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A year ago I gushed about the annual Bang on a Can marathon, the crucial new music event in New York that had moved to a new space and attracted a new, excited -- and exciting -- audience.

This year (the performance was two weekends ago) the space was the same, the Winter Garden, an extravagant, comfortable public space downtown, with ceilings high enough to accommodate full-sized palm trees. It's right on the Hudson River, in the miles-long stretch that's been developed as a walkway (and skate- and bikeway) and a park. So you'll always have people walking there, and maybe popping into the World Financial Center (the building that the Winter Garden is part of), to eat or have a snack or do some shopping.

Which gives Bang on a Can a readymade audience, especially since their marathon was part of an established downtown arts series. But that didn't mean that the audience would be as large as it was, or would stay as long as it did. Because this marathon was long. Last year's was longer -- 26 hours -- but this year's, at 12 hours, was long enough to run all night.

I got there at 8 PM or so, two hours after things had started, and the first thing I noticed was that the audience was larger than it was the year before. I'm not good with estimating numbers, but the figure thrown around last year was 1000 people, when things were at their height. This year there were more than that, quite a few more, I'd say.

And who were these people? Last year, the organizers didn't know, which is to say that this wasn't a new-music insider audience, but instead what I'll call (in whatever tone of view you choose) a real one, an audience of people who either came or wandered in and stayed becuase they liked the music, not because they had a professional connection to what was going on. They were mostly young. So here again -- as I mentioned in my post about the Wordless Music orchestra concert -- was the new, young audience the classical music world says it's looking for, alive, in the flesh, larger than life, but maybe striking out in directions of its own, toward new music and away from standard classical repertoire and concerts.

I didn't mention that the event was free, which of course helped to draw people. I stayed for seven hours. Among much else, I loved the music. Well, not all of it, of course. I must have heard a dozen pieces, maybe 20. How could I love them all? But overall I did love it, and could cite many highlights, though the highest one for me was Julia Wolfe's Strong Hold, for the astonishing ensemble of eight double basses (played by The Bass Band, students from the Hartt School in Hartford, CT). Julia, of course, is one of the three Bang on a Can composers, and her music often digs into edgy, weighty, thick, and complex textures, so a piece for eight basses might be natural for her. Except, of course, that it's hardly natural for anyone, and that the sound gets quickly muddy in the lower register, where the basses are at home.

Julia, I thought, aced that problem triumphantly, and the piece was pretty much mesmerizing, throbbing through time absorbingly, always keeping me wondering what would be next, until it ended on a major chord so richly scored that it felt like it came from the bottom of the earth. This, with any mainstream audience, would hardly have been a hit, but alternative rock has changed the rules here, and the audience at the Marathon whooped and yelled.

When I left at 3 AM, So Percussion had just finished David Lang's the so called laws of nature. By this time, there might have been 600 people there, still this new and avid audience. David, of course, is another of the Bang on a Can composers, and this ye, ar's Pulitzer Prize winner. The piece, again by mainstream standards, wouldn't exactly be a crowd-pleaser, since it's long (at least 20 minutes), rigorous, and, within each of its large sections, pretty much unchanging, with nothing in it that you'd expect to wow an audience (except maybe the pulsing rhythm, though that would start and stop). But, again, the rules have changed. This audience whooped, and as I headed toward the exit, David was greeting people who'd line up to have him sign CDs.

I wonder how many other Pulitzer Prize composers have faced a line of happy fans at 3 AM? This marathon remains a miracle, and, if you ask me, it's the most important classical music event in New York, both for the quality of its music and the excitement of its audience. Recently, in a private blog about orchestras that I was asked to take part in, some eager orchestra professionals got rhapsodic about performances their orchestras had done (which I'm willing to believe were wonderful), and offered them as wistful proof that classical music will never die. To me that's essentially a statement of faith, and while I respect the faith, I don't see how it answers questions about what might well be diminishing interest in standard orchestra performances in the future. I feel more confident in what Bang on a Can evokes, because the hope for the future I think they offer is tangibly, visibly, andn audibly supported by an excited new and growing audience.

The National Performing Arts Convention -- convening in Denver next month -- has a blog. I was asked to contribute; my entry is here. Subject: why the arts -- aka the collection of interest groups meeting in Denver -- don't really represent art in our current world.


Since I got after the classical music business for ignoring Earth Day -- and, basically, all environmental concerns -- I should be fair, and note that the Ojai Music Festival has announced a green initiative. It's the first I've ever heard of in classical music, though I hope there have been others. To quote from Ojai's press release:

With the help of Marty Fujita, an ecologist who founded a farm-to-school food program in local Ojai schools, and Green Team volunteers from the Ojai Valley Green Coalition, the Festival is reducing solid waste going to landfills, selecting merchandise and foods produced with minimal environmental impact, and supporting local farmers, merchants, and products.

Though of course they'll still have a carbon footprint -- maybe not a small one -- from flying artists to play their concerts. I wish they'd say something about that. You can read their complete press release here.

It's still scandalous -- and I really mean it  -- that other classical music institutions haven't done anything like this. If their concerts halls are green, they don't talk about it. And they don't even do Earth Day programming. In 2008, that's scandalous.

In Wong Karwai's new film, My Blueberry Nights, Rachel Weisz has a monologue that could almost be an opera aria. When I saw the film, and Weisz quiets down outside a bar where she's just thrown a fit (with Norah Jones sitting by quietly, ready to listen to anything Weisz says), I thought, "If this was an opera, now we'd get Rachel Weisz's aria."

But I couldn't have known how musical Weisz's monologue would be. For one thing, she often spoke in musical phrases, with pitches - musical  notes - I could just about have written down in musical notation. But she also made music in a higher sense, gripping my attention simply with the sound of her voice, quite beyond the meaning of her words. Up to a point, this happened as her voice was pushed and shattered by her feelings, but as I listened - maybe because I'm a musician - the sound took on a force that was completely musical (understanding here a wider definition of music, which goes beyond the notes and chords of traditional music, and enters the wider world of pure sound.)

Listen to the monologue, and see what you think.

This, I thought, posed a challenge to opera - to new operas, that is. (And don't forget, in what follows, that I've written some myself.) The simple way to put the challenge might be, "Who needs opera, when a movie monologue carries this much musical conviction?" But that's too simple. Maybe a broader way to make a richer point would be something like this: in past centuries, when opera was a truly current art form, people understood (instinctively; this hardly had to be discussed, though perhaps it sometimes was) that opera created drama by stylizing it, embedding it in well-known forms of music.

As time went on, and as musical language developed, singing in opera could become less stylized - less dependent on full-fledged melodies, with a purely musical form of their own - and more realistic, more like the ways people actually speak. (Wagner of course had a lot to do with that.) But let's not forget that stage acting (and public speaking of any sort) was much more stylized in those days than it is now. So realism of the Blueberry Nights sort - music closely imitating speech - wouldn't bring dramatic music where pure drama is today.

I'll skip over the rest of operatic history (and especially Janacek, who tried harder than any other composer to render speech in music precisely as it's spoken), and simply observe that new operas these days tend to emphasize full-throated operatic singing. Which leaves them largely in the dust if you compare them to Rachel Weisz, who also outflanks them musically.

Which isn't to say that new operas are impossible. I tend to feel, though, that they work best when they're deliberately stylized. And since I think that, it can't be coincidence that Philip Glass's Satyagraha (stylized from beginning to end) knocked me out more than any new opera I've ever seen on stage, and that I wrote my own favorite among my operas, Frankenstein, deliberately as an affectionate (well, loving, really) and stylized take on Italian opera in the 19th century (which itself is stylized). If I wanted to write a realistic work - which really would appeal to me - I'd listen again, and very carefully, to Rachel Weisz, and be afraid.

I've been meaning to link to Molly Sheridan's new ArtsJournal blog...there, I've done it. I've known Molly for years, always enjoyed her, always learned from her. And now she's flying. I hate to limit her, by quoting something that doesn't give you her nuance or range, or her flavor, something so merely factual...so follow the link above and read the full Molly...but still here's something she knows more about than I do, something that fits right in with the conversation we've been having here about the new audience, and the blend of new classical music and alternative rock they're so easy with. (Here and here.) It's from Molly's first post, "I'll Take One of Everything, Please":

...a funny thing happened during a panel discussion over at Peabody a few weeks ago: Someone asked me where new music was going and for the first time since I started covering the field in 2001, I realized a big change that I had personally witnessed had finally come to pass.

Picture it: The year is 1999. Where I am living in Brooklyn, many bands are rehearsing in cheap studio spaces. Many of them come from indie rock backgrounds and liberal arts educations, but they are seeking to put their own experimental twist on the genre.

Meanwhile...

Across the river and quite a few blocks uptown--or okay, fine, just as likely right next door--other musicians in other studios are finishing up pieces for their composition degrees at the city's prestigious conservatories. They've got a piece scored for Pierrot ensemble, but they are seeking to put their own experimental twist on the genre.

Sadly, except for the occasional happy anomaly, in 1999 Camp A and Camp B seemed to exist in largely separate worlds, sharing neither common dive bars nor common practices. And this always seemed a shame, because to me it felt like each side had information the other side needed and wanted. I'm not speaking in terms of music (though some wanted to travel that way, too) but more in terms of trading recording technique for orchestration technique. But that was then. These days when I look out, it's striking to see how close these two camps have come, and it looks and sounds great...

Ellipses at the end, not because I cut off in the middle of a sentence, but because I cut off in the middle of a thought. By which I mean that Molly's thoughts are worth reading (and that it's hard to fit their full flavor into any one headline). It's great to have her here.

Problem: You're involved with a classical music organization, maybe a big one. And even though you might describe your institution as "a vital community cultural resource" (to quote one orchestra's website), you know that once you get beyond the "cultural" part of that -- which basically means the contribution that you make to the community with your music -- you don't have all that much to offer. You sense that you're not a vital part of the community when other issues -- non-musical issues -- might arise.

Solution: Do something for the environment.

I'm writing this on Earth Day. The main news section of the New York Times has three full-page environmental ads, from Macy's, Starbuck's, and the BBC. Macy's website, on its home page, suggests you ride your bike or walk to work, and offers a link to a Macy's Earth Week celebration, where you can get environmental tips, and learn what Macy's is doing for the cause. The IBM home page prominently asks if you've recycled all your old computers, offering a link to an environmental page that tells you how to do so, with further links to pages like this one, which offers an entire green campaign, with the slogan "Good for business. Good for the planet."

And of course there's more. The New York Mets are building a new stadium. It's going to be green, says the team, built almost completely from recycled steel, and with a green roof over the administrative offices, plus other green initiatives. Major League Baseball has its own green initiative, the Team Greening Program. The Pittsburgh Pirates have an environmental program; the San Francisco Giants generate electricity with solar panels.

And what do classical music institutions do? Nothing I've ever heard of. Which doesn't mean that nobody is doing anything -- that would just about defy belief -- but certainly we don't hear a lot about this. Have any of the new concert halls boasted that they're green? Not that I've heard of. The Nashville Symphony's page for their new Schermerhorn Symphony Center says not a word about anything environmental. The LA Philharmonic's site says nothing green about Disney Hall.

And sure, some -- a lot? -- of the corporate environmental stuff is hype. A computer newsletter I get, "PC World Daily Tech News," asks "Are Big High-Tech Companies Green Hypocrites?" The baseball initiatives have been questioned, as the articles I linked to show. (They generate huge amounts of carbon playing night games.) Back in January, the New York Times reported that the FTC was asking whether corporations really did offset their carbon footprints, after saying that they'd done so.

But classical music organizations don't even take phony stands (if that's what the corporations are really doing). I've blogged about this before, and asked the American Symphony Orchestra League (as it was called back then) if any major orchestras had ever tried to offset the carbon dioxide they generate when they tour. I never got an answer.

So that's my solution to a community relations problem -- take a stand on the environment, and do something about it. It's just about expected, these days, and it's almost shocking (when you think about it for a while) that classical music organizations don't seem to know this.

Footnote: Maybe this is related to something else, the way people who aren't classical music initiates (especially if they're young) can be surprised that big classical music institutions don't do anything for charity. Pop stars do, after all. The almost indignant answer from the institutions is that, hey, they're charities!

But this doesn't wash. From the outside, big classical music institutions look like they're rolling in money. From the inside, they often enough can barely pay their bills, but still their whole presentation (I'm talking about major orchestras, big opera companies, and major concert halls) is lavish.

So they ought to do something for charity. I once privately advised an orchestra about this, suggesting that, since they wanted to raise more money from subscribers, it would help to work for charity themselves, so they'd create an atmosphere of giving. I've heard they've done this, with some success. One way, it seemed to me, would be to stress the charitable work of individual musicians, and also to join in community-wide fundraising efforts.

But each institution can figure this out individually. Just so they do something!

Today I got e-mail from a major orchestra, advertising a photo exhibit. The photos sound very interesting. But none were included in the e-mail! Dumb. They had my attention. Why not do something with it?

They gave me a link to click, if I wanted to read a full press release about the photo show. No photos in the press release, either. Come on, people -- don't you know how the Internet works? And yes, you'd have to make separate versions of the press release, one for print, the other for downloading. But how hard would that be? Though why not just include the photos in the print release -- not as separate 8 x 10s, but printed on the paper with the text --  as well?

And speaking of the press release -- why do I have to click to download it? Other orchestras (and non-orchestral institutions, too) include the entire release, complete with formatting, in their press e-mail. Why shouldn't this one do it? Why make it hard for people to read your releases?

While I'm at it, here are some other things that publicists shouldn't do. I offer these thoughts in a constructive spirit, hoping that publicists will see how they can be more effective.

• Don't put "Press Release" -- and nothing more than that -- in the subject line of your e-mail. If I'm pressed for time (no pun intended), your release is this one I won't click on. Use the subject line to tell me something that might interest me.
• Don't send CDs tightly bound in tape-sealed bubble wrap, inside a protective envelope. My wife and I might get a dozen (or even more) CDs a day. None of them arrive damaged. So why an extra layer of protection? It's annoying -- first I have to open the protective envelope, and then get through the bubble wrap.
• Don't put the urgent flag on e-mail, unless you know for sure the content of your message really will be urgent to most people getting it. Often I get e-mail from large institutions, telling me (with great excitement I don't share) that the pianist who's supposed to play a concerto Saturday night has cancelled, and that someone else will be playing instead. I'm sure this is urgent for the institution -- i know the kind of backstage flurry these cancellations cause. But for a critic who gets the e-mail? Maybe not so important. Save the urgent flag for when you're doing business with me, and something has changed that I really, really have to know about.
• Don't use messengers or overnight delivery or even UPS unless you really have to. We get packages from UPS and other carriers, sometimes four times a day. Typically they're new releases from major record lables -- CDs which, to be honest, we might not listen to for weeks, if ever. So why the rush? Why not send the CDs by regular mail? And the point isn't just to save you money. You save me some annoyance. Here I am, sitting home, trying to get my work done, and four times during the day I have to stop my work to buzz the UPS guy through the downstairs door, and then wait for him to get to my apartment so I can sign for the CDs -- which, remember, I haven't any urgent need for (though I'm not saying I'm not glad to get them).
  

Here's something I'm very happy to announce: I'll be giving the commencement address at the Eastman School of Music next month. This warms my heart, because I've had a very happy time teaching at Eastman for the past three years (I teach a quick course in the future of classical music, taught in January, February, and March). And I've bonded each year with my students.

But I'm also  honored to get such recognition from a major mainstream music school. And not just honored -- I'm thrilled to see my ideas taken so seriously.

I was dismayed at the response to Robert J. Flanagan's very long, very serious, though very academic report on orchestra finances. (Unavoidably academic, however, because Flanagan is an academic.) Could be that I'll sound impatient in what follows, for which I either apologize or not. I'm not sure.

But here's the background. For many years, the Andrew W. Mellon foundation funded more than a dozen orchestras through a program designed to encourage innovation, called the Orchestra Forum. The strengths and weaknesses of that endeavor aren't something I'm going to discuss here, but I was involved for some of its run, as a "fellow" of the program, going to its biannual retreats and participating in all discussions.

And it was from one of those discussions that the Flanagan report was born. The executive director of one of the Big Five was worried about orchestra finances, and convened a meeting attended by representatives of several orchestras, including at least two other high-powered executive directors, but also musicians, and members of various orchestras' boards and staffs. I was at this meeting. The subject of discussion were what the people there called "structural deficits" - what they saw as a long-term pattern of orchestras' expenses growing faster than their income.

Obviously this problem - if real - was serious. So out of this meeting grew something called the Elephant Task Force, a group of board members, musicians, and staff members from a variety of orchestras, who met under Mellon's auspices to study the problem. The name, of course, comes from the notion of the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge, in this case the serious financial problems that - at least as Task Force members saw it - weren't being faced.

Eventually the Task Force made its report, which was delivered at one of the Orchestra Forum retreats by the board chairman of the orchestra whose executive director had started all this rolling. His report was dramatic. I'm not going to go into any detail about what was said, but it was dire, including projections that showed how a major orchestra (unnamed) could easily go out of business not many years in the future. I don't know that I've ever had such a shock in all my years in this business.

But where should the Task Force - and its dire predictions - go from there? One thought was to have its work repeated by an economist. Enter Flanagan, commissioned by Mellon to study what the Elephant Task force had studied, to see if its conclusions were correct.

What he came up with is milder than the Task Force's presentation - no predictions of demise. But certainly he supported the idea that orchestras have structural deficits, and, though he didn't use the term, that notion was a central part of his report.

Which I why I'm going to seem impatient. One big reaction to the report was people not even remotely understanding what Flanagan said, and thinking instead that he'd only reported something obvious, that orchestras have deficits, that their income from ticket sales can't alone support them. "Duh!" said many people, with scathing derision, most famously here, but also echoed here and here (and probably other places). This stupid guy works all this time, we're told, backed by a major foundation, and all he comes up with is something everybody knows. Orchestras can't earn all the money it takes to run them. Duh!

But that's a complete misunderstanding of what the report actually says. I'll grant that report isn't lively to read, and that Flanagan does repeat, maybe more than he needs to, the statement that orchestras can't pay their expenses with earned income alone. Maybe he does this because he's an outsider to the field, and maybe to the entire non-profit world, so the fact of deficits is more notable to him than it is to people - who'd certainly include everyone making fun of him - who live with this information every day. But then William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen also keep repeating this very basic fact in their seminal 1966 study, Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma --which was an important starting point for Flanagan, as it should be for anyone looking at performing arts financial issues - and nobody made fun of them.

But what did Flanagan really say? Now we're back to those structural deficits, strongly sensed by people directly involved with them - orchestra people, musicians, board members, and staff members - and strongly stressed in the Elephant Task Force report. Flanagan (though, as I said, without using the term) said that they exist, that for orchestras, the gap between earned income and expenses is constantly increasing. Here's where he summarizes that, on page 28 of his report:

For most orchestras the trend increase in real performance expenses is two to four times as large as the trend increase in real performance income....[T]he majority of orchestras have continued to experience a long-term worsening of the performance income gap, even after controlling for the perturbations introduced by changes in general economic conditions that are beyond the control of the symphony community. Even if orchestras adjust successfully to the cyclical "weather," the long-run economic "climate" of the industry produces ever-increasing performance deficits. [Those are his italics.]

And just to make everything clear: When Flanagan talks about "performance deficits" he doesn't mean bottom-line deficits, the kind that leave orchestras in the red at the end of a fiscal year, and therefore in debt, because they spent more money than they take in. He knows perfectly well that orchestras raise money far beyond what they earn in ticket sales, and that overall their budgets are in balance. A "performance deficit" simply means the difference between the amount of income earned through ticket sales and the amount of income needed. This constantly is growing, and while it doesn't leave orchestras floundering in helpless debt, it certainly puts pressure on them.

Or, to put this differently: As time goes on, a smaller portion of orchestras' budget comes from ticket sales, and therefore a larger portion of their budget has to be raised from private and institutional donors. So, as the decades pass, orchestras have to work harder and harder to raise the money they need.

Did the people who laughed at Flanagan know that he was saying this? Do they themselves know that, over time, the gap between earned income and expenses has constantly grown larger?

And about what Flanagan concluded:

First, Baumol and Bowen came to exactly the same conclusion in 1966, after a similarly serious academic study.

Second, the conclusion is supported by data. As Flanagan points out (and as I wrote long ago right here in my blog), orchestras used to get much more of their income from ticket sales than they do now. In fact, there's been a constant decline in this for 70 years (and maybe even longer, if we only had earlier data to show us what was happening). In the 1930s, orchestras earned, on the average, 85% of their budgets from ticket sales. In 1962 the figure was 58% and in 1972 it had fallen to 47%. It's a lot lower now. So it's hard to dispute Flanagan's conclusion. What he did was put the data on firmer ground, adjusting it to eliminate bumps and dips created by the economic ups and downs, so we can see the data in its purest form.

Third, there's an economic principle that predicts that this will happen, called, variously, "Baumol's dilemma" or "Baumol's disease" or "Baumol's curse." Baumol, who's been called the most distinguished economist who's never won the Nobel Prize, came up with this principle in his 1960s study. Basically it says that enterprises not engaged in manufacturing - and especially service industries - don't show gains in productivity equal to the productivity gains in the rest of the economy. Thus they're always lagging behind financially, always looking for more and more cash to pay the rising expenses that everybody has, but which they have trouble meeting, because their productivity doesn't rise.

Or, more specifically: If I run a car company, over the long run I spend less and less money to make more and more cars. This is because, thanks to productivity increases, I can make more cars with the same number of employees. (Or, unfortunately, even fewer, which is one reason why Michigan is a wasteland of unemployment.) Thanks to this , I can pay my employees more, and I have money to set aside for research and innovation.

But if I'm an orchestra, I'm playing masterworks with the same number of musicians I used in 1937. And my staff is bigger - I'm now paying many people to raise money for the orchestra, while in 1937 I had no fundraising staff at all. (And no marketing staff, either - both funding and ticket sales more or less took care of themselves, or at least were vastly easier than they are today.) So, roughly speaking, putting on concerts costs me the same amount it did in 1937. Purely in fiscal terms, I haven't gotten more productive. But meanwhile salaries have risen, across the board, throughout the economy, and I have to pay those salaries. So I'm in an economic bind. I'm always squeezed - I always have to find more money than I needed a decade ago.

Or, more simply, my ticket sales just don't pay as large a part of my expenses as they used to - which is exactly what in fact has happened.

So there's no doubt that Flanagan is right. And if anything, he understates how serious the situation is. Yes, orchestras have found ways to raise the money that they need. But there's always the potential for a serious crisis, and one in fact arose late in the 1960s, when the largest orchestras expanded their seasons and raised musicians' salaries - and when the costs of that collided with the long-term trend of getting less and less income from ticket sales.

And so the largest orchestras, back in 1969, really thought that they were going out of business. I have to laugh a little here (however grimly), because classical music optimists keep saying, "Oh, all this talk of gloom and doom is ridiculous. People are always saying classical music will die!" And, then, often enough, they'll cite newspaper stories from the late '60s and early '70s, predicting orchestras' demise. Ha! they say. It never happened! See how silly these predictions are?

But what really happened? The crisis was very real. And so the Big Five hired McKinsey, the big consulting firm, to study what was going on. McKinsey did a preliminary study, and then a bigger one in 1972, working now for a consortium of 28 large orchestras. (See my blog posts about this, here and here.) The conclusions? Orchestras were in really big trouble, and the only solution was for the federal government to fund 25% of every orchestra's budget.

We know that didn't happen. So how did orchestras survive? It's simple - they developed the funding structure we take for granted now, in which they work feverishly to get donations from individuals, corporations, and foundations. And they staff large development departments to do that work. This all evolved during the 1970s, in response to the late '60s financial crisis that orchestras quite genuinely had.

Which shows that the funding pressure, growing over time, can get quite serious. It can lead orchestras to completely reinvent the way they fund themselves. So what happens if they have another crisis like the one in 1969? What happens if the percentage of income from ticket sales keeps falling - which we have no reason to believe won't happen - and other funding, under stronger pressure now, falls short? (Which could happen, for many reasons, one of which is the decline in concert attendance that Flanagan cites, and which I've noted in my blog before, here, for instance. One important source of donors, for orchestras, is the people who go to concerts. So if the number of people going to concerts falls, the number of donors ought to fall, too, at least in the future. Flanagan doesn't note this danger, and also doesn't mention the late-'60s crisis.)

There's more to say about Flanagan, of course. The study has its flaws, and some details of it have been strongly challenged, privately, to me, by a consultant who's worked with major orchestras. He thinks, for instance, that Flanagan is wrong in one of his other notable conclusions, which is that money spent on marketing and fund-raising may not do much good. (He also thinks orchestras will have a major financial crisis in the next few years.)

And I can understand, at least a little, the anger of the musicians in ICSOM. Flanagan does say that musicians' salaries, during the period he studied, rose faster than the consumer price index. I find his other comments on salaries very mild - he's hardly saying that salaries should be cut back. But musicians are sensitive. And - as Flanagan, for whatever reason, doesn't note - some orchestras have negotiated pay cuts in recent years, sometimes temporary ones, sometimes longer lasting. So no wonder musicians fly up in anger when the subject seems to come up, as maybe it seemed to in Flanagan's report. (The consultant I mentioned says, by the way, that musicians' pay hasn't risen any faster than the pay of other highly trained professions, a comparison that Flanagan might have made, but didn't.)

But what I can't understand - or at least don't have much sympathy for - is the hysteria (there's no other word) in the musicians' response. When they start talking about "our great art form," as they do toward the end of their statement, it's clear that their emotions have surged way beyond overdrive. It's as if they're afraid of bad news. "Bankruptcy used as a fund raising tool," they scream. "Ridiculous." But Flanagan never talks about bankruptcy. Nor does he think that orchestras are going bankrupt.

And if the financial news is bad, should orchestras hide it? Are they even able to hide it? This actually is a subject discussed behind the scenes in the orchestra world, and with my own ears I've heard at least one powerful orchestra manager say the public should never be told how bad things are, because that would scare off donors. The answer of course would be that donors would be more than scared if they find out they've been lied to. They'll be furious.

But there's an additional problem with hiding bad news - you might go into denial, and hide the bad news (or at least the extent of its badness) even from yourself. At least if you admit your problems it publicly, you're forced to do something about them. (Or at least to say you are.) The ICSOM musicians, I fear, sound like they're in the denial zone, since one reading of their statement might be something like this: Bad news is bad for us! So there isn't any!

And one final point. Some critics of the report seem to have anointed themselves as economists, and go around disputing any economic analysis that they decide they don't like. I found this happening when I e-mailed privately with one published critic of the report, someone I'm friendly with, and I'll admit I called him on it. There's also a notable music blogger whom I won't name, someone I otherwise greatly respect, who - though he probably wouldn't tell physicists what's wrong with the theory of relativity - runs out to tell the world why Baumol was wrong, why Baumol's dilemma shouldn't be taken seriously.

Which isn't to say that economists, even distinguished ones, can't be wrong. (And Baumol, often cited as a top candidate for the Nobel Prize, is certainly distinguished. I won't offer any single link here. Just Google "Baumol Nobel Prize" and see what you get.) And of course economists can disagree with each other. But I had a cognitive psychologist pester me, via e-mail, with total nonsense about Pierre Boulez. And at one of the Mellon meetings, an arrogant consultant told some of us that professional conductors aren't needed, that orchestral musicians should just take turns conducting their orchestras. When we tried to tell him why he was wrong, he smugly told us that we were standing in the way of innovation.

So how would an impartial panel of economists react to this blogger's post? Choose one:

This man is right. And he's taught us something! None of us ever thought of anything he said.

Or:

Yes, he has a point. We've disputed these things among ourselves, and some of us say pretty much what he does.

Or:

Sorry. Some of us might disagree with Baumol, but this man doesn't understand the principles involved. What he says doesn't make sense to any of us, even those who come to the same conclusion he does.

Though from what I've gathered - and I, as a non-economist, could of course be wrong - there's no serious disagreement with Baumol's theory. Well, at least I covered myself by saying that I could be wrong. I am wrong. Some economists do argue with Baumol, and you can find these arguments in a standard text, The Economics of Art and Culture, by James Heilbrun and Charles M. Gray. I've ordered that book, and will find out what sense I can make of the debate. But I'd urge you take this as en example not only of me making a mistake, but of how tricky it can be for non-experts to venture into expert territory.

Some things I've been thinking about....(And I'll have to add more in another post. Note that I'll be on vacation for a few days, and won't be able to post any comments till next Monday or Tuesday.)

First, and most exciting, Terrance McKnight (and also here), the new host and programmer of the "Evening Music" show on WNYC, New York's public radio station. He started on March 3.

I've been fascinated, over the many years that I've been commenting on the future of classical music, to see that future emerge. Fascinated, and delighted, too. I wouldn't have dared to predict exactly what the future would be, or when any part of it might arrive. And I'm finding that it's coming faster and faster. Terrance McKnight is a major step. He programs a nightly classical music show (well, Mondays through Thursdays), in which new music is the norm.

But it's not a new music show! Mainstream classical works are also featured, along with jazz, and other things. He opened with some African-American folk music from Mississippi, very rural and wild, which then unforgettably segued into the slow movement of Beethoven's Op. 109 piano sonata. You must look at his programming, which I've collated, up to the start of this week, from the WNYC website.

I think this is the classical music programming of the future, programming in which new music isn't an occasional spice (or annoyance, for people whose main love is standard repertoire), but is - I'll say it again - the norm. Certainly this is the kind of programming that can attract the new, young audience that classical music people always talk about. I don't know what kind of numbers the show is pulling, whether it's gaining audience or losing it. I can imagine many scenarios, one being a stampede toward the program, as word gets around, and another being a stampede away from it, and then a slow but steady surge of new people, growing over time, ending up with more people listening than listened before. Certainly I'm likely to listen.

And note that this future isn't, I'm a little sad to say, the future many of the people in the field so wistfully have hoped for. That's a future in which things continue unchanged, but somehow a new, young audience starts coming to concerts. When you think hard about that, it's unlikely - why should people start coming to something they've stayed away from for so many years? But I know many people (many, many people inside classical music) hoped they somehow would. The sadness, for these people, is that Terrance McKnight might be a strong sign that classical music really has a future, but it's not the future many people wanted.

McKnight, I should add, doesn't do this alone. He was brought to WNYC by my friend Limor Tomer, the station's Executive Producer of Music. Limor had already moved the show in this direction, but needed a brilliant host and programmer to make it sing. She found him, and deserves full credit.

But don't take my word for it! Download the programming, as I've collated it, and see what classical music looks like, when half the pieces you hear (maybe even more than half) are by living composers. I feel like I've been waiting for this for years, maybe for all my life. If this succeeds at (so to speak) the box office, and once word gets around, this might be the biggest a shot in the arm classical music has had in years.

***

Faithful readers may have noticed an echo above of my post on the Wordless Music orchestra concert, a performance of orchestral music by Gavin Bryars, John Adams, and Jonny Greenwood that sold out a thousand-seat church two nights in a row, with no advertising. As I said at the time, we saw - right at those concerts - the new young audience everyone talks about, the same audience (or pretty much the same) as the people who might listen to Terrance McKnight. And I quoted a veteran, highly placed classical music insider who - greatly impressed, even thrilled with what he saw - recalled that he'd told an orchestra he once worked with that if they ever got the young audience they talked about, they wouldn't like it. Here, he thought, was living proof of that. This audience simply won't go to standard classical programs, or at least not nearly as often as the present audience does.

You can hear that Wordless Music concert on WNYC's website. WNYC - another Limor Tomer initiative - broadcasts and archives all of Wordless Music's performances. (Note, by the way, that if you want to listen to the program one piece at a time, click the tiny "more" button at the lower left of the box describing the orchestra concert. You'll be taken to a page where you can choose which part of the concert to hear.)

The orchestra concerts were a new departure for Wordless; normally they do smaller shows, combining alternative bands with classical music. (And absolutely not, as I've said before, as any kind of outreach. The concerts simply reflect the taste of Ronen Givony, who runs the series. And, of course, the taste of their audience.)

I apologize to everyone who posted comments on my last few posts, but who hasn't seen their comments appear on the site. As I've often noted here, I have to approve each comment, because of the vast -- truly unspeakable! -- amount of spam that arrives. And since I like to reply to comments, I usually wait to post comments until I have time for the replies. Now, though, things have gotten out of hand, and I have a backlog. I do apologize, and the neglected comments (for which I'm grateful) will be posted shortly.