Classical Music is committing suicide
It is a slow and agonizing process. While sports events seem to be essential for the well being of the population, while shopping centers are being favored to any other style of entertainment, the Corona pandemic has left the culture world in a lingering limbo. Live concerts might not be coming back any time soon, but it is unclear if the audiences are so heartbroken by not being able to attend. If politics is a meter for the will of the people (sometimes it is), it might be a small but loud minority which is pressing to open concert halls.
Classical music is not what it used to be. At the beginning of the 20th century it was the most performed and most recorded kind of music. The post war years have marked western musical tradition as an important and central cultural export. Think about Van Cliburn, Bernstein, Stokowsky, American exports of European culture. As a result of this, you can't beat the Japanese, the Korean at devotion for this form of art, and the Chinese have been building new symphony halls and opera houses in masses in recent years.
But! In record sales Classical Music is lagging far behind rap, pop and rock. Audiences seem to get older and older and most important, seasonal subscriptions which were the bread and butter of orchestras, opera houses and concert halls are disappearing at an alarming rate. You just can not run an orchestra or an opera house without subscriptions. It's just too big a financial risk to have the hall half full.
In Germany we have a very generous government support, as well as a unique density of competing orchestras and opera houses. So a ticket price can be financed by the government up to 80%. Think about Students going to the opera in Berlin. They pay 15 Euro for a seat which has a 60 Euro price ticket, in a world renowned opera house, where they get a scolding look from their seat neighbour, for not wearing a tie. It's marvelous! But in the world today, where somehow the state has to pay for the Corona-aftermath, medical bills, vaccinations, Billions and billions of lost work days, it might be frowned upon when huge half full concert halls are still generously funded.
So as a classical music professional, I would like to say at this point, we are making it extremely easy for them.
Just go with the stream
It was March 2020, a Monday, pretty much all theatres and orchestras are sent to a lock-down. No shows, no rehearsals. it is going to be the biggest crisis since the second world war. Classical music was played in the darkest of times, during the blitz in London, the siege of Stalingrad, even in concentration camps. So how did an art form which is about 500 years old, and survived the worst times of civilization react to an existential crisis? It pretty much didn't. Some orchestras and opera houses already had solutions and streaming services and could capitalize on them. Others hurried to the archives, to look for some video material, anything to put on social media. It was soon apparent, even a relatively young recording, let’s say 2010, is a far fetch from the habits of today's consumer. So the dubious act of watching a concert or a stage production on video, becomes even more dubious in 720p. Still, you could say people watch Star wars from 1977 or the Godfather from 1972, but these are not translations of one art form to another. So is it possible that Classical Music has missed a bit? Why have a beloved and century old art form failed to stand pace with the digital age?
The fourth wall
Many people feel very estranged when they get to a classical concert. They find it weird to sit in absolute silence for a very long time and then cheer as if on cue. Other customs include, coughing on pauses (but not all pauses), not drinking during the concert, not talking and generally trying your best to resemble a house plant.
Historical accounts from times of Mozart, Schubert, Liszt give a very different image of the way it was done at the time. It was loud, everybody cheered and booed as they liked and ate and drank everything possible. If you've been to the opera in Paris you would notice, you can see every single person in the audience, but not always the stage. It was a social event. And if the stage wasn't interesting you could always do other stuff. So people on the stage were also engaged in preventing you from doing other stuff. If by improvising, by talking to you directly, by doing something brilliant. By singing long amazing high notes, by playing dazzling improvisations, by writing divine music. If you try any of these traits today you will probably be laughed away as an "unserious" artist. So classical artists ignore their audience completely. If they are bored, it's their problem. If they're happy, it's also their problem. In the world of popular music, it would be unacceptable if a rock artist refuses to talk with the audience. Why are Classical musicians acting like robots?
Repertoire
Think about a parallel reality. Cinema has seen a golden age in the 1930s. The new age of the 1950s has seen the rise of experimental cinema in such a manner, that any conventional film makers are considered too old school to work on large scale films. So the big studios and cinemas have concentrated on improving and marketing old copies of golden age films such as Citizen Kane and Gone with the Wind. New movies are shown to a small audience of connoisseurs and are a product of a vast industry of government subsidies, prizes and scholarships. Sounds stupid? That is pretty much how composers have been working since the 1960's. Sure there are exceptions but the vast majority -especially in Europe- of composers wouldn't see any contradiction. It's not even their fault. They went to university and there they learned the following: invent something new or disappear. So start from Boulez and see where it gets you to. "But what about the audience?!" they asked. "Forget about the audience!" said the Professor.
So if it is so bad to be a crowd pleaser how would you explain the art of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Stravinsky which survives to this day? They were also frowned upon at the time but they always kept a connection, a discourse with the audience.
A very prominent conductor I met (his name starts with a 'Z') says: "Classical music is a museum. we have to preserve it for the next generations." And maybe he is right if he is talking about the Vienna Philharmonic or La Scala. But he doesn't see a huge amount of artists, teachers, and audience trying to live an everyday existence with this art form. All these people who were left in conceptually and intellectually darkness in the pandemic. I hope it doesn't symbolize the beginning of music’s dark ages.
So where does this leave us?
Let’s think about china again. They are building a system of culture, not for export, but for social construction. It is a part of a huge transition from rural to industrial society. So they are using Classical music and Opera as an instrument of education and development. Something the west did for years and years, before it used music as exporting goods. Maybe we forgot: it is not “build a concert hall to draw the bourgeois to the city”, it is “build a concert hall to create content for society”. In the west we see a concerning rise of fascism, concerning at least for Social Democrats. So they try to be more social, more environmental, but why don’t they try to be more human? Culture is not only an instrument of expression, it’s an instrument of content, of politics, of change. But for that we need new repertoire, we need new formats, we need new values. We can play Opera from the 19th century, but it will never fully reflect our values today. We can stream concerts, but it is a terrible replacement for the real experience. And we need to stop behaving as if only the most educated should be a part of this world. Classical music needs to stop being a museum, and start being a living vibrant current happening.