Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-28 07:06
Much of the problem is that orchestras are huge and incredibly expensive undertakings. They'll never make it on ticket sales alone.
Also, we as the classical music community historically did this to ourselves. Right when swing and rock were getting a foothold in popular culture, we went very far out of our way to make everything new in our tradition unlistenable, or at least very challenging. A Mozart symphony, a Beethoven sonata, the people of the time could appreciate on a first listen. Maybe not grasp the depth of it, but find something to enjoy.
What were we doing when rock and other popular genres came along? Serialism, high modernism, etc. When the compositional community rebelled against the romantic traditions of the past, they also inadvertently shut out the "common folk" audience. The damage was done, and classical music turned from a combination of old and new, of classics and things relevant to people of today, to a museum. A museum of old things, and a museum of contemporary things, but a museum nonetheless, where terms such as "art music" abound.
And it became increasingly irrelevant to the cultural mainstream, to the point that today it's seen largely as "there was this really awesome thing once, and we should try to keep it around because it has lots of awesome bits to it, even if much of it is nostalgia." It's still here out of habit, and as a niche, and as something that everyone's been told is important, and most of them believe it, but that is so far removed from culture at large that, with all the stuff people do and the other options they have and with bands that promote themselves as something people might WANT to listen to rather than what they SHOULD listen to, they can't be assed to come to one of our concerts. And I really wouldn't expect them to.
The damage has been done, and as I see it, we need to come to terms with this reality: classical music is disconnected from relevance with our current culture. Even new pieces that reflect the world of today are presented in an institution so ingrained in the past that they may as well have been written 100 years ago. We can't rely on this institution to make a valiant comeback because it's continuously getting older. Each generation that passes is one generation further removed from Haydn symphonies.
Approaching it as a start-from-scratch-with-a-huge-base-of-awesome-material-to-draw-from angle may be a way about it. I'm not saying to pander, nor to dumb down the music, but rather to consider the musical institution as "something over there that's preserving the awesomeness of the past" rather than something that will see it on into the future.
I don't see anything wrong with preserving classical music as a museum-type entity, even one that has relevant aspects and inroads to today. It's just never going to morph itself back into the mainstream. Stand by the entrance of a classical concert and watch people walk in. Observe their attitude, their walk, their demeanor. If you didn't know where they were going and were given the following options, which would you guess: museum, church, show, party
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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