What can be done to save Classical Music?

[douglasM6]

Death in the City
(500 words).

Amidst the debris I perceived that this was once an eminent city: Majestic colonnades, marble museums and art galleries; grand concert halls and coliseums; colossal libraries archiving the tomes of collective wisdom and music of a hundred generations.

The pattern toward cataclysm was well-defined. First, under pressure from young electorate (who had already abandoned the old values), boom-boxes were legalised. These became universal bombastic status symbols and insidiously altered the psyche of all age-groups. People became confrontational. Lawlessness increased. The very fabric of society - morals and family - began to fragment as people selfishly stampeded to grab the latest and loudest boom-box and all expressions of Beauty were swamped, drowned out by the rising din.

Now firmly in the grip of madness, and lusting for more decibels themselves, the authorities, in a stroke of warped ingenuity, decided to fix society through noise. The Project was born.

The staggering enormity of the Project seized the collective imagination: Gigantic underground nuclear plants powering fifty monolithic exawatt amplifiers, each flexing a dome-shaped omnidirectional sound blaster the size of an Olympic stadium. With unsurpassed cohesion citizens united in a crescendo of activity. (Free auditory attenuation operations were performed on a small minority who became concerned that the impending climax might permanently affect their hearing).

The Day of Reckoning dawned. Everyone congregated in the city-centre, waiting in statuesque, deathly, silence for their moment of existential truth, their moment of glory. The mayor “pressed the button�.

Issued there forth an almighty thunderous roar of horrendous pink noise that savagely and multiply cleft a yawing, heaving valley, that wrenched foundation from edifice, that smashed, shattered and buried a city…


To counter post-modernism on the music front, impassioned classical lovers must champion the cause, directly and indirectly, along the following, and similar, strategic and particular lines:

Win the hearts of the children - in the schools and through creative home activities. Invite your children’s’ friends. They are malleable and they are the next generation.

Plan and promote regular affordable passes to concerts and rehearsals for groups of children and families.

Channel the promotion of all local amateur and professional performances into one non-profit multimedia information source.

Record companies: Allow free public broadcasting of classical music – it is powerful advertising.

Demonstrate the financial and social benefits of classical music to town councils, persuading them to discount rates for business that publicly broadcast the genre.

Shop and restaurant owners: Imbue your premises with a touch of class by playing Mozart in the background.

Employers: Do you want more productive, happier workers? Get rid of that junk in the background and over the phone system, and replace it with Bach and Chopin.

Police: Play classical music to the gangs. It has power to cleanse, quieten and stimulate the soul, as Edmonton Department, Alberta, Canada discovered. Criminal elements in a rough section disappeared.

It is action or extinction. Perform or perish…


Emergent from the sonic wasteland, a lone spire scratched at the heavens. A distant knell sounded the death of a civilisation.

[Lech]

Nonsense! Classical music has a foundation built of rolid sock! Besides, if we administer classical music to prisoners, they'll become calm, calculating, and psychopathical like in the movies.
Lech

[Ayn Marx]

Nonsense! Classical music covers such a wide spectrum of psychological states and mental spaces that to generalize about its effects is meaningless.Rumors of it's death are an exageration. Listened to the sound tracks of many movies of late?

[tma1]

Originally posted by Lech
Besides, if we administer classical music to prisoners, they'll become calm, calculating, and psychopathical like in the movies.

Seems to have official blessing ...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnews...section=latest

[douglasM6]

Originally posted by Lech
Besides, if we administer classical music to prisoners, they'll become calm, calculating, and psychopathical like in the movies.
Lech

As has been pointed out, "classical" (Baroque, classical, romantic, modern) spans all moods.

Maybe in certain cases, Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" would be the wrong piece to play to a psycopath out on parole or to drunken teenagers on Whangamata beach.

And Wagner, it seems, influenced Hitler's mix.

Heavy rock music it seems is not helpful when sitting a maths exam, while Bach seems to improve performance in some.

And there is a correlation between crime and certain types of "music".

In the news recently: people appear spend more at restaurants that play classical.

Sufficient to note that music does affect us and influence behaviour.

[tma1]

Originally posted by Ayn Marx
Rumors of it's death are an exageration

Maybe so, but go to the Auckland Town Hall when the Philharmonia are playing and count the number of patrons under 50. Apart from some music students and the few oddballs like me there aren't many. Unless those in the 30-50 age range suddenly acquire a liking for classical music then these orchestras and venues are going to face a major funding shortfall in a few years time.
What to do? Not sure. Probably get rid of the stuffy image for starters (the rock generation isnt interested in passively listening to a bunch of people in penguin suits). In the right relaxed context people are quite happy to listen to orchestral music -witness Christmas in the Park/Starlight Symphony in Auckland (100,000+ audience), or even "Symphony and Metallica"!

[douglasM6]

Originally posted by Ayn Marx
Rumors of it's death are an exageration. Listened to the sound tracks of many movies of late?

I think there may be slight exaggeration, but there is a struggle going on according to Naxos and apparently other labels that exist to make recordings:

"Symphonies are shutting down. Ballet and opera companies are reorganising. Throughout the world, purveyors of live classical music are struggling, and it seems that a centuries-old tradition of people gathering to enjoy live classical music rapidly is headed for extinction. "

These days, you have to go to a specialist store to see a respectable variety of classical on sale.

While it is not all doom and gloom, where is the younger generation that is the future? What is the age distribution of supporters of classical, live and recorded?

I fear that aesthetics will be thrust aside as hard economics hammers away. Eg. termination of music programs in the schools, as in the film "Mr Holland's Opus". Heck I grew up in a school that had its own orchestra, let alone a music lesson a week.

[Ayn Marx]

Originally posted by tma1
Maybe so, but go to the Auckland Town Hall when the Philharmonia are playing and count the number of patrons under 50.

Yes indeed the symphonic scene is in decline.A few notable exeptions have impressed me of late though:- Gorecki *& Arvo Part come to mind. However the symphonic repetoire is only one part of the classical world. In Oz chamber music , early music & organ/harpsicord recitals attract large numbers of young fans. Though not to my taste,crossover jazz/chamber music thrives. Also world/ethnic music has off-shoots that some might consider classical or serious.
Rather than just puzzling about the end of some classical music we need also to ask why it is that the younger generation is utterly incapable of sitting in one spot and listening to ANY kind of music without accompanying videos, laser light shows & performers thrusting thier crutches at the camera etc. Expecting the members of any symphony orchestra to indulge in such juvenile idiocy is recommending we paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa because she's become a boring cliché.

[tma1]

Originally posted by Ayn Marx
In Oz chamber music , early music & organ/harpsicord recitals attract large numbers of young fans.

That's encouraging, I wouldnt say it's the same in Auckland. Is this in a concert chamber or a less formal setting? Is the marketing aimed towards a younger audience?

we need also to ask why it is that the younger generation is utterly incapable of sitting in one spot and listening to ANY kind of music

Make that incapable of sitting in one spot and doing anything for more than 3 seconds. Too much opportunity for instant self-gratification, that's what I say - hey, I'm actually turning into a boring old fart, must go and listen to Salmonella Dub again.

[mycenius]

Originally posted by tma1
Make that incapable of sitting in one spot and doing anything for more than 3 seconds. Too much opportunity for instant self-gratification, that's what I say - hey, I'm actually turning into a boring old fart, must go and listen to Salmonella Dub again.

...or perhaps too much sugar and food colouring in their diet, too much emphasis on getting somewhere (rather than on how you get there), lack of patience, lack of good role models...

All part of the world 'growing up'... You can expect more of it...

M.

[Craig F]

Does classical music need saving? If it is perceived as relevant and interesting then there will be no shortage of people performing and/or listening to it. If however it's perceived as irrelevant and boring it'll quietly die. I find it hard to believe that music that has survived for hundreds of years will completely wilt and be forgotten, but many other arts and human endeavours have why should classical music be any different? By the way I've been listening to a lot more classical over the last couple of months and I'm really enjoying it, I just don't see it as more or less special than any other style of music.

Cheers,

Craig.

[Ayn Marx]

Originally posted by tma1
Is this in a concert chamber or a less formal setting? Is the marketing aimed towards a younger audience?

Both concert & less formal settings. There's also a very healthy chamber music scene being held in private homes.
The marketing is indeed very deliberatly aimed at the younger audience.

[Lech]

Originally posted by Craig F
...If it is perceived as relevant and interesting then there will be no shortage of people performing and/or listening to it. If however it's perceived as irrelevant and boring it'll quietly die....

Too right! Compare the longevity of classical music with rock and pop, with most of today's music all it takes is a few months and the songs are forgotten. Sure, there are all the "mediocre hits of...." albums just to milk it to death... Come to think of it classical music could teach "pop" music a few lessons (npi).

A lot of people can't stand classical music, yet they find rock - especially when it has violent undertones and yelling - relaxing. I might think that's strange, but it has probably always been like that. Not much can be done about it, it's probably somehow hard-wired in the brain. It's not like classical music is going to die out though, I think it has always been a minor player compared with all the other genres.

Lech

[tma1]

Originally posted by Ayn Marx
There's also a very healthy chamber music scene being held in private homes.

Don't I know it! I regularly have my wife's quartet playing in the lounge. The amateur scene here is indeed very active, it's the commercial concerts which seem to have problems.
I am convinced that better marketing could turn the tide. It could start with some promotion of current New Zealand composers - Gareth Farr is flamboyant enough to appeal to a younger audience and much of his music is influenced by Indonesian gamelan which would attract the world music crowd. John Psathas uses rock and jazz influences, some of his work could be described as "ambient" or "chill out". And for the electronic experimentalists there's John Rimmer.
From there the whole world of "classical" music opens up.