U-turn

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November 18, 2004

Classical music's dead end

According to many discussions going on on the Internet and the real world we are experiencing interesting times. It is a fact that classical music is a dead end.

The audiences are getting smaller and smaller. Artistic managers play safe by programming another Beethoven and Mahler. Opera directors all want to do a complete Ring cycle. And for what purpose? What is the relevance?

Classical music played by symphony orchestras are the equivalent of museums. There is no edge to the art. The political, economical meaning or whatever has been neutralized. There is no bite.

If symphony orchestras want their public back, they will have to do something that is relevant now. They should not shunt away from public debate and program a majority of the music by LIVING COMPOSERS who show their faces to the public instead of playing music by dead ones nearly all the time.

Composers on the other hand need to think about how to reach an audience and give it something it can reflect to. The majority of the audiences want to be touched and moved by what they hear and see. Some may want some intellectual reflection. And only a small number will get off by a wall of dissonances with a dictionary filled with blah blah to explain it all. From an economic perspective the latter category doesn't have much right to exist. And economics in the end are the ruling. Artistry has to coexist with this.

If we composers leave it up to the Stockhausens and heirs, we can just wait to see the classical music industry crash, as is about to happen in Germany. If nobody moves out there we have to just sit and wait to see it all happen.

In the mean time we can be jealous that U2 is selling great numbers of their new album.

Posted by Renske at 10:55 UTC | permanent link