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Re: Are even clarinet hobbyists a dying breed?

Author: EEBaum
Date: 2006-01-14 18:20

Doom and gloom! Doom and gloom!

Frankly, I think that if the "classical" world spent as much time trying to connect to audiences as they did lamenting the horrible decline of the music, perhaps they wouldn't be so bad off.

Given the number of people that make the "woe is the arts" argument year after year, there will always be some audience out there.

I also think that people would be less steeped in "old" classical music if they didn't keep complaining about the horrible state of classical music. If you believe that the audience doesn't like your music, you play to the few people that DO still come (the people that like the "listeners' choice CD" music), and further marginalize the people that were undecided on the issue and may have enjoyed an edgier program.

I also don't care for the losing "war on rock music" that many classical-types seem to be waging. Heaven forbid that WE play music that is relevant to our audiences. Why, after all, is it such an incredibly big deal when someone in our circles plays something less than 30 years old?

We should be happy as a niche, and we're quite a large niche at that.

I think the classical world just has a LOT of trouble coming to terms that they aren't the popular ones. After hundreds of years of exaltedness, I guess it takes hundreds more to accept the loss of "supreme music" status.

If we would get out of denial and accept our musical place in the world for what it is, I think it would be very freeing, and would lead to a much more vibrant "classical" world. After all, would you rather go to a welcoming concert put on by people who play a particular style of music because they like to and who appreciate your patronage, or to an oppressive "you're supposed to be here because we are culture" marathon event put on almost out of habit by people who feel entitled to have a large, quiet, attentive, high-brow audience and snubs their noses at people who do not "understand" them?

Are there any other genres of music where a newly-formed ensemble EXPECTS to have an audience without any prior exposure? If I were to form a Beatles cover band (because that's essentially what a newly formed, say, string quartet is) I wouldn't expect a soul to come and hear us in concert. MAYBE we could start out with a coffee house gig. And it would probably be mostly older people who came to listen to us (getting older every year! Oh noes!). And not very many of them. Unless we got really good, we would likely disband, and we'd say "Well, we had a good time." As opposed to the string quartet who would be more inclined to say "Screw you all, haters of classical music!"

If we were to consider ourselves culturally valuable and insightful rather than "we are culture, hear us roar! A pox on you all, players of inferior musics!" I think people would come to us more and, in turn, perhaps school funding for our type of stuff would in turn be reexamined as valuable and people would find us agreeable people to hobbyisticize with.

-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com

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