Classical music and the new middle class - Brightcecilia feature

[Scott Good]

Originally Posted by Philidor

I suspect a major problem is that directors of the big orchestras - multimillion $/£/Euro enterprises with wildly expensive infrastructure and running costs - are terrified of doing anything which might interrupt their income stream. They'd love their seats filled by the new middle class, but stick with rich oldies on the basis of one grey-haired bird in the hand being worth two trendy thirty-somethings in the bush.

This is exactly the point. Orchestras sit tenuously on the edge - 2-4 seasons of negative growth can be devastating. But, as I was trying to suggest, at least in North America, certain initiatives have worked.

Here at the VSO, there is a series called "Musically Speaking"http://www.vancouversymphony.ca/musiccategorylist.php?category=series&gridkey=09MU S. 5 concerts over the season, with the direct purpose of inviting in "newbies". Programs contain Romantic era classics, but not full symphonies. The idea is keep the musical pace relatively fast. As well, there are video screens that both have closeups on the players performing, as well as displaying videos of interviews with soloists (who would rather not talk before playing a concerto).

One last feature, for which I have come to realize is very positive, is that each concert features a commission of an emerging composer - a short work (3-4min), but, a great opportunity for young composers to get an orchestra to perform their music. 30 works have been commissioned through this program to date.

It serves as a bridge to the main series concerts. And, it is working. Many people "graduate" from this first level, and begin subscribing to the main series concerts. It has been a major part of why the orchestra's attendance has been growing.

In England, as you mentioned, the proms is another fine example of how to bring in new audiences. But, I guess as you are suggesting, it isn't spilling over into the concert hall.

Originally Posted by Philidor

Perhaps chamber ensembles could afford to be less cautious? They're cheaper, more flexible and can move quickly: like speed boats as opposed orchestral oil tankers. So if there's to be a major cultural shift to attract new audiences maybe chamber groups will provide the shock troops.

Excuse the mixed metaphors.

The metaphors are just fine!

And, this is indeed what is happening, and many chamber groups have much broader scopes of musical presentation. Groups like Kronos, Bang on a Can, 8th Blackbird, Alarm will Sound and many more in the US are leading the way in innovative programming. I'm sorry I'm not as aware of what is going in the UK, but, from what I know of Holland and Germany, there are many examples of this as well.

And in Canada, the Canadian Brass have shown to all that a massive industry can be built around re-formatting the tradition of concert presentations.

[maureen]

"stick with rich oldies on the basis of one grey-haired bird in the hand being worth two trendy thirty-somethings in the bush."

flor...didn't you catch this one?

let me be the first to say...philidor...

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Scott Good

This is exactly the point. Orchestras sit tenuously on the edge - 2-4 seasons of negative growth can be devastating.

The more government funding orchestras are given, the less the orchestra has to worry about its takings. Case in point - Boulez could afford to programme modern and contemporary music at his time at the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the early 70s, but couldn't do the same thing when he moved to the New York Philharmonic.

[maureen]

reagan decimated the national endowment for the arts?

just wondering...

and didn't we have a discussion about this months ago

i.e. new works being included because of the public funding and what a good thing that is....?????

not that we shouldn't discuss some more...we should or you should because i enjoy the lively discourse

ticket sales will probably never cut it...even springsteen couldn't get an audience out to the same venue week after week...hmm...any classical musicians ready to take it on the road full time?

it's a different bird and boosting ticket sales is worth the effort but definitely not at the cost of the music...i do think at least in the u.s. there is less hesitation and more sophistication in the general rabble

i attended a horrible popular orchestra event several years ago complete with a char woman skit...through out the entire program...
an attempt to popularize the music...

i wanted to slap the conductor

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by maureen

an attempt to popularize the music...

... the Stringfellowisation of classical music....

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Philidor

... the Stringfellowisation of classical music....

Attachment 3956

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Philidor again.

[Philidor]

Following on from the big 2002 survey by the Knight Foundation, the marketing director of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, David Bukvic, is reported as having discovered the following regarding the types of individuals who attend classical music events:

The 5 types

1. First are the purest of the pure: the “music onlys.”

“Classical music purists are called ‘music onlys,’ ” Bukvic said. “They don’t care what they are dressed like. They pick their seats very carefully. ... They compare the live Shostakovich Eleventh Symphony with the five other recordings they have.”

2. Bukvic said the survey found that the largest group attending classical music concerts are called the “romantic evening outs.” They make up roughly 25 percent of classical audiences.

“They tend to be a little bit younger than average, 35 to 55, and they want to have a great arts experience with their spouses,” Bukvic said.

3. Then there are the “social displays.” For them, attending a classical concert is just one way of feeding their egos.

“This group feels that seeing and being seen at a DPO concert is part and parcel of being in the upper echelon of Dayton society,” Bukvic said. “They feel it is something good for themselves and good for their careers.”

4. The group identified as “symphony dedicateds” believe classical music is one of the legs of the chair that holds up society.

“Whether they attend a concert or not, ‘symphony dedicateds’ feel that if you take away classical music, society will crumble,” Bukvic said with a chuckle.

5. The final group couldn’t care less about classical music. They are called “I’m with her.”

“They tend to be male,” he said. “He’s there because she wants to be there.”

Source The article cites a survey by the League of American Orchestras. I'm not sure how useful this sort of stuff is, beyond showing that orchestra marketeers are pulling their hair out trying to get bums on seats.

[Chilperich]

It's fairly clear to me that generalisations about class differences made about the UK will not apply to Continental Europe, still less to North America (particularly the USA), nor vice versa.

It isn't true, of course, that there is no non-money-based class distinction in the USA, even if it is basically a money- (and, derivatively, status-) stratified society. I don't doubt for one moment that there are small but intense pockets of snobbery among, say, the older New England families, and I strongly suspect that there are similar vestiges in Canada. (I know such vestiges to exist in Continental Europe.)

What makes class such an issue in Britain (especially England) is its visibility and audibility (although I doubt that a society matron from Boston will talk with the same accent as a woman from the other side of the tracks). "Every Englishman", George Orwell observed, "is branded on the tongue." The composite nature of the English language (often abstract Graeco-Latin and Norman French vocabulary grafted onto a basic, generally concrete substratum of Anglo-Saxon and Norse) also means that there are acute differences in vocabulary between educated and uneducated people, and since the upper and middle classes long had a monopoly on education, this has tended to map onto social class (universal education from 1870 onwards helped for some time to promote social mobility and blur class distinctions of this sort, until the watering-down of the state curriculum and public examinations (supposedly on "anti-elitist" grounds) from the 1960s onwards).

A serious interest in classical music is almost the exclusive preserve, in Britain, of a subsection of the educated middle-class. I wish that were not so, and that the best of what used to be called high culture were made available to anybody with the potential to enjoy and otherwise benefit from it, without diluting it or dumbing it down. Unfortunately, there are strong cultural pressures that prevent such an ideal from being achieved. There is a perception that since high culture happens, as a matter of fact, to be predominantly the preserve of the educated middle class (or, more accurately, a small section of it), it therefore has no "relevance" to people from other backgrounds.

This is nonsense. I am not an African-American from the Deep South of America, but I can still enjoy the music of Robert Johnson or Louis Armstrong. If something is genuine and deeply felt, it has the capacity to touch any human heart.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

A serious interest in classical music is almost the exclusive preserve, in Britain, of a subsection of the educated middle-class.

I don't want to criticise these people (the article may need changing in that regard). I was sat in a Dorset village church some years ago waiting for a concert to begin. As usual I was the youngest person there by about 40 years, sitting among a sea of respectable middle-class gray heads.

A sprightly old boy came and sat in the pew next to me. He looked vaguely familiar. We got chatting and I realised who he was.

'You're Doctor *********!' I said.
'Yes I am,' he replied. 'Who are you?'

He turned out to have been my GP from age 0 to 14 and actually delivered me in the local cottage hospital. I thanked him for the safe delivery - it's a special thing to have done for someone (how many people reading this have thanked the person who pulled them safely from their mother's entrails, bloody and screaming, into this world?).

The old boy looked at me and said: 'D'you know, I practiced as a doctor for forty years and delivered hundreds of babies and you're the first person who's ever thanked me!'

LOL. I like these people. They're good people. But it would be great if an equal or greater number of proles rubbed shoulders with them at non-dumbed down live classical music concerts. Both sides would benefit, especially in class-tormented England.

[marquis66]

My observations on it are pretty well known, I think. In America, classical music has to compete for exposure to students with other subjects. Overall, Arts education has suffered in this country for over 50 years because of prioritization of public budgets away from the arts (ie an anti-European/Socialist philosophy) and to more production-based factory/technology skill trade (ie Capitalist). As a result, the policy makers who decide what is important in education today don't see it as important since they turned out fine without it, so adding it back in equates to losing money. So what you get is an entire generation of Post WWII Americans who grew up in the 1950's and 60's that doesn't have the appreciation for great art music, or the arts in general, and as a result their money doesn't get to those institutions. Until the paradigm shifts, large groups which produce that music are going to suffer.

My parents, for example, couldn't have given a rat's ass about art music at all if my brother and I hadn't got involved in it. And to some extant, they still don't.