One thing both Tim and Anne put a lot of stock in is the idea that if the President embraces classical music and makes it a part of his ‘being’ that more Americans would hop on the classical music train. Do you think this would work?

If the President jumped off a bridge would u jump off a bridge 2?
Should the President make classical music part of his personal brand?
Would that ‘save’ classical music?
If the President got his piano trio on would u b ‘all about’ classical music?
Should there be a classical music lobby?
Should White House classical music concerts be in an ‘alternative venue’?
When the White House has classical music ‘shows’ should it change its name 2 (la) maison blanche and ‘serve art & alcohol’ with the music?
If the President made classical music ‘fun’ would Charles Wuorinen campaign for the Republicans?

1. Karlheinz Stockhausen
2. John Adams
3. Claudio Monteverdi
4. Steve Reich
5. Arvo Pärt

These composers are supposedly big influences on the music of Dirty Projectors, Negativland, Owen Pallett, Clogs, Nico Muhly, Basic Channel, Simon Bookish, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, and Radiohead. I think we need to make a definitive list of Classical Music’s 5 Favorite Indie Rockers. Okay, so who are Classical Music’s 5 Favorite Indie Rockers?

Which indie rockers are most ‘relevant’ to Big Indie Classical Music?
Who are your 5 fav indie rockers for your classical music compositions?
Will there be a spike in Monteverdi album sales because of that Flavorwire post?
Are indie rockers gonna start playing the viol?
Is Nico Muhly an indie rocker or an indie-classicist?

How about a little levity this Friday?

So as we know, people who like classical music are sometimes often characterized as stuffy, prim, and old. However, the internet reminds us that that isn’t necessarily the case. You sure find some interesting things when you type ‘classical music’ into a generic Craigslist search . . .

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Classical music lover with a wild soul – 49
Date: 2010-02-04, 8:43AM EST

If you’re a non-SPAM replier (bless your socks) use the subject line “Needle in a haystack.” Thanks.

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Click here for the full ad (and to see that I’m not making this up).

In advance of Lady Gaga’s appearance on Good Morning America last Wednesday, George Stephanopoulos issued a call for questions:

To which Shia Kapos, a lifestyle reporter/blogger for Crain’s Chicago Business, responded:

Then Kristine Farra (N.B. I don’t know these people) replied to Shia Kapos’s reply to @GStephanopoulos and also made an interesting pronouncement about classical music:

I wasn’t really sure how @KristineFarra made the jump from Gaga to classical music, but it appears to be widespread public knowledge that Gaga took some classical piano lessons and may or may not be an actual classically-trained pianist. I Googled that.

Which ultimately led me to this article from the FemaleFirst website which talks about how Lady Gaga hated her real name. After she tells you why she despises her real name—she was “fed up with people yelling about 800 names at me every day”—she talks about the impact classical music had on her. There’s also this pullquote:

WHOAWHOAWHOA there, classical music cognoscenti! Before you go all ganging up on Gaga for her “grossly misguided statement” about the relationship between popular music and grand master Bach, consider for a moment that she’s digging on Bach and taking something away from it. Just cuz there are no free counterpoint or false expositions in “Just Dance”—or that she might not be able to composer a bona fide fugue—doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s some kind of source of inspiration. That’s cool. Hey, I’ve heard that a lot of new music composers these days are maybe like using their pop music influences in their music. I don’t hear Lady Gaga or Ke$ha bitching at you.

But let’s get back to @KristineFarra’s decree that classical music only gets u success after death. I know that there are some people in the classical music field who actually believe this. It’s a way for them to reconcile the fact that nobody pays attention to their music now—well, they’d tell you that it’s “overlooked.” It’s a delusion that promises them fame in the afterlife when some musicologist in the future tries desperately to find a composer from the past nobody has ever heard of so he/she can publish an article in some journal only other musicologists read in order to display their prowess in the library stacks. Then, based on this innovative research discovery, there will be renewed interest in this composer’s music. More scholarly articles will be published. People will discuss performance practices related to this composer’s music. Their obscure duet for flute and bassoon will enter both instruments’ standard repertory and be included in countless doctoral music students’ annotated bibliography dissertation projects. There will be festivals of their music. One of their melodies will inspire a composition student to compose a “Variations on a Theme by…” piece that will be performed exactly once on their university composers’ forum concert. But none of this will matter to the composer whose music all this fuss is over because they will be DEAD! Hey, whatever keeps ya going.

But now onto the second part of Ms. Farra’s tweetcree:

Talent + uniqueness + marketing = now.

That’s an equation I assume she was applying to Gaga’s supposed background as a classically-trained pianist, which she supposedly ditched to be a famous pop star now. There’s no reason that equation needs to follow logically from the I-won’t-make-it-in-classical-music-until-I’m-dead-and-gone-so-I’ll-become-a-pop-star train of logic. No, I think that equation can be applied just as well to someone who wants to try and make an impact in classical/new music. More and more folks in the industry are starting to get the hang of that. Is anything wrong with that or are we just becoming a bunch of sellouts?

Now, Don Sinta is one progressive guy. For example, one of his solutions for getting more of the general public to attend concerts at the every-three-year saxophone geek-out known as the World Saxophone Congress was to invite Bill Clinton, Kenny G, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (What? You didn’t know he was a sax player?!) to play Hook Trios together. Now that would seriously sell some tickets.

God only knows how blasphemous the saxophone cognoscenti would deem this proposal, despite the fact that Mr. Sinta is regarded as one of the godfathers of American “classical” saxophone playing. I can hear the hypothetical snide comments and quips in my head: “Well, that’s just cheapening our “serious” artform and undermining the decades of work we’ve done to legitimize our instrument. We simply won’t stand for this kind of pandering to the masses!” It’s that sort of closed-mindedness and elitist nonsense that continues to leave the saxophone marginalized and irrelevant. Any sort of niche artform needs a hook—please notice that I didn’t use the word ‘gimmick’; I think there’s a difference between the two—if it hopes to expand its’ audience and fan base.

Anyway, what Sinta was onto with his “there’s something we can learn from that” comment was that there were elements of the culture surrounding pop and rock music that we—’we’ meaning, musicians engaged in the creation and promotion of the music of our time—could harness to further our own cause. So the question is, do we need pyrotechnics, fog machines, spinning aerial drumset cages, and lasers at new music shows? Would that help sell the art? (I would personally enjoy having an LED curtain at Mobtown Modern shows, but that’s just me.)

As an aside, I’m wondering if Daniel Bernard Roumain had a similar conversation with Mr. Sinta about his Alanis concert experience because if he did, it seems like he might have taken some of that advice to heart:

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?

If the pie charts tell us one thing for certain, it’s that new music is a niche market. I mean, since the ratio of Poop to Not Poop in both New Music and Pop Music is equal (+/- 1%, of course), then it stands to reason that the skewed popularity ratio between New Music and Pop Music is not the result of Pop Music possessing greater quantities of Not Poop, but rather that Pop Music is, well, more popular. Question: Is there anything wrong with being a niche market? Think about it, but also think about the following quote from this mostly Not Poop post via the Proper Discord blog:

“All too often, we confuse ‘niche’ with ‘endangered’ when in truth the top end of any market is usually quite unpopular. Mercedes Benz has a 3% share of the US car market. They aren’t worried about extinction. Why should we be scared?”

Before going any further, let’s highlight some of the similarities between Mercedes Benz and Classical/New Music. A Mercedes Benz is a solid, well-crafted, finely-tuned machine. Classical musicians are highly-trained and capable of great precision. A Mercedes Benz is expensive. So too are tickets to many classical music concerts. People who can afford a Mercedes Benz are generally part of an elite social caste. People who like classical music are stereotyped as being elite. So with all the similarity, why doesn’t Classical/New Music share the same sort of niche market perks as Mercedes Benz? Here’s one possible reason:

I don’t think being a niche market is all that bad. (N.B. This is coming from a lifelong Red Sox fan. Translation: I have been raised to root for the underdog.) I also don’t believe that being a niche market means being headed for extinction. Ain’t gonna happen. Too many people pay too much money to go to college and learn the craft of classical music to let that knowledge just sit around and rot in their heads. We’ve just got to do a better job getting that information out there in a manner that says, “Hey, this is neat. You should listen to it,” and not, “Hey, I’m way smarter than you.” Are there ways we can change from perceptions of elitism so that we might move away from snob characterization to hot chick characterization?

It’s also not impossible that a niche market gains a following, becomes more popular, and then more mainstream. Remember MTV in the 1990s? That whole alternative music, Seattle grunge scene thing? But if mainstream acceptance like that happens you’ve got to be prepared for name calling (“SELLOUT!”) and the possible loss of the music’s true soul and quality. Surely there are ways to have your cake and eat it too. Right?

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Johns said he knew little about Jay-Z prior to the performance and went to Wikipedia to get an idea of the rapper’s accomplishments.”

So, um, yeah, wait a second… [scratches head.] You’re telling me that in the year 2k10 a musician—and a youngish-looking one, at that—can be more or less completely unaware of who Jay-Z is? I’m not saying that everyone should know that Jigga went from bricks to Billboards and from grams to Grammy’s, but he’s become such a modern cultural icon that you’d kind of have to have been living under a rock, had your head in the sand, or holed up in a practice room for 12 hours a day, to not have noticed Jay-Z’s contributions to contemporary society (not to mention MUSIC).

All throughout the land, people are bemoaning the death of classical music, the death of opera, etc. WE R ALL GOING 2 DIE! However, if indeed the future is so grim, maybe it’s because classical music has too many ostrich musicians. Please don’t misinterpret me here. I’m not saying that hip-hop needs to be included on the listening list for the 20th century unit in history of Western music courses. (But why not?) Nor am I saying that orchestras need to engage big time rappers-cum-orchestral soloists to sell tickets. (Though wouldn’t that be something?) But in the current age in which we find ourselves living, where things are becoming more—not less—connected, I’m saying that interfacing with all aspects of cultural relevance should be part of any musician’s diet. And since pop music is music, let’s just say that that’s a pretty logical place to start.

Sure, you could argue that pop music is centered on marketing, that the level of talent and brilliant musicianship among most pop stars pales in comparison to that of top-notch classical musicians. It’s not all about marketing though. The product still has to be decent. (Well, that’s also up for debate. I listen to enough pop radio to know that some pretty bad music gets ordained as “good.” And for the record, I am not talking about Lady Gaga, who happens to be brilliant.) It’s certainly easier to sell a good product, but it’s not impossible to sell a bad product (see previous parenthetical aside). Really, though, we should focus on the product. Right, Stringer?

Hey, maybe that’s it. Maybe people should stop whining and being all “nobody cares about classical/new music” and start focusing on putting out some better products? Is that the problem?

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N.B. Though Jay-Z with orchestra was cool, my “Best Use of Orchestra in Pop Music Tune” award goes to Peter Fox’s “Alles Neu” (The Beatles “The End” notwithstanding):

Click here to view the embedded video.