Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

I was in a store, and heard an ad on a classical station for a Shostakovich festival put on by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. “Celebrate Shostakovich,” said the ad, “with spectacular performances.” Or something like that. “Celebrate” and “spectacular” were certainly words the ad used. I pulled out my little notebook and wrote them down. This was ridiculous, of course, and almost offensive. Shostakovich isn’t celebratory or spectacular. He’s bitter, wry, and painful. Yes, he’s dramatic, but not in spectacular ways. This is … [Read more...]

Many thanks to ArtsJournal founder, guru, and all around good guy Doug McLennan for the spiffy new look of this blog. Doug does prodigious work, and has prodigious ideas as well. I don’t know when I’ve had a more stimulating or more helpful colleague. As I’ve said before! But it bears repeating many times. Doug deserves massive funding for everything he does, so he can be repaid in more than gratitude. … [Read more...]

Here's a wonderful passage from E. M. Forster's novel Howards End, about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. A followup, more or less, to those Louis Biancolli notes about the Sixth that I posted recently. Again we have somebody describing music the way we might experience it, not historically, and not analytically. A rare art, today, as many of you agree (if I can judge from the enthusiastic e-mail I've been getting). I'd love to know more literary passages that describe classical music this wonderfully. I know a few: the famous passage about Lucia … [Read more...]

Unfortunately, the start of my book has to be delayed a week. My apologies to everybody who hoped to read the first installment today (Monday, 10/24). And especially to the good people who have already written to me with interest in the book, and with fine suggestions for what should be in it. As they know from my responses, I take everything they say very seriously. The first installment will appear, without fail, on Monday, October 31...Halloween! I trust the only people it will scare are the few remaining die-hard purists. … [Read more...]

If anyone would like to see the complete liner Louis Biancolli liner notes for the Pastoral Symphony (see my post called "Out of the Past"), just contact me, and I'll e-mail them back to you. … [Read more...]

So now it's official. The first installment of my book will appear on Monday, on a special page right here on ArtsJournal. The subject of the book, of course, is the future of classical music. The title might be something like Looking for a Future: What We're Going to Do About Classical Music. Or maybe just What We're Going to Do About Classical Music. Which do you prefer? Or would some other title be better? True to the adventure that's a big part of this project, I'm happy to revise the title as I go. I'm certainly going to be revising the … [Read more...]

I was in Tower Records the other day, and they were playing the opening chorus of what turned out to be the Klemperer recording of Bach's B Minor Mass. It was slow and massive, moving (if it could be said to move at all) without a trace of what we now understand to be Baroque rhythm. Nobody, I think, could do Bach that way today. Some people would laugh, others would groan. Then, later the same day, I was listening to a 1955 Charles Munch recording of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and could barely believe the liner notes. They were by Louis … [Read more...]

I've gotten two e-mails about my "Media world" post, from people who got the idea that I'm impressed because guys in the Marines put Carmina Burana -- a classical piece -- on DVDs they made about their time in Iraq. So I guess I didn't write clearly enough. Really, I do know that Carmina Burana has been heard a lot in pop culture; I wouldn't conclude that anyone who uses it on the soundtrack of their homemade movie is sophisticated in any way about classical music. What I wanted to say, instead, was that guys in the Marines are making such … [Read more...]

The recent announcement from the BBC about their upcoming broadcast of everything Bach wrote reminds me that — unaccountably —I never said anything about their free Beethoven downloads, which must be the most wildly successful classical music promotion I’ve ever heard of. And it wasn’t just the downloads. They filled their website with Beethoven material, fascinating, readable stuff. They knew, in other words, how to create an event. And in fact they’ve been creating classical music events for a while now. We shouldn’t forget their … [Read more...]

Is it just me, or is this yet another demonstration of the way classical music lives in a little box, without looking up to think how it might look to the outside world? A CD by Early Music New York came in the mail, called A Bohemian Christmas. Now, nothing against the CD itself, which is just fine, really nice to listen to. But won't most people think first of offbeat artists celebrating Christmas, and not, as the group intends, about Christmas in medieval Bohemia, the place Dvorak later came from, which is now part of the Czech … [Read more...]

My wife's cousin just got back from Iraq. He's in the Marines; he was in combat for seven months. And he came back with a DVD full of films about his unit there. He didn't make them; someone else (or maybe a couple of someone elses) in his unit did. The films were quite adept -- mixtures of stills and video, with music, little snippets of shoutss or conversations, explosions, gunfire, black-humor asides. And all with music running in the background, either the "O fortuna" opening of Carmina Burana, or else rock songs (acerbic rap/metal … [Read more...]

From Ian Moss, Development and Marketing Associate at the American Music Center, and a faithful correspondent: I've known situations where someone brings a classical music newbie to a concert or whatever, they enjoy it or at least say they enjoy it, but that's it. There's no desire on their part to now seek out whatever that orchestra or ensemble is doing next, or to read up on the big issues in classical music, or this or that. They've put in their time and it was a fun night out and the next time they'll go see some comedy or … [Read more...]

Looks like the first installment of my book will appear online two weeks from today, on Monday, October 25. In a week, there should be some publicity, with more details. As I've said, this will be the first draft of what eventually will be a published book. Comments will be welcome (and in fact I'll leave two weeks between installments, to give time for comments). They'll help me immeasurably. But I still need a title. Any ideas? The subject, of course, is the future of classical music. And the contents will be arranged more or less like … [Read more...]

From my faithful correspondent (and former student, and pianist, and movement teacher) Eric Barnhill comes this: Your columns on City Opera reminded me of a nice opportunity I had several weeks ago to talk about City Opera's marketing with a couple of early-30s women who have no interest in opera, although as former dancers they both were very connected to the arts. One of them brought in the mail while I was over and they had a postcard from City Opera, that was in imitation of a personals ad section. I thought it was cute and asked them … [Read more...]

An ArtsJournal link on Monday took me to a Chicago Tribune story about the death of a Chicago chamber orchestra. The orchestra is the Concertante di Chicago, and the reasons given for its folding are very simple: "We looked into the future and were concerned about what we saw with audiences," [said Sheryl A. Sharp, the chair of the orchestra's board]. "We play to a generally older crowd, and frankly they were falling by the wayside. When we looked to see who was coming up behind them, we were not encouraged."[Artistic director Hillel Kagan] … [Read more...]