New Audience For Classical Music Redux

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:07 AM Eastern on 5 Sep. See below.]

Musician and blogger David Preiser of Through These Ears tries his hand at addressing the now well-worn issue of attracting new audiences for classical music. Writes Mr. Preiser:

The language of the Standard Repertoire (I don't intend that as a pejorative, I swear) tends to be that of the European harmonies and structures of the late 18th Century through to the middle of the 20th. Yes, this is a gross generalization, but bear with me. When I say "harmonies and structures", I mean the shapes and colors and emotions of the language. These affect different people in different ways, depending on many personal things. In the end it's a personal perspective, and so much of life experience contributes to that.

The personal music experiences of today's younger generations tend to include far more that is over-amplified and distorted or strange-sounding, violent or ugly, or harsh and dissonant than in previous generations. The sounds that some Classical audiences reject are much more readily accepted by people who listen to other kinds of music.

[...]

How many times have we heard that "Classical Music" is boring? Or, "That's too pretty, it's putting me to sleep", or other casual dismissals of 1000 years of music? As often as not, it's because they are only exposed to one of the "prettier" languages, and their own personal experience simply hasn't prepared them to understand it. That should be a familiar argument to anyone who cares about New Music.

Someone who is very into the grungier, more experimental sounds in rock or electronica will find many appealing sounds in contemporary works. But the same person who enjoys the purely electronic sounds coming out of IRCAM can just as easily run screaming from the room at the sound of a harpsichord. The language of one is familiar and enjoyable, the other is Lurch from The Addams Family.

What this means is that there are many more people for whom the language(s) of New Music won't be so alien after all. It's time to reach out to that audience.

Concludes Mr. Preiser:

It's time to give up for good the idea that the old school composers [i.e., composers of the standard concert rep] will lead the way to new school audiences. That doesn't mean that music isn't great, or that it should die out because new audiences dont care for it. Instead, it means that the path to the enjoyment of the Standard Rep. starts with the enjoyment of the New Rep.

We respectfully but adamantly disagree. Gaining a new and younger audience for classical music is NOT a matter of programming music more appealing to younger audiences. It's entirely a matter of being bluntly honest about the nature of classical music vis-à-vis other musics, and of cultivating a way of listening to music that's thoroughly alien to today's younger audiences; a way of listening that involves focused and close listening to complex music over relatively extended time spans (i.e., complex and extended compared with the relatively simplistic music and minutes-long time spans today's younger audiences are used to and comfortable with); a way of listening that, generally speaking, can be instilled only in the very young, and can be instilled only very rarely later in life.

As we wrote in 2004 in one of Sounds & Fury's inaugural posts, "An Audience For Classical Music":

During the past decade or so, one has read often of attempts made by various classical (or "serious", or "art") music entities — symphony orchestras, chamber groups, recital organizers, even opera companies — to gain a larger audience for their "product", and it's nothing short of depressing to observe that, virtually without exception, they've all, to greater or lesser degree, pursued a model that's not merely wrongheaded, but positively suicidal. That model, in keeping with the rabidly populist and promiscuously equalitarian Zeitgeist of our era, and using promotional techniques employed in the world of mass entertainment, has at its core the concept of reaching out to The People; or using less euphemistic and less generous terminology, prole pandering. While such a concept is perfectly appropriate and spot-on in the world of mass entertainment, it's an ultimate kiss of death in the world of classical music for the simple and should-be (but astonishingly, largely isn't) obvious reason that, much as one wishes it were not the case, classical music is not, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever even marginally be, an object of mass or even widespread appeal no matter how vigorously and assiduously it may be promoted. Classical music is, by its very nature, a fundamentally elite enterprise, and should never be viewed or promoted as anything other.

[...]

The alpha and omega of it is that a hardcore audience for classical music can, in huge part, be created only by targeting the very young. If you fail to get 'em very young, you mostly don't get 'em at all.

And that targeting must begin with the pre-kindergarten young, and continue at least through early adolescence. Schools, both public and private, cannot do the job by themselves although they have their place in the campaign. Neither, strange to tell, can parents although they, too, have their place. In today's world, the single most important — overwhelmingly important — entity in the promotion of classical music is none other than the commercial media, cable and broadcast TV most especially, via its content, not via commercials, public service or paid-for. If classical music is not sold there, it will remain largely unsold no matter what else is done. Classical music must be made a part of the very air children breathe, and only the commercial media can accomplish that.

So, the answer is to give up the ineluctably doomed attempt to "convert" those young but already grown-up persons who presently have little or no understanding of and little or no interest in classical music, and concentrate all efforts on (you should pardon the term) "growing" a new audience for classical music by targeting the very young, and making classical music "part of the very air [they] breathe." As we concluded in our above linked 2004 post,

[It's] a long, hard road to travel, but an on-the-right-track — the only right track — beginning. Without a long-term commitment to the education of the very young, the classical music concert as we know it today (that is, neither adjusted, watered- nor dumbed-down in either content or presentation to accommodate the ignorant) will be doomed to the trash bin of history.

---

Update (1:07 AM Eastern on 5 Sep): Mr. Preiser responds in an update to his above linked post.

While we share Mr. Preiser's desire for a quick-fix solution to the problem of building a new and younger audience for classical music, we've never been able to come up with or discover one, and we cannot agree that Mr. Preiser's proposal constitutes such a solution either as a quick-fix or for the long term. Neither can we agree with Mr. Preiser's notion that for today's younger audiences, "the path to the enjoyment of the Standard Rep starts with the enjoyment of the New Rep." The enjoyment of the new rep with its "grungier, more experimental sounds" that echo the "over-amplified and distorted ... violent or ugly ... harsh and dissonant" sounds of the "personal experience" of that younger audience will almost never lead to an enjoyment of the music of, say, Monteverdi, or Purcell, or Bach, or Mozart, or Beethoven, or Brahms, or Prokofiev, but will, at very best, lead only to a desire to hear more of the same for no reason other than that it's an extension of the already familiar, "grungier" sounds of "their own personal experience." And that, we suggest, is no way to build an audience for classical music, quick-fix or long term.