Greg Sandow on the future of classical music
If you take the troubleto read this blog on the Web, you get one thing the RSS feed can’t give you. (And believe me, I understand the convenience of RSS feeds.)
The comments, as I’ve often said, are one of the best things about this blog.
This was the first in what turned out to be a long series of posts, in which I and many readers highlighted people, groups, and institutions making new departures in classical music, doing things in new ways. This wasn't even close to a complete … [Read More...]
“To be a musician in the service of music is not a job; it is a way of life.” –Isaac Stern, violinist (The Musician’s Way, p. 299) The music education community is swirling with talk about how best to prepare university-level students for … [Read More...]
Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]
[From Greg: A followup to Erica's guest post yesterday, about the performance of Winterreise she did in a small town. Here she tells us what she said before the performance, to introduce the piece to an audience that doesn't know classical music. … [Read More...]
Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. How young the audience was in 1937: Results of an audience study, showing a median age around 30 (from … [Read More...]
While we're still talking about CD covers, I thought I'd add a few likes of my own. Starting with this one, which I've loved ever since the recording came out on LP in 1962: Of course it's Siegfried, from the Georg Solti Ring. And there couldn't … [Read More...]
[Lara Downes was the first of our guest bloggers here, and she began with a post about classical CD covers she likes. And about how she came up with the cover for her own latest album. Her list -- along with mine, and others that I hope will come … [Read More...]
I've spent some time compiling a list of videos I think especially stand out from the very bland standard classical music videos (no easy task to find these!). Most bigger budget classical music videos are basically just documentations of … [Read More...]
an ArtsJournal blog
Do bear in mind that there are those of us who do both: read by RSS, then click through to your blog to read on and comment.
You might want to consider limiting the amount of text that your RSS feed displays. That way, you’d encourage readers to come to the blog to continue reading – and start commenting on – what they began reading in the feed. (That’s what I do, anyway.)
FK
Greg-
I am not sure what you mean. I read via the RSS, and I find comments, and sometimes I even dare to make a comment. But, I keep the feed for quite a while and I check back, to see if my comment is in and to see if you responded and to see other comments.
I do believe that via the feed I am seeing everything. I am going to do both for a while to see if I find any difference.
>>RSM
Greg-
Here is a possible answer: Posts and comments do not show up immediately in the feed readers. I use MyYahoo! Sometimes I will see a new post, but it will be marked as being from 3-10 hours past.
So, one could go to your weblog and see what is immediately there, and then check in the feed reader and the content of the weblog, including any comments could be missing.
So, let’s say there is a post to the weblog, where it is immediately available, and it shows up in the feed after three hours, but then there is a comment after four hours. That comment may not show up for again, 3-10 hours in the feed, while it is immediately available in the blog.
In any case, my friend, this is not your problem. You do incredibly great work. The rest is in the hands of the internet gods, and no on has yet figured them out.
No, please do not shorten the text in the feed. I read a lot of blogs, and there is no way I can read the comments on every post of every one of those. I assume most people understand the concept that the feed has just the article text, and if they want the comments, they’ll have to visit the site.