Sound Directions

Last week, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote a post that included a death of classical music apocalypse graph via the League of American Orchestras’ Audience Demographic Research Review (see below). What this graph basically shows is that in each generation, there is a spike in classical music concert attendance at some point during that generation’s lifetime. Well, in all generations except one generation: Generation X. Obviously, this is big-time bad—and downright scary—news for classical music organizations. But the whole how-we-can-increase-participation subject is for another post, not this one.

Anyway, as I tend to do when I find things on the web I consider to be interesting or important or that I simply want to remember, I save them to my Delicious account. If you’ve not heard of Delicious (nee del.icio.us) before, it’s an online social bookmarking site. You bookmark a link, tag it, share it, comment on it, etc. But you can also see who else has bookmarked that particular link and if they’ve had anything to say about it. As I bookmarked Alex’s article, I noticed that several other people had as well. And they added some interesting comments.

Here’s the first one that caught my attention, from user Satisfy the Mind:

The complete quote:

“I just wish people would listen to a wider variety of all kinds of music. Unfortunately most people have little frame of reference to understand or appreciate so-called classical music. We also have to get beyond this idea of associating certain kinds of music with certain demographics or political persuasions.”

Exactly, Satisfy the Mind. That’s what I was saying here just a couple days ago. No need for me to elaborate further.

Here’s the portion of Alex’s post I chose to highlight:

Though there’s more that I quoted, let’s just focus on the first sentence there: “It’s time to drop the mask of professional aloofness.” This has been something of a personal crusade for years. Aloofness, but also, and maybe more so, distance. There’s this “thing” that’s around in classical music where the process has to be secretive and mystical in some way, like we’re practicing some kind of esoteric sorcery. The composer locks him/herself away for months at a time. The musician isolates him/herself within the confines of a soundproof room. And in both cases, they emerge bearing these magical gifts that just happened to appear.

I’m not trying to take anything away from the “magic” of music because that’s definitely what makes it so attractive, seductive, sexy, and powerful to so many people. What I’m getting at is that the process of creating or arriving at those magical and transcendental experiences is by and large not that magical—it’s just hard work. Why perpetuate this myth that we’re navigating this higher transcendental plane? To a lot of people, I think it just comes off as snobbish.

Listen, I’m a big fan of transparency. I think giving people a window into the creative process is one of the most beneficial things we can do for the future of the art. People don’t get interested in something unless they’ve got some kind of investment in it. And providing a glimpse into how we practice our esoteric musicraft is just one possibility for inviting more participation. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?