by Frank T. Manheim
The
Pace of Classical Music Reform Increases
in the UK and the USA
Classical music’s
decline stimulates greater outreach
to audiences but a real turnaround needs
more.
The most important stimulus
for increased outreach to general musical
audiences by professional musical establishments
has been concern about the decline in
classical music’s influence (see a previous
article).
The magnificent musical
traditions inherited from the past:
symphony orchestras, operas, ballets,
and conservatories of music are expensive.
They can only be supported or justified
in terms of funding if they serve the
public.
Pragmatically motivated
initiatives are important. But from
a conceptual viewpoint they may play
second fiddle to increased numbers of
motivated musicians and music activists
willing to challenge the music establishment.
I personally want to experience a reversal
of the decline in Classical music in
my lifetime. It’s a long shot but not
impossible.
The importance of
new music that speaks to audiences today.
Notwithstanding the
beauties in older music, I believe that
a critical means to revitalize classical
music must be new music that speaks
to today, but also speaks to audiences.
In the absence of exciting new music,
I recently traveled 600 miles to attend
a world premiere of the assumed lost
Boris Goudenow (1710) by baroque
composer Johann Mattheson at the Boston
Early Music Festival. It was a huge
hit – nearly three hundred years after
its composition. It couldn’t have motivated
nearly three years of effort in retrieval
from Armenia and production, nor captivated
both musicians and audiences, and induced
travel by my wife and I if composer
Mattheson’s objective had been largely
self-actualization or demonstrating
his originality to peers (although surely
both were achieved). Mattheson – a newly
discovered major talent, was clearly
motivated to communicate with audiences.
As in previous centuries
of evolving styles, effective music
in the 21st Century will
probably express an internal desire
by composers to communicate, at times
stretching for effect, but using a musical
language understood by audiences. The
test of new music meeting the challenge
of a turnaround may well be whether
it can attract young people – because
they’ll be the key element required
to turn the tide and confound the cynics
regarding the future of classical music.
I know of no compositions
after 1950 by accredited contemporary
composers except Leonard Bernstein (West
Side Story) that have aroused significant
or sustained interest among American
young people. And as regards Bernstein,
his more popular musical flyers were
widely deprecated by musical leaders
and influential writers in his time.
Composers with "attitude"
don’t engage audience gratitude.
I explored in a previous
article the lingering effect of futurist
philosophies. These ideas – rejecting
methods and musical language familiar
to audiences - stoked the revolution
in the arts in the early 20th
Century. Their legacies lingered on
and built walls between the professional
music establishment and audiences. article
It will surely sound odd and even offensive
to some musicians to hear professionals'
prerogative to define standards for
their compositions questioned. But the
historical reality is that when composers
composed for patrons or audiences, compositions
like those of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven,
and Schumann not only engaged audiences
of their time. Their works have crossed
time barriers and today even reach new
cultures like those in Japan and Korea.
On the other hand, once
composers set their own standards –
beginning in the early 20th
Century, an unbridgeable gulf grew between
them and audiences – even though the
latter could often be intimidated into
paying lip service to official opinion.
Aaron Copland, an early enfant terrible
in the avant-garde movement of the 1920s,
"simplified" his music and
created popular works for twenty years
after the onset of the Great Depression
(1930). However, even during this "popular
period" he insisted on the autonomy
of the artist, and rejected the idea
that he "composed for audiences"
(What to Listen For in Music, 1939).
Copland understood the huge divide between
composers and the public, and even recognized
that some music lovers thought that
the "ultramodern composers"
were perpetrating frauds: "The
first thing to remember is that creative
artists, by and large, are not out to
fool you."
The cost of academic
isolation for poets and musicians
In an article that created
a national stir, the American poet,
Dana Goia, pointed out that in the 20th
Century, academic poets had essentially
killed poetry as a popular medium ("Can
Poetry Matter?", Atlantic Monthly,
May 1991). They did this, said Goia,
by professionalizing poetry, building
walls of artificial constructs, specifically
rejecting communicative forms from the
past, e.g. rhyme, and essentially converting
a communicative art to an arcane discipline
practised largely within academic circles.
Interestingly, Goia is now Chairman
of the U.S. National Endowment for the
Arts.
Early 20th
Century composers were on track toward
achieving the same type of isolation
for classical music. They did this by
embracing any kind of musical creativity
except traditional forms and conventions
that would communicate with audiences.
Some were motivated by political ideals,
whereas others’ goals were purely philosophical-artistic.
The record is crystal-clear:
that some of the most highly esteemed
composers were quite prepared to sacrifice
mass audiences. Pierre Boulez proposed
to "burn down the opera houses"
and John Cage thought that "Americans
should have no problem doing without
expressive emotional music like Beethoven".
Both gained the highest levels of esteem
in the intellectual cultural world with
their views. However, the public attraction
and commitment to the great music monuments
of the past (e.g. symphonies, etc.)
was too great for these leaders to carry
the day, so concessions were made by
the music establishment – even by Boulez
- to public tastes. Music performance
came to incorporate earlier classics
for the audiences, and contemporary
music primarily for music reviewers
and the cognoscenti
In a previous article
on the role of futurism in music, I
talked about how, in spite of the evolution
away from more extreme rejectionist
artistic expressions, there still remain
today prejudices against the taste or
capacity of audiences to render valid
opinions on musical quality. article
Articulate exponents
of the formal establishment, such as
reviewers for the Evening Independent,
the New York Times, Washington
Post, et al, still hold the media
high ground. To be fair, increasing
mentions of problems in paradise occur
among writers for the prime media, e.g.
Robert Maycock’s article: "Is Classical
Music Really Headed for Extinction"
(Evening Independent, April 26,
2005). However, discussions within
the establishment about popular alienation
from classical music sound a bit like
referring to the Irish famine in terms
of a shortage of potatoes, without mentioning
that people were starving.
Let’s now briefly list
selected developments that have emerged
in the past five years, besides the
Knight Foundation report and
individual events affecting symphony
orchestras. One can conclude that the
UK leads the USA in terms of significant
musical breakthroughs for reform.
- Businessman
John McLaren launches Masterprize
(2001), a composition award in
which 50% of the decision on winners
was to be made by listening audiences.
The Masterprize gained unexpectedly
large response and continues.
- ClassicFM Radio.
The stunning achievement of 6.5 million
listeners per week to an all-classical
radio channel has no parallel anywhere
in the world to my knowledge. The
most widely listened to classical
radio program in America is the commercial
WGMS Classical station in Washington
D.C., with a claimed listenership
of up to 700,000. Publicly supported
classical radio in the U.S. continues
to decline.
- London Symphony.
The dynamic organizational, programmatic,
and outreach innovations of recent
years include development of the Symphony’s
own recording productions. I haven’t
yet found parallel developments among
major U.S. symphonies. However, a
sea change in American symphony management
has taken place since the Knight
Foundation Report came out. Drew
McManus is a young Turk who writes
his Adaptistration blog on
symphony management in the widely
read Arts
Journal web site.
McManus claims that until recently
most American symphonies’ management
model remained stuck in 150-year old
autocratic structures based on single
patrons or sponsors.
- Musicweb-International.com
The key feature of the web site in
which this article is included, is
its meritocratic diversity of writers
and opinions, and open nature of the
discussions. With 70 + reviewers of
CDs as well as other topics reaching
9,000-16,000 viewers per day, and
a lively chat site, this music lover’s
Mecca is the antithesis of the controlled
nature of most large-city newspaper
music writing. It is also more democratic
and open than most U.S. web sites,
which tend towards thematic content
but have few meaningful opportunities
for exchange of views. For example,
Classical
Archives claims
the largest number of classical music
files on the web "33,909
full length classical music files
by 1,881 composers". However,
a few authors dominate writing, and
there is a subscription fee. With
notable exceptions like
New Music Box most of the myriad
U.S. web sites offer mainly
specific information
on specialty interests. An increasing
number of individual bloggers have
sites, but opportunities for visible
interaction like that on the site
of the emancipated freelance cultural
writer, Zachary
Lewis, are not common.
- Terry Teachout-
American music reviewer for Commentary
magazine.
Nonconformist music
and culture writer, Teachout, has
gained national stature. He doesn’t
duck specifics about realities of
the current music world and provides
unconventional historical vignettes.
In his current article, "Romantics
Return" (July-August 2005) Teachout
discusses late modernist dismissal
of tonal music, asserting that history
has left behind Pierre Boulez "who
famously declared in 1952 that ‘any
musician who has not experienced …
the necessity for the dodecaphonic
[twelve-tone] language is USELESS.
For his whole work is irrelevant to
the needs of his epoch." Teachout
goes on to describe the first in a
six-volume series of critical studies
of modern American composers who created
significant new work without abandoning
traditional musical forms and procedures:
Walter Simmons, Voices in the Wilderness:
Six American Neo-Romantic Composers,
Scarecrow Press, 2005.
- National Public
Radio awards for new ideas to increase
communication with audiences regarding
classical music
In late 2004 an award
of $500,000 was announced, to be administered
through Minnesota Public Radio. The
amount was not large, but the theme
is a first.
- Small town newspaper
reviewers. Many years ago double
bass virtuoso Gary Karr said that
some of the best music writing in
the U.S. came not from the big city
newspaper critics, but from small-town
reviewers. Currently, small-town reviewing
has suffered along with major paper
counterparts by generally reduced
coverage of classical music. However,
in towns where music activity is vigorous,
I have seen some of the most colorful,
lively music writing to be found anywhere.
The following example is by Kitty
Montgomery in the Daily Freeman,
Rhinebeck, NY, in 2003:
"If
cellist Paul Katz and the Cleveland
String Quartet are the centaurs of
the classical music world - half fiddle,
half man - the women of the Cavani
Quartet are its maenads. If
you need to brush up on your Greek
mythology, these were the wild women
whose annual civic duty it was to
rip apart the wine king Dionysus after
a long day's riot. In concert
for the Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society
at the Church of the Messiah Sunday
afternoon, the Cavani, divas all,
surpassed their ancient sisters in
passion and mystery, rending hearts,
then restoring them more whole.
- NAXOS Records.
Naxos’s inexpensive
classical recordings set new standards
for the industry, and bucked the
trend for declines in classical
recordings by American firms. However,
the current web site, www.NAXOS.com
does not continue the earlier magazine
and other musical features.
Next steps
The serendipity of the above developments
makes guesses about specific future
events hazardous. More younger musicians
and musically knowledgeable activists
can be predicted to join the movement
for innovation and reform. Greater communication
among activists could lead to initiatives
of larger scope. I would hope that more
young newspaper critics would cultivate
audiences and local music resources,
speak with candor about what they hear
– and become activists in the community
– not just passive arbiters of opinion.
Dean Robert Freeman at the University
of Texas College of Fine Arts, the initiator
of the famed Eastman School of music
curriculum that stresses community interaction,
could initiate a cooperative movement
among forward-looking conservatories.
The influence on the U.S. of new Scandinavian
and Baltic-trained conductors has yet
to be determined. Major breakthroughs
in terms of classical MP3 and other
downloads are not yet in evidence. I
often wish for classical videos and
DVDs in fitness centers instead of the
tiresome pop offerings to accompany
pumping iron and treadmills. I’d like
to hear more string quartets emulating
rock, more rock groups toning down and
trying their hand at classical repertory,
and a string quartet working up some
of the more than 125 string quartets
by turn-of-the Century American composer
Fidelis Zitterbart Jr, languishing in
the basement storage area of the University
of Pittsburgh Library.
I see highly promising potentials for
compositional prizes awarded to school-aged
musicians - with winners picked by peer
musicians and audiences in performance,
not by professional musicians based
on scores. During my time as a music
program manager in Falmouth, Massachusetts
our Association commissioned a composition
evoking the musical history of Cape
Cod from a 14-year old musical prodigy.
The only limitation was time and accessibility
to our local audiences. The work produced
was spellbinding – beginning with winds
and waves in prehistoric time, and continuing
through Indian cultures, pioneer hymns,
etc. Statistics says that more young
geniuses should emerge. Let’s put them
to work!
