{"id":1733,"date":"2020-04-19T11:41:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T15:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1733"},"modified":"2020-04-19T11:41:39","modified_gmt":"2020-04-19T15:41:39","slug":"music-in-challenging-times-an-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2020\/04\/music-in-challenging-times-an-opportunity.html","title":{"rendered":"Music in Challenging Times &#8212; An Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Deep River: The Art of the Spiritual\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZPtErjL9fWk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Back in the 1930s, American radio \u2013 that is, American commercial radio, which is all we had \u2013 knew that listeners were amenable to paying attention to what they were hearing and nothing else. A long attention span was assumed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Commensurately, the airwaves were full of classical music \u2013 a phenomenon I pondered in my most reviled book,&nbsp;<em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=18\">Understanding Toscanini<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (1987). (Reviled because I foresaw the swift marginalization of classical music, but never mind.) I wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAs Toscanini\u2019s celebrity attested, culture\u2019s new audience, tutored by Will Durant, H. G. Wells, the \u2018University of Chicago Round Table,\u2019 and Billy Phelps of Yale, feasted on great music. Radio offered the Metropolitan Opera and the NBC Symphony on Saturdays, the New York Philharmonic and \u2018The Ford Hour\u2019 on Sundays: as of 1939, these four well-known longhair broadcasts were said to reach more than 10 million families a week. Additional live broadcast concerts and operas, and portions of \u2018serious\u2019 music emanating from network studios, had diminished since the early thirties. Still, an average Sunday afternoon gave New York City radio listeners perhaps three \u2018light classical\u2019 studio concerts and as many studio recitals in addition to the Philharmonic broadcasts; an average Sunday evening added three or four more live concerts and recitals in addition to \u2018The Ford Hour\u2019; and the weekday schedule might include more than a dozen live broadcasts of hinterlands orchestras, studio orchestras, and studio recitals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An audience study conducted in 1939 showed that in cities (population 100,000 or more), 62 per cent of college graduates \u201cliked listening to classical music in the evening.\u201d For town of 2,500 and under, and farms, the percentage was 49.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You could also tune into Abram Chasins, whose \u201cPiano pointers\u201d on CBS and \u201cChasins\u2019 Music Series\u201d on NBC \u2013 commercial radio, ambitiously masterminded by William Paley and David Sarnoff &#8212; were workshops for amateur pianists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was then and now is now. And yet I read that a new survey of public radio stations shows that listeners are keen to find distractions from COVID 19. And for some time youtube has been discovering an appetite for \u201clong form\u201d content: two hours of talking and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also read that in Germany\u2019s minister of culture, Monika Grutters, has recommended an expenditure of&nbsp;&nbsp;50 billion euros ($54 billion) for Germany\u2019s \u201ccreative and cultural sectors.\u201d She says: \u201cOur democratic society needs its unique and diverse cultural and media landscape in this historic situation, which was unimaginable until recently. . . artists are not only indispensable, but also vital, especially now.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At a moment when America\u2019s performing arts institutions are challenged not merely to continue to function but to function in new ways, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.postclassical.com\">PostClassical Ensemble <\/a><\/strong>\u2013 the \u201cexperimental\u201d DC-based chamber orchestra I co-founded 17 years ago with the wonderful Angel Gil-Ordonez \u2013 will undertake a series of videos exploring the role of music in society. We\u2019ve tentatively christened it \u201cPostClassical: More than Music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This initiative comes easily to us, as our programming has typically focused on music as an instrument for mutual understanding and human betterment. In fact, our\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wwfm.org\/programs\/postclassical#stream\/0\">library<\/a><\/strong> of two-hour WWFM webcasts, inimitably hosted by Bill McGlaughlin, is our starting point in this new venture, in which we are partnered by the film-maker Behrouz Jamali and the enterprising journal of politics, government, and culture\u00a0<em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/the-american-interest\/tai-today-1285344\">The American Interest.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our two most recent projects, before the virus changed everything, were&nbsp;<em>An <\/em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/404265049\"><em>Armenian<\/em> Odyssey,<\/a><\/strong> at the Washington National Cathedral, and&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wwfm.org\/post\/postclassical-february-21-furtwangler-wartime\"><em>Furtwangler in Wartime<\/em>,<\/a><\/strong> via WWFM. The former explored the power of music to forge inspirational cultural synergies. The latter explored the power of music to \u201cbear witness\u201d during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We begin posting our new \u201cMore than Music\u201d videos&nbsp;<em>today<\/em> with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/the-american-interest\/tai-today-1285344\">\u201cDeep <strong>River: The Art of the Spiritual<\/strong>,\u201d <\/a>in which we are joined by PCE Resident Artist Kevin Deas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Forthcoming programs will include \u201cShostakovich and the State\u201d (with Solomon Volkov), Arthur Farwell and the \u201cIndianists,\u201d \u201cThe Russian Gershwin,\u201d and \u201cDvorak and America.\u201d The topics at hand are \u201cWhat is the role of culture in a nation\u2019s life?\u201d and \u201cWho is an American?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For decades, conventional wisdom about the airwaves has been \u201cclassical music radio stations don\u2019t want talking\u201d and \u201cavoid the unfamiliar.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If that is ever to change, now is the time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in the 1930s, American radio \u2013 that is, American commercial radio, which is all we had \u2013 knew that listeners were amenable to paying attention to what they were hearing and nothing else. A long attention span was assumed. Commensurately, the airwaves were full of classical music \u2013 a phenomenon I pondered in my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-rX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1733"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}