Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

This came to me last night, from Delta David Gier, music director of the South Dakota Symphony: I am now coming to the close of a season of concerts centered around Pulitzer prize-winning composers. This is my first season as Music Director, and I have worked for the past ten years as an assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic. During the interview process in Sioux Falls last year I stressed the importance of the orchestra's commitment to contemporary music. When I was offered the position I then had to figure out how to make good … [Read more...]

What follows comes from conversations with several organizations, and a consulting job with one of them. Suppose you're a classical music group, musically terrific, reasonably well known, and with a reasonably long history of success. But now your audience seems to be shrinking. You're not alone in this, since the same thing seems be happening everywhere. But still you need to do something about it. What do you do? Immediately, as far as I can see, you have a dilemma. On one hand, you've got all the stuff you've always done to sell tickets. … [Read more...]

[This is an old post -- from January 25. But I'm not sure it ever got on my blog, due to some technical glitch, so I'm reposting it now.] Well, responses have been pouring in to things I've been writing lately -- the dimensions of the crisis, Baroque and medieval performance, CD covers. I'm glad I'm touching various nerves. And finding so much agreement! We've got a fine conspiracy going here. All through the classical music world are people who agree with the kinds of things I say, some of them in major institutions. The institutions are slow … [Read more...]

Funny to read (in a Norman Lebrecht column, linked from ArtsJournal) that anyone might object to the English National Opera performing Leonard Bernstein's On the Town. It's a musical, see, and opera companies ought to be above that. (Which isn't Lebrecht's position, by the way.) My wife and I just listened to the On the Town original cast album, during one of our drives from our New York apartment to our country place. It's very sophisticated music, heads and shoulders, if you ask me, over most American operas. The beginning is especially … [Read more...]

Orchestras are in trouble, in the end, for one simple reason -- their market is shrinking. You can see that in a long-term decline in ticket sales, especially for most orchestras' core subscription series. You can also deduce the shrinking market from the overall situation of classical music, which each year gets less important in our culture. In the early 1960s, Life (then the leading mass-market national magazine) commissioned a piano piece from Copland, and printed it, for readers to play. In the early 2000s, classical radio stations … [Read more...]

If you've already read this…I've revised my conclusion, adding some thoughts on why deficits can be a misleading measure of financial health. Here are two headlines, from ArtsJournal links to recent news stories: "SF Opera in the Black (After Major Deficits)" (San Francisco Chronicle, February 21) "Cincinnati to Build on Recent Fiscal Success" (Cincinatti Enquirer, March 2). Both these headlines make you think that the San Francisco Opera and the Cincinnati Symphony are in good financial shape. Granted, they're a little sunnier … [Read more...]

It's also helpful if someone -- trashing or loving some work of art -- gives some space to the other side. That's especially helpful if the art in question is controversial, extreme, not well known, or widely misunderstood. For instance, when I write about Cage's 4'33", I could reach out a hand to everyone who can't abide the piece, everyone who sits there during a performance, going wild with boredom or nervousness, wishing the silence would go away. (Though, in the '80s, writing my column in The Village Voice, I had no patience with Edward … [Read more...]

Hilton Kramer, and his assault on the poor, harmless gates (linked from ArtsJournal today)…I really have to laugh. Of course the guy's a long-time curmudgeon, but he doesn't say a thing about what's wrong (in his view) with this Christo/Jeanne-Claude artwork -- just that they're a "defacement" of Central Park, an "assault on nature," and a "wanton desecration of a precious work of art." In these last two points, he's incoherent, since the "wanton desecration" comes about because Central Park is a masterpiece of landscape art, which means the … [Read more...]

A footnote to the above. When we read someone trash The Gates as Hilton Kramer trashes them, how can we know whether to take the trashing seriously? Or, conversely, if someone praises something, how can we assess the praise? Here are some ideas. When someone trashes something -- or, at the other end of the spectrum, praises something wildly -- we need to understand whether they actually know anything about what they're trashing or praising. We can judge that from how they praise or trash. Do they mention anything specific about the work … [Read more...]

I was in Paris this past weekend, and went to the Louvre, where somehow I'd never been. Of course I had to see the Mona Lisa, which turns out to be three art pieces, all happening at the same time, layered on top of each other. The first, of course, is the painting itself, which is more impressive -- it has more presence, for one thing -- than I'd guessed from reproductions. I wish it were displayed with other Leonardos, especially if its smile is one of its attractions. Other faces in other Leonardos at the Louvre also have sly, surprising … [Read more...]

A painting by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, "Fête musicale donné par le cardinal de La Rochefoucauld au théatre Argentina de Rome en 1747 sur l'occasion du mariage du Dauphin, fils de Louis XV." ("Musical celebration given by the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld at the Theater Argentina in Rome in 1747 on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin, son of Louis XV.") As its title would suggest, this painting shows a large and rather formal concert. There's an orchestra of (by my count) just over 70 musicians, which certainly supports the point I made … [Read more...]

We need to revise a lot of what we think we know about classical music and its history. For instance, how the audience behaves. We take for granted our current practice, which of course is that the audience sits silently, not even applauding between movements. Of course, we're starting to ease up on that -- applause between movements doesn't seem completely forbidden any more. But what most of us don't know is how recent our current rules for the audience are. They may date only from the middle of the last century. I've made a great fuss about … [Read more...]

Today there's a very important link on ArtsJournal -- or actually links, because the piece shows up both under Music and Theater. (And it was linked yesterday, too, which makes three links!) Seriously, though, this is something everyone who cares about classical music should read. It's by Nicholas Kenyon, a former critic who now (to his everlasting credit, considering what he's done) runs the BBC Proms; it ran in the Guardian in Britain yesterday. What Kenyon says is very simple. Classical music ought to be in fabulous shape, because the … [Read more...]

This just occured to me. Classical music purists insist that classical music is valuable precisely because it isn't popular. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You define classical music as not popular, and its look and feel starts to reflect that. People -- no fools they -- start to get the message, and classical music actually becomes unpopular. People stop listening to it. And so the purists get their wish, though not quite in the way they expected. They hadn't figured that if classical music wasn't popular, it might disappear. … [Read more...]

Here's an e-mail I got from a friend this week, someone who works in the classical music business in New York. No need to say anything to introduce it. It speaks, wistfully, for itself: So this weekend I finally got around to screening some of the DVD's of the Bernstein Young People's Concerts; it's amazing how far we HAVEN'T come.  Who could imagine a Music Director actually leading a series to help people learn how to listen, and a national TV network broadcasting it?  And they're GOOD.    Then I went to MOMA, and I … [Read more...]