, as with Muzak in a restaurant); add to that the fact that most people who are interested in or drawn to classical music end up wanting to listen to it – so it makes sense to cultivate a listening environment with no extraneous noise.

Being fairly still, focusing, not making much noise – all these things contribute to an enjoyment of what you're hearing. Let's stop thinking of them as unnatural reactions to music.

(Why is the mp3 player so popular, regardless of musical genre? Because it provides, among other things, the focussed, block-the-world-out listening environment that concert halls have been cultivating for centuries.)

Have classical music presenters and supporters gone too far and become rigid about things? Very likely. Have we generated impressions of stuffiness that are often far greater than the reality? Definitely.

But in lightening up, let's not throw out the proverbial baby.

On one hand…yes to what you're saying, and -- as supporting evidence -- people who hear really serious rock bands in clubs have enjoyed hearing them in concert-like settings where people don't talk, drink, move around.

And on the other hand…a lot of our classical masterworks were composed and premiered in an age when people didn't sit still, talked during the music, walked around, and applauded the moment they heard something they liked. You can even find an essay by historian William Weber on how this was an active, engaged kind of listening, no matter what we in our time might think of it. Accounts of Lully performances are especially shocking -- a priest in the audience sitting next to an attractive woman (this is just one example of what went on) would get jeers and catcalls from his fellow operagoers, who'd find him much more diverting than what went on onstage.

We could say that this wasn't ideal, that we're better off today, when people sit still and listen. And yet there aren't many (or maybe not any) records of complaints during the era I'm talking about, not until the 19th century, when the idea of silent listening began to be fought for. Quite the opposite, in fact. Composers seemed to relish the response, and (as one of Mozart's letters demonstrates) wrote music designed to provoke it.

And even in the 19th century, even late in the 19th century, you'd have applause after the cadenza of the Brahms Violin Concerto, with Brahms evidently approving, and applause after Amonasro's opening phrase in his duet with Aida -- not just applause but wild cheers, demands for an encore, demands for Verdi to take a bow. Verdi said that he loved that, and deplored the new German idea that the audience should sit tight and shut up. I once hosted a performance of a Mozart symphony movement with the Pittsburgh Symphony, at which the audience was invited to applaud whenever they liked, and the results -- though tumultuous -- turned out not to disturb the structure of the movement at all. Mozart, I suspect, had planned the music to allow for audience reaction, something we might think of trusting before we too quickly deplore suggestions for relaxing our present concert behavior.

@Eric, Bill: Perhaps what's at stake is not so much "smartness" in an intellectual sense or even "understanding" but an audience member's motivation for being there.

In any concert hall there will be some people who ultimately aren't really there for the music. They're there for social reasons or through obligation or through sheer force of habit. You could perhaps say (and I risk being unfair to such people) that classical music is not really "relevant" to them even though they belong to its audience. If a newcomer senses such a lack of relevance for the existing patron, how likely are they to feel a connection on their own account? [I have problems with this word "relevance", but I'm using it for convenience.]

Greg would probably now point to the old painting of the concert rotunda with audiences strolling about during a performance that they've clearly attended for social reasons (or through obligation or habit!). And he might say that relevance and connection should be able encompass anyone's reason for coming in contact with the music.

At which point we do have to consider that the repertoire itself as well as our own culture has changed considerably since the 18th century. And of greatest significance is that many of the musical functions of that rotunda are now fulfilled (in many cases more successfully) by recordings. I'm thinking of background music, social lubrication, dancing, even private recreation.

This leaves live performances of music occupying a different space and function, and attracting a more discrete group than before the advent of mechanical reproduction. And for all their different atmosphere and conventions, I think this is true of live rock concerts as well.

You got me, Yvonne!

I was reading your comment, and after the beginning, I thought, "Well, right, there's that painting…"

And you thought I'd probably be thinking of it. You know me all too well.

Did you forget:

15. A great many of classical music's devotees believe that if you have had little or no musicological training you cannot fully or in some cases even partially appreciate classical music.

I should clarify what I meant by 'cultivating a smart audience.' I don't mean that everyone has to be forced through a music history or intro theory course in order to enjoy a Classical Music concert. It would be nice of course, but doing that doesn't guarantee the student will like the music, and I'd rather have someone who will fall in love with the visceral aspects of the music but doesn't know every little technical detail as an audience member than someone who does but doesn't really enjoy it. So I think Yvonne is onto something here. Perhaps it is the connection that matters, and that's what makes a smart audience. (I actually don't think this conception is too far off from the Cocteau idea of the 'talented audience'--since I my opinion, talent is not necessarily completely based on mental intellect; part of it could be physical, and hence visceral intelligence)

I don't think this is something you can formally train. Someone either likes the music or doesn't. Sometimes you can 'grow' into something if exposed to it enough. Sometimes it'll never happen. There's no reason or rhythm behind all this. (Feldman for me...didn't understand it for a long time...once I got it, I became addicted. On the other hand, I've always enjoyed Boulez and mid-to-late Ligeti right from the start, just to mention some modernist composers that some people dismiss completely without listening to at all. As for works I never liked no matter how my profs emphasized the structure, the genius etc.? A lot of Mozart except the requiem, a few late operas, a few chamber pieces and the clarinet concerto. Go figure.)

The one point I'd revise in your original list, Greg, is this: "3. The musicians don't talk to the audience. In our culture today, people expect musicians to talk."

I'm not sure just how I'd reword it, but I'd broaden the wording to something like, "The musicians don't interact with the audience. . . ."

At the recent College Music Society conference in Atlanta, a number of speakers who are working in the building audiences/musical entrepreneurship area stressed the distinction between musicians talking "to" (often "at") the audience, and talking with the audience. Making comments can be effective, but if it degenerates into a dull lecture recital it can be deadly. Some form of genuine interaction between the performers and audience is key.

This can happen before and after the actual performances, with informal mixing and chatting, as well as during a concert.

Allowing the audience to respond freely, not being bound by the no-clapping-except-at-the-end-of-a-multi-movement-work rule is one form of interaction (which has already been mentioned). Asking for audience comments and reactions is another (when to best do that varies with the context). I've heard of, although not been at, performances where a new piece was performed, discussed, and performed again, and that it worked well.

When there's the element of improvisation in a concert, performers can take suggestions from the audience, and that's another form of interaction.

The recent Wall St. Journal article on the revival of improvisation in classical music performance describes Robert Levin and Garbiela Montero improvising in response to audience suggestions, something Liszt did and many other improvisers do.

Eric Barnhill gave a concert here in Greencastle last summer where he improvised modulatory preludes between Chopin Etudes selected by the audience, and a sonata-allegro form movement based on a four notes supplied by different audience members. It was one of the most popular concerts of the summer. The immediacy and risk-taking of the improvisation was exciting, and the combination of Eric's conversational style of making comments and also asking for audience input worked very well.

The favorite part of many audience members who attend the improv concerts my students present at DePauw (we are covered in that WSJ article as well) are the portions where the audience give suggestions to the musicians. At the most recent concert, this resulted in improvised songs on finding a worm in an apple, doing a "barrel role" in Starfox (a video game, and dancing through a field of daisies. In addition to creating interaction, this can create a sense of genuine relevance and connection with a particular audience on a particular day.

Any of this can become gimmicky if not done well, of course. But the larger point is an important one: two-way interaction is very powerful, and the forms it can take are many. Talking "to" the audience may be all that can happen in a very large hall, and can be very effective; in smaller venues there are opportunities for dialogue in many forms, all of which can help the audience and performers connect with each other.

I was interested to see that the Times review of Matt Haimovitz's recent Poisson Rouge performance noted he was amplified. If we free the audience up to respond more freely, embracing amplification may be essential.

I started reading this without noticing who sent it, and immediately thought: "This has to be Eric!" And it was.

Good thoughts. But I'm not too worried about how musicians talk to/at/with an audience. I'm even a little sad, to be honest, that this needs to be a topic of discussion. What counts is whether the audience feels the musicians know they're there, and care about them. And this, in the end, comes from the musician's attitude, not from anything said or not said. That is, some people can convey this by saying hello, some by a lengthy disquisition on the music, and some without needing to say even a single word. Artur Rubenstein never, to my knowledge, talked to the audience (and certainly didn't at the one recital of his I heard, when I was a kid), but no one could miss how much he cared about the people who were hearing him.

I doubt that anyone in the pop world strategizes how to say hello. They just do it, and the audience can easily figure out who means it and who doesn't. I think we're a little cautious in the classical world, because we haven't done this much.

At Le Poisson Rouge, Matt played two amplified pieces and two normally unamplified ones. I didn't ask him about it, but I suspect he may have wanted amplification to equalize the sound world, so to speak -- to give all the music something of the same sonic ambiance. In a larger space, a concert hall, for instance (even a small one), the unamplified pieces take on some color from the hall's resonance, but I don't think that happens at LPR. At another performance I attended there, a chamber group of normally unamplified instruments was lightly amplified, a decision they made because of the entire sound world of the club. That would include the music playing between sets, and the amplified sound of the other acts on the bill. This group felt they'd be better off joining that sound world, at least a little, rather than standing apart from it.

But I suspect we won't need amplification simply because the audience responds. After all, the audience responded vividly in past centuries, and nobody had amplification back then.

I'm not sure that merely having a 'classical music' event in a non-concert hall setting will make it more accessible. I remember a group of young lady singers - connected to the NY Continuo Collective - doing a program of Monteverdi and his contemporaries in a pub in Greenwich Village, several years ago. The women were bright and attractive, dressed in 'downtown' black street clothes, and tried to make the songs sexy. The audience - aside from their families or friends from Continuo Collective - sat at the bar or small tables and largely ignored them. Hey, it's New York, anything can happen: camels can walk down the street en route to Radio City, why not Renaissance chicks in a Greenwich Village pub? True, the audience was free to talk, drink or eat. But the music was out of any recognizable context, and probably made less of an impression on the conscious minds of the bar's 'regulars' than the tv tuned to CNN or a football game.

It's like recording companies putting photos of classical musicians wearing bikeroutfits on their CD covers of Schumann, or whatever. These photos were not going to sell more CDS or expand the audience for that music, especially given the rigid categories under which CDs are sold. I am thinking of the late lamented Tower Records at Lincoln Center. One did not find Lieder CDs in the same place as country music or world music or heavy metal. The classical CD-buying crowd, such as it was, was looking for a certain work, or composer, or performer: they weren't going to be impressed by the costume on the cover.

I suppose what I mean is that repackaging the same old product - when that product has less and less to do with the contemporary world - is meaningless.

I've seen it work, though. And if Shakespeare plays can function in the contemporary world, why not Monteverdi?

Hi,

I'm a newcomer to this discussion. I've found all of the commentary very interesting.

However, I take issue with quite a few things.

Firstly, I find the premises of this whole discussion - identifying ways in which classical music doesn't "connect to our larger culture" - unproductive. I am alarmed, Greg, that you started such an inherently pessimistic discussion.

Secondly, I am surprised that the discussion continued along the same pessimistic trajectory. Everyone who has commented is saying what is wrong with classical music, the institution of the concert hall, performers etc. But scarcely have any suggestions for change been made!

I fundamentally disagree with the statement that classical music doesn't connect with our larger culture. I'm not even sure what "connect with our larger culture" means in this context.

I guess I'll go through each of your original points:

"1. Most of the music at classical concerts comes from the past. So we're rarely engaged with contemporary life. (Is this one reason the people who go to these concerts like them?)"

Yes, the overwhelming majority of music at concerts does come from the past. I don't think this is an issue though. Just as people still flock to the Uffizi gallery in Florence to see beautiful works of art that are centuries old, there is still a beauty from past works of music that can be appreciated today. I’m not saying that Bach engages directly with contemporary life in any way. But I am saying that in much music, new or old, whether were familiar with it or not, there is something worth appreciating in it.

There is something to the very 19th-century rhetoric of “universalism,” that music can convey something universal. I think there is something universal about some of the great music of the past, something along the lines of the “infinite yearning” that ETA Hoffmann talks about in Beethoven’s symphonies. Tons of other examples could be cited… Wagner’s operas, Mahler’s symphonies, the Rite of Spring. I think there is something universal about these works that many people could find meaning in, in spite of contemporary life.

So I think the key to this problem is to improve programming- there’s a lot of rubbish that is performed. I also think that program notes that give listeners an “in” are important as well.

“2. Formal dress looks archaic, and out of touch. “

Yes, I agree with this statement, to an extent. However, unfortunately for classical music the only connection I can find is the strict black and white tuxedo still worn by most conductors. That’s a bit silly.

The norm for most performers these days is wearing only black. In general I disagree with this concept, but I think points can be made in its defense and I think that it does connect to our larger culture. It’s a bit like going to the movies and expecting to have a film shown completely in the dark with no glare and no distraction. The black dress code for performers is an attempt to create the optimal environment for listening to live music with the least amount of distraction.

In my experience there is no strict dress code for the audience, even at opera these days. So I think this point is more or less a non-issue in terms of how classical music connects to our larger culture.

“3. The musicians don't talk to the audience. In our culture today, people expect musicians to talk.”

What do you mean “people expect musicians to talk”? I wasn’t aware of this. In my experience people expect to go to classical concerts, read the program notes, maybe attend a pre-concert talk if there is one, and enjoy the music.

In general, though, I agree that musicians don’t talk to the audience and this is a problem. Listeners these days (compared to say, listeners over a century ago) are much more passive and less musically inclined. I think to an extent they need to have things explained to them, especially with serious music from say 1914 onwards (basically the stuff that’s avoided in the basic music education these days). What we need is something like what Pierre Boulez did when he first joined the New York Phil- he would perform something like Webern with pre- and post-concert question and answer sessions.

There is a good deal of music that is inherently “difficult.” For “difficult” works I think musicians should talk to their audience. In general I think if musicians did talk to the audience it would increase the appeal of the serious music concert experience. I recently saw Steven Isserlis do this in between pieces at a performance with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. It relaxes the mood slightly.

“4. Musicians subordinate their own personalities. They play the music the way they've been taught to. They don't take much initiative, don't make their concerts personal statements, don't play the music their own way.”

Is this really true? I think if you look at the plethora of Mahler recordings that have come out in the last 30 years it is impossible for us to say this of orchestral music. In fact, rarely are two sittings of the same piece of orchestral music ever the same because of different conductors and different ensembles and different traditions within those ensembles.

For solo recitals, yes it is true that the trend in conservatories has been to get performers to shoot for stylistic accuracy rather than be extremely personal. This does not mean that they play without personality or without any hint of a distinct personality. Yes, they do often subordinate their own personalities for the sake of historical accuracy. I do not necessarily consider this a bad thing. If you look at the extremes of players playing with “personality” (what does this even mean?) the results are often ridiculous.

I think the problem isn’t always with the way performers play their music. I think a good deal of the problem is how they program their performance. A simple fact of music today is that the conservatory has turned into an institution of performance specialization, which is alarming if you consider that just 30 years ago it was all about composition. Performers today aren’t as smart as they used to be. Sure they can play or sing the hell out of whatever they’re doing, but that’s often all they can do. So when they present a program that is unthoughtful and doesn’t attempt to make any insight into individual works or perhaps works in relation to each other, the concert lacks any intrigue and is in no way a personal statement. One of the best concerts I went to recently was a program of guitar music- it was a mix of renaissance and baroque guitar music with modern guitar music. It was a very personal statement- the performer was saying, “this is all interesting music, but especially if you hear these works in succession.” The result was fantastic- the early stuff sounded modern and the modern stuff sounded cliché and dated.

“5. Even when new music is played, much of it doesn't sound like the world around us. The sounds of popular music aren't much heard, though they were in past centuries “

“The sounds of popular music aren’t much heard, though they were in past centuries.” That’s one of the worst clichés of music history, along with the claim that “Mozart was the popular music of his time.” It is almost impossible to say that popular music has always been part of or an influence on what we consider the serious music tradition. Sure, Josquin used the song “L’homme arme” as the basis for a mass, we hear klezmer bands in Mahler, and there’s Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” But for the majority of these examples such “popular” idioms are used for a specific artistic effect, not merely for the effect of audience recognition.

And there even examples of new music that quotes popular song- how about “Waltzing Matilda” in Barry Conyngham’s Southern Cross?

Pop music has influenced new music, more so than ever before! The harmonies in the works of Philip Glass are clearly influenced by pop music. Works like “Clocks” by Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin features a movement called “Blues.”

Is art music really meant to sound “popular”?

Music isn’t necessarily meant to sound like the world around us. One might say that music is meant to be a reaction to the world around us- something like Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music that was used to justify integral serialism, which was meant to be the necessary “sound” of music after World War II.

Where does musique concrete fit into all of this? Music that essentially is the world around us being manipulated and abstracted to create music. How about works such as “Come Out” or “Different Trains” by Steve Reich?

I don’t think that music not “sounding like the world around us” is a reason for the disconnect between classical music and the modern audience.

“7. The audience is old.”

Really? Is the audience old? At all of the concerts of new music that I’ve been to the audience is predominately young. At all of the concerts of music that has been seen to be iconoclastic throughout history (Boulez, Second Viennese School, etc.) the audience is predominately young. At performances of Mahler the audience is always young.

I think Mahler is a very important point. I think it’s very easy for young people to connect with him for a variety of reasons.

You’re planning to write a book about the future of classical music? Following from all of your commentary, I don’t think it will be a very constructive book. I think we need to look at the ways in which culture has changed and try to find a way in which we can fit classical music into it. I think there will always be a place for it.

We should consider things from the reverse perspective. Maybe there’s something wrong with the larger culture and not classical music. The current generation is not being brought up to have the capacity for a classical music concert experience. The expectation in life is on instant gratification, something that classical music can’t give (but that isn’t a weakness!), and we’re bringing up kids with shorter attention spans and lower expectations for themselves. Everything is being given to them- they can have all the music they want on their iPods, they don’t need to go to concerts when they can just “play” instruments on their new Wiis, they can play videogames instead of engage with art… there is a lot wrong with modern world.

In Europe, however, I think it’s less of a problem than in the US. There is still the sense of a strong musical tradition, and many kids there are brought up listening to classical music and regularly attending concerts.

This is all I have to say for now. I think we need to move the discussion into a more positive direction. Simply listing complaints is useless. Yes, there is a good deal wrong with the classical music world, but there is also a lot of good. We need to be like Alex Ross, who found a way to make music accessible and relevant and meaningful to current audiences in his amazing book The Rest is Noise.

Dave, you really are new to this discussion. I don't mind what you're saying, but a lot of it has been covered here before, either in blog posts, comments, or in the drafts of parts of my book that I put online. Or, for that matter, in a lot of writing and speaking by Alex Ross, for instance his big piece about the future of classical music in the New Yorker a few years ago, or his keynote speech at a recent Chamber Musuic America conference.

I can't respond to everything you say -- there just isn't time -- but I'll say two or three things. First, about the disconnect, and what you think is my pessimism, or lack of a constructive approach. About the constructive approach, I've posted so many specific ideas for change here in the blog, and worked with so many institutions and musicians on specific changes, that I just sigh when I read that. If you don't like reading the things you responded to, be my guest, but this has very little to do with my role in the classical music world.

And then the disconnect. You can search through old blog posts of mine for details on the decline of classical music ticket sales over many years, and the aging of the audience. Maybe you're not aware that the classical music audience used to be quite young, with a median age not much over 30. The aging of the audience is the most tangible measure I know of the growing distance between classical music and the rest of our culture. The people most avidly listening now are those who formed their taste when classical music was far more widely loved. Younger people -- the statistics are very clear about this -- aren't joining the classical audience at anything near the rate that they did in past generations.

It's also clear that educated, cultured people, and artists in other fields, are often uninterested in classical music, even while they're involved with other fields of art. It's easy to find, let's say, a graduate student in comparative literature or cultural theory who knows Joyce and Jane Austen and Derrida by heart, and whose main musical interest is alterative rock. This is such a cliche in our time that it's scarely necessary to mention it, but I bring it out once again, Dave, to clarify for you at least a little of what I mean.

Finally, I'm sorry that -- obviously without reading much of what I've written -- you've decided that I've embraced the silly "Mozart was the popular music of his time" idea. Again, if you search my blog, and look through the old episodes of the draft of my book, you'll see that I've discussed very extensively the ways that classical music worked in the past. And also that I've pointed out that current scholarship is revealing a lot of things that contradict what most of us were taught when we studied music.

The truth about Mozart's position on some pop/classical spectrum is that the spectrum didn't exist in his time. The term classical music was never used; the concept didn't exist. Nor was popular music a concept. Those ideas arose after 1800, and what you find then is Beethoven and Schumann being called classical music, and Rossini and Paganini being called popular music. But in Mozart's time, people simply created and played music, in a variety of circumstances and in a variety of ways. Some of it -- Handel's Water Music, for instance -- was very popular, and some of it -- Bach's Passions -- wasn't popular at all. Mozart seems to have occupied a middleground, writing music in styles that often were popular, but then made his music too complicated for many people to follow. (Which many, many, many people observed during his lifetime; look, for instance, at the comment of the impresario who commissioned the Paris Symphony, or at the reviews of the premiere of Don Giovanni, or the emperor's famous comment on the Marriage of Figaro). Haydn, by contrast, never did this. His music was always popular.

What I meant by my comment was that the everyday musical styles of past centuries -- the music people played or sung at home, or whistled in the street -- weren't all that different from the music that composers wrote. And, conversely, the music that composers wrote could easily encompass the everyday musical styles of the time. Berlioz, for instance -- very much in the classical music camp, in his day -- had no trouble assimilating (in, for instance, the Romeo Alone scene in Romeo et Juilliette) the far more popular music heard at that time in opera houses.

I'm glad you think that today's pop music finds its way into classical music. Yes, it does -- in rare cases, except maybe in the works of young composers. But you're certainly not going to claim that the average new music concert today will resound with the sound of current pop.

But then you think "art music" doesn't need to sound popular. This could be a long discussion, but first I'd note that the concept of art music never existed till the 19th century, and that a fair amount of indie pop music today is unmistakably art music, showing that art music can perfectly well take off from the sounds of current pop.

But I'm going to stop here. I do think these ideas are new to you, and you might want to explore them further.

Dave, it's great that you put so much energy into a contribution here. But I don't think you've looked around too much. Take negativity. There's a lot of positivity and positive suggestions all over this blog. Greg & many commenters love to highlight what they think people are doing right. Check out some of the past few entries, and see if you still feel that way.

Second, your assertions about the classical world diverge in varying degrees from any classical world I know of. Where do young people converge to listen to an hour of Mahler in reverent silence? Where for that matter is the de facto concert dress black, and where did your report of the reasons for it come from? And most questionable, at what conservatory was "it all about composition" 30 years ago? That was 1978. If anything conservatories were far more compartmentalized then than now. I speak only for myself as an occasional commenter, but that last statement in particular doesn't do a whole lot for your credibility.

I encourage you to check out some of the other discussions around here and see if you don't find some interesting counterpoints to some of your opinions. Best wishes, Eric

Greg, your response to me hit a nail on the head: "What counts is whether the audience feels the musicians know they're there, and care about them. And this, in the end, comes from the musician's attitude, not from anything said or not said."

And that attitude really comes from how the performer experiences her or his relationship with the audience. A musician who is afraid of the audience, who projects that the audience is there to judge him or her, as is the case with many students (for example), isn't going to carry that sense of caring about the audience on to the stage.

I think this is the case even with many high-level professionals. What seems like aloofness may be a mask for fear, including the fear of violating classical music conventions. Leonard Rose, who was such a great cellist, comes to mind. He was a very formal person. While quite kind with people he knew and trusted, he was also very insecure and anxious. (I'd give some examples but I'm pressed for time.) I can't imagine him being comfortable talking to an audience.

Yo-Yo Ma, on the other hand, is extremely comfortable with himself, and is a very caring guy. While Rose carried a sense of mild paranoia with him, Yo-Yo seems to really get that his audience loves him. And Yo-Yo establishes rapport and connection with the audience in performances where he doesn't say a word.

I've been thinking about the impact of WWI on culture and music. It seems to me that the world wide collective experience of such an apocalyptic event generated some dramatic responses.

1) Shattered Innocence- the adoption of serial, aleatoric, and extreme dissonance as the "chosen" method of serious classical expression.

2) Escapism- The world is coming to an end, lets party. Particularly, we don't want to think about anything ugly. (the explosion of "popular" music in the twenties, [also helped by technological developments that grew out of the war such as amplification and radio]

3) Abandonment- (Sibelius and Elgar pretty much quit writing).

4) Retro- An attempt to find security in the past. (Stravinsky switches to neo-classicism and Copeland et al develop a nationalism glorifying the American Frontier)

I am choosing to use musical examples because that is what I know and love, but I believe that similar reactions happened throughout the arts, and in society at large.

It seems that classical music concerts became frozen in time around 1918. When you go to a concert today, you see musicians dressed in 1918 garb, with a very Edwardian or even Victorian expectation of how to behave. Even our conservatories attempt to freeze our performances and we are carefully taught that it is blasphemous to do anything that is not written in the score. So classical music has become a museum instead of a living art form. We pay homage to the shattered part of our psyche and play a serial piece every now and then (to "educate" the audience), a few pops concerts now and then won't hurt too much as long as the musicians all look down their noses, and now that todays composers have embraced neo-tonality we can all sigh with relief. But where is the passion of Mahler or Puccini, the confrontation with God of Beethoven, or the emotional vulnerability of Brahms?

This is not a fully formulated theory yet, I welcome any suggestions, critiques or additional insights!

Finally, I grieve that other people don't seem to "feel" music the way that I do, as a visceral , gut wrenching, emotional, cathartic, sublime experience that is as necessary to living as food and air. Even the musicians that I have worked with often seem to be insulated. (I even quit a symphony job because the performances were all so safe and bland. Not one of the biggies, but up in the second or third tier). I desperately hope that the classical music industry wakes up. I see signs of hope, but we have a long way to go, and I need classical music in order to survive!

Thank you so very beneficial to the community organizations, of course