The Future of Art Music

[retiredprof55]

As a composer, performer, and educator, I am constantly concerned with the future of art music. A recent newspaper article about the Pittsburgh Symphony budget deficit is the impetus for this posting. The article mentioned a deficit of $500,000 or more for the 2004-05 season and attributed the deficit to lower than expected ticket sales for the classical subscription series. Ticket sales for the classical subscription series have grown only 2% over the past 22 years while ticket sales for the pops concerts have grown 8%. In my opinion, this is reflective of three national trends that I feel need to be addressed.

Because of outside influences, music education in our schools has been watered down. In an effort to be more inclusive, classroom music, music ensembles, and college music courses for the general student have indirectly equated vernacular music and art music. There is nothing wrong with being inclusive, but I feel it is the music teacher’s responsibility to point out the similarities and differences between vernacular music and art music. Each offers its own rewards, but art music involves more understanding of musical elements and their relationships, and therefore functions on a higher intellectual plane. I feel it is the educator’s responsibility to help the student grow in the intellectual understanding of music and not succumb to pressure from administration, parents and students by allowing vernacular music to be equated with art music.

Most performers display a lack of interest in music being written by living composers. Unfortunately, the trends of composition in the middle and late 20th century contributed greatly to this problem. However, performers should realize that there are many composers writing art music that is accessible to both performers and listeners as it is based on the traditions established prior to the mid- 20th century. John Winsor, in his book "Breaking the Sound Barrier: An Argument for Mainstream Literary Music", makes a wonderful case explaining why music went astray in the mid-20th century. I feel his book is a "must read" for any educator, performer or composer. A way for performers to show their audiences that music composition is an art that is still alive and vital is to include a recent composition composed in a "mainstream literary music" style on every program.

Many of today’s composers emphasize intellectualism and innovation over perceivable craft. There is nothing wrong with innovation except that it has become an end within itself. Intellectualism and innovation are rewarded through composition contest prizes and grants that are judged by other composers, therefore perpetuating a style of music that is no longer accessible to both performers and audiences. I would like to quote from the final chapter of my book "A Composer’s Guide to Understanding Music with Activities for Listeners, Interpreters, and Composers" regarding composing trends. "Throughout musical history, the balance between the classic (of the mind) and romantic (of the heart) modes of thinking has alternated. The center of the pendulum can be thought of as equal treatment intellectualism and emotionalism. The pendulum swings that occurred prior to the twentieth century have not eliminated the other mode of thought. They have just changed the emphasis. During the early to mid-twentieth century, the swing towards classicism went to extremes by over emphasizing the intellectualism and rejected anything associated with emotionalism. The composer, Igor Stravinsky, stated that "music is powerless to express anything at all". He later retracted that statement, but it clearly illustrates the rejection of emotionalism in music. The intellectualism that dominated much of twentieth century music, and still exists today, has been a contributing factor to alienating audiences and performers from new music. The majority of the relationships between unity and variety are mostly perceivable through in-depth score study, rather than by active or passive listening."

Educators, performers and composers must work together to ensure the future of art music. I welcome your feedback regarding my comments and invite you to visit my web site at http://cooppress.hostrack.net to learn about the programs that Co-op Press has established to encourage partnerships between composer, performer and audience.

Dr. Sy Brandon
Professor Emeritus
Millersville University of Pennsylvania

[BWV 1080]

ISTM that top-down perscriptions such as this are doomed to failure. Developing the symphonic equivalent of Smooth Jazz to draw in audiences is a mistake. Actually modernist music appears to resonate with the younger generation that is likely turned off by bluehair music like Bruckner. Witness the enthusiastic sellout audiences for Ferneyhough's recent performances in New York. Your description of modern music is a tired cliche. Tonal, accesible music has never stopped being written. In the past 30 years, minimalism and new romanticism have been arguably the dominant trends in new compositions.

[BWV 1080]

deleted (duplicate post)

[Ralph]

As a very non-retired academic I welcome you to our eclectic group. Your topic is always relevant-we've discussed the subject many times. I hope you become a regular contributor.

Many reasons underlie the reported mortal illness of classical concerts but the picture is far more complicated than the naysayers' exhortations that the concert venue ceiling is falling.

I attend, as most here know, several concerts (or operas) a week. I have the time and, most importantly, the funds to do so. Many younger people have neither as work hours have dramatically increased as has competition for leisure dollars. Input into that a clear and probably permanent shift by younger generations to make leisure activity decisions frequently and on a close-to-the-event basis and it's easy to see that a commitment to a season of weekend or midweek concerts a year in advance is a tradition marked largely for desuetude.

On the other hand recent concerts at the New York Philharmonic where tickets were discounted brought in many young people, including teens, quite often obviously in dating duos.

Marketing is the key and that means creative marketing that ignores old strategies, assumptions and comfortable beliefs that if the orchestra or soloists are great, the masses (mini-masses to be sure) will follow.

Anecdotally, it seems that opera is attracting a broader segment of younger consumers than classical music is.

I don't think gimmicks like big screen projections of music-associated themes or of the orchestra members and conductor offer any hope of enlisting new attendees. Singles events, which the Philharmonic has tried, don't seem to work much either (I can't imagine sidling up to a winsome lass and asking her, as a starting line, "Do you think there should be two or three hammer blows in the fourth movement of Mahler's Sixth Symphony?").

The loss of musical education programs is deplorable but many orchestras, including the NYP, are reaching out to select schools to bring classical music to very young kids. This is definitely an area crying for both more commitment and more money.

Despite Norman Lebrecht's incessant prognostication of extinction for classical recordings, sales are more or less where they've been for a long time. NAXOS has conspicuously demonstrated that fine recordings of often little known music can sell. Other labels need to follow their example. NAXOS is the Jet Blue of classical CDs.

There are other issues, of course, but I don't think the situation is desperate. Troubling? Sure. Challenging? Absolutely.

[dzalman]

Around this time last year, there was a huge conversation on this topic going on in the "blogosphere", participating in which were some print-media biggies (bloggers all) such as even Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker. Here's an excerpt from one of the posts in that conversation from one of my favorite bloggers, A.C. Douglas:

During the past decade or so, one has read often of attempts made by various classical (or "serious", or "art") music entities -- symphony orchestras, chamber groups, recital organizers, even opera companies -- to gain a larger audience for their "product", and it's nothing short of depressing to observe that, virtually without exception, they've all, to greater or lesser degree, pursued a model that's not merely wrongheaded, but positively suicidal. That model, in keeping with the rabidly populist and promiscuously equalitarian Zeitgeist of our era, and using promotional techniques employed in the world of mass entertainment, has at its core the concept of reaching out to The People; or using less euphemistic and less generous terminology, prole pandering. While such a concept is perfectly appropriate and spot-on in the world of mass entertainment, it's an ultimate kiss of death in the world of classical music for the simple and should-be (but astonishingly, largely isn't) obvious reason that, much as one wishes it were not the case, classical music is not, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever even marginally be, an object of mass or even widespread appeal no matter how vigorously and assiduously it may be promoted. Classical music is, by its very nature, a fundamentally elitist enterprise, and should never be viewed or promoted as anything other.

The above is the opening paragraph of the post, the entirety of which (and it goes on in some detail) can be read here, and includes links to others in the conversation, including a response by Alex Ross.

[pizza]

One has to wonder how it is that the Finns seem to have solved the problem. In a country of 5.5 million people, just look at the staggering proportional number of world-class composers, first-rate orchestras and world-class conductors produced, as well as the high interest and support of the populace for classical music. There must be a lesson to be learned there.

[karlhenning]

Allow me to echo your welcome, Dr Brandon!

(I once glanced briefly at John Winsor's book, and found it of interest ... I should look more closely soon ...)

... There are other issues, of course, but I don't think the situation is desperate. Troubling? Sure. Challenging? Absolutely.

This must be the appropriate time to trot out the Chinese word for crisis, which is a compound of two ideograms, meaning something like "dangerous opportunity."

[Gregory Kleyn]

One has to wonder how it is that the Finns seem to have solved the problem. In a country of 5.5 million people, just look at the staggering proportional number of world-class composers, first-rate orchestras and world-class conductors produced, as well as the high interest and support of the populace for classical music. There must be a lesson to be learned there.

One doesn't have to wonder. The "solution" in Finland has been considerable state subsidies (including stipends provided to composers), and the simple lesson to be learned that the Finns value art music in a way that typically vulgar Americans do not.

[Dickson]

If the Finns value art music so highly, why do they need "considerable state subsidies"?

[Gregory Kleyn]

If the Finns value art music so highly, why do they need "considerable state subsidies"?

The expression of values in a society need not always result in financially self-supporting enterprises to legitimate them, and market forces driven by the stimulus and response immediacies of individual choices not necessarily the most effective means to institute those values.

Higher human culture, with its (non-democratic) correlates of quality, vision, and distance simply cannot function socially and economically in the way American mass culture does, - and any insistence otherwise manifests the same vulgar mindset unable to truly access that higher culture (but which simply wants to appetitively consume it), - and which will kill it as a result.

[retiredprof55]

I look forward to participating in future discussions.

Sy Brandon

[Ralph]

I look forward to participating in future discussions.

Sy Brandon

*****

And we look forward to your participation.

[karlhenning]

As a composer, performer, and educator, I am constantly concerned with the future of art music [...]

Because of outside influences, music education in our schools has been watered down [...]

Most performers display a lack of interest in music being written by living composers. Unfortunately, the trends of composition in the middle and late 20th century contributed greatly to this problem [....]

Curiously, I have sometimes run into the opposite problem. Some of the music I have written is of such seemingly effortless transparency, that quite a few choral conductors have dismissed my scores for being, apparently, too easy.

Of course, I get cuffed from the other end, too; some of my scores are quite technically demanding, and other conductors/performers shy away from the rehearsal demands.

And perhaps, part of the problem with lack of interest on the part of performers and audience, may be this very watering-down of the cultural component of education, should we not think?

Cheers,
~Karl