Commonwealth Orchestra Outreach Project Post #1
You’re watching TV, watching your favorite show. What’s the opening music? Some hybrid of rock. It goes to commercial: what’s the music? Probably an old rock or pop tune rehashed with new words selling the product. A slight chance that it will be a bit of the O Fortuna movement of Carmina Burana or Confutatis from Mozart’s Requiem. You might or might not have any idea what either of those two pieces are, but you know they are some heavy-hitting classical music.
You decide to listen to some music. You go to your iPhone or soundcloud or whatever you use stream. Or maybe the radio. What to listen to? How about some Aerosmith, or Cranberries. Maybe Dr. Dre or Alicia Keyes? If you are the roughly 99% of Americans (according to one survey), your preferences run toward all popular forms of music, especially Rock, Pop, Country, R&B, & Hip Hop. Other surveys are a little more generous, putting Classical music listenership from 17% to 24%, and I would tend to lean towards these surveys since they are generated by radio stations and statistical sources. This is one I viewed, from Statista seems to check out pretty reliably.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/442354/music-genres-preferred-consumers-usa/
But on to the root of what I’m talking about: whatever you’re listening to and on whatever media, it is not likely to be classical. So, is there anything wrong with that? No. People listen to what is meaningful to them. Bu-u-ut — I’m a classical musician and an orchestra conductor, so I have a little input here.
On the internet, on television, in stores, even on public radio — I’m surrounded by rock/pop so pervasive that it all mushes together in a miasma of sound. It’s so omnipresent that the occasional clip of classical stands out like a sore thumb. If I do a search for music on iTunes (yeah, I still have an account), what comes up — despite Apple creepily knowing my preferences — is row upon row of bright, colorful little thumbnails of the latest release from artists I never heard of before, and they ain’t classical. If I go to JC Penneys for a new pair of jeans (frustrating in itself, because every scrap of denim these days has spandex), I hear someone piped over the audio install, usually using that sexy “cry” voice that sounds like they’re in pain. And maybe the singer is in pain — it makes me worry a little. At least the endless lines of melismatic runs seem to have modified since the 90’s.
Ok, I’m out of touch with what is current. What I do know I get from my students. And usually they have pretty good taste and know what is good. And it gives us something to talk about and a way to help me help them develop a little critical thinking about music. But that’s not the subject here.
This is about classical music and where it went.
To take a step in Marshall McLuhanland, the Medium is the Message, after all. The ubiquitous presence of the top three rock/pop/hip hop tell us that’s where we are as a culture. Classical is the province of a previous generation and those 17%-24% of Gen X and Millenials who have had the pleasure of being introduced.
Tune into classical radio. Or go to Itunes or Amazon or Soundcloud or Youtube and type in “Classical.” Better yet, go to your local orchestra concert — they happen in the fall, winter and spring in most good-sized towns. For Boston, there are twenty-eight that are listed in Wikipedia and many others that are not — enough so that you don’t have to drive far. Tickets to local volunteer orchestras are cheap and often well attended — up to two or three hundred in the audience! True, most of the audience are family members of the 40-60 members of the orchestra, so there’s that 17%-24% for you,
Here’s my plug: attend live concerts. But here’s the reality … what are you going to hear? Yeah, classical, duh. What specifically? Oh, Mozart. Beethoven. Brahms. Dvorak. Tschaikovsky. Some Bernstein because it was his 100th birthday this year. Then … the pops. John Williams, a raft of cheesy arrangements of pop, soft rock and show tunes from Bert Bacharach to Frozen. But we’re not talking about the pops in this article. And despite my private issues with the distinction between the two categories, we’re talking about Classical.
Look at that first list — all dead white guys, every one of them. Almost entirely European. Their music is great but …
What do they have to do with us?
…
Think about it.
…
(sound of needle ripping across a vinyl LP)
…
Other than the aspect of universal truth that great art represents, not much. The Universal-Truth-That-Great-Art-Represents part of Classical music is what keeps it alive. That’s why we still stage Shakespeare, or enjoy Vermeer, or read Dante’s Inferno. But while Theatre, Art and Literature have continued to evolve to represent who we are as a society today, serious art music doesn’t seem to have.
Or has it … ?
Stay tuned. I have a lot to say on this topic. In the meantime, enjoy this youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXC4LXw0Fwc
Commonwealth Orchestra Outreach Project 