Continuing from my last post, about how to define classical music… My students — in my Juilliard course on classical music’s future — came up with a definition that I think works. It happens to be the definition I worked out years ago for myself, but I didn’t lead the students to it. They found it on their own. It’s in two parts. First, classical music is the music of the European tradition. Both the art and entertainment music, it’s important to say. Because we have the idea that classical music is, by nature, high art. But in past … [Read more...]
Archives for 2017
What is classical music?
This question deeply engages the students in my graduate course on the future of classical music, which I teach at Juilliard each spring. The link takes you to the week by week class schedule, with links to all assignments. For an overview of the course, go here. And this is an important question. We need a new audience. But how are we going to get one if we can’t tell people why classical music is valuable? And how can we do that if we don’t know what classical music is? Without, that is, falling back on boilerplate — resounding phrases … [Read more...]
What our new audience wants
Over and over I’ve said that our classical music world doesn’t feel like the world outside, the world most people live in. Including our hoped-for new audience! Not that I’m the only one saying this. But one organization that did something to address the problem, bigtime, is the California Symphony, spearheaded by its executive director, Aubrey Bergauer. So, without another word, I’ll link to Aubrey’s post on the orchestra’s blog, a post called “Orchestra X: The Results.” Some excerpts: Back in August, we rolled out a new program called … [Read more...]
Getting back on track
Happy new year, everyone! I've been slow restarting here. Much holiday travel and happiness, and a weekend in our country house, flying Rafa's new remote control helicopter clear over the roof. And then preparations for my spring semester Juilliard course, Classical Music in an Age of Pop. The link takes you to last year's class schedule, with all assignments, but this year's will be reasonably similar. For a shorter read, here's a course overview. And now… …I'll tease some upcoming blog posts… How will we know when classical music is truly … [Read more...]