Classical music = Sinking ship

[Rick Denney]

I suspect there's a reason behind much of this that hasn't been trotted out for a salute.

Around here, most orchestra concerts are given on weeknights. Who has time to go to a concert on a Thursday (or Tuesday...) night any more? People are working longer hours nowadays with more crowded schedules.

I wonder if symphony concerts would fare better in the US if they were moved to the weekend exclusively? Sunday afternoon would be a great time for a concert.

It's a rare Thursday evening that I don't have some other commitment.

Another factor is that music is now the aural wall paint for our society. Movie music is just that--it enhances the experience by providing the right room lighting. But in general, we swim through a sea of music, in elevators, supermarkets, on telephone hold, in commercials, etc. etc. etc.

It's part of the landscape and just not that special any more.

Agreed on all counts. And I'm often busy on weekends, too.

Rick "leaving the office early tonight--at 7PM" Denney

[andrew the tuba player]

It's part of the landscape and just not that special any more.

If we make music thinking that it's not speacial, then we are already fighting for a lost cause. Music must come from inside the musician or it's just notes on a page. The musician must put his or her feelings into that particular song or else, then it will blend in with all the rest of the music in socitey. Then, it isn't speacial...But, in my views, the feelings of a person no matter what they maybe should be speacial. Every person has a mind of there own and chooses to express it in different ways. We as musicians choose music. Therefore it should be speacial.
A good example of this would be Amazeing grace...This song can do one of two things...It can either bore the listener because it's slow and boreing....or it can bring them to tears because the message of the song is so powerful and can be felt through the the sounds comeing from the group or instrument...Music can be speacial...The only thing that it requires is for the musician to put there feelings into whatever they are doing. And, I'm sure that if you can make music so powerful that you can make people cry, then they'll be back...with others. People like to get in touch with there emotions. It just takes the right thing to do it. And music, if played proporly is one of those things

[Chuck(G)]

If we make music thinking that it's not special, then we are already fighting for a lost cause. Music must come from inside the musician or it's just notes on a page.

I'm not sure I follow you. Most professionally-played music is of very high quality. We've become accustomed to hearing flawless (either by post production or by pure artistry) performances. A first horn who cracks a note in a performance of the Bruckner Konzertstück for 4 horns is not likely to get much sympathy.

I think of it like coffee.

Back in the 50's and 60's and much of the 70's, when you got a cuppa coffee, you tossed some pre-ground robustus that came out of a can into your percolator. It was terrible, but since that's what everyone had gotten used to drinking, it didn't matter.

When when of my customers gave a bag of coffee right out of the roaster (this was a coffee producer for the restaurant trade) and I took it home and brewed a pot, and put my lips to the cup--and my eyes bugged out. It was ambrosia--why didn't all coffee taste like this? I was a believer and no "cuppa" ever tasted the same again.

Nowadays, robustus beans are a quaint thing of the past, but for some of the really rotgut brands. The coffee that you brew in your home is yards and miles better than what you used to be able to get. But it's just another cup of coffee all over again. It's not special.

Think of it another way. If the city came out and paved the street in front of your house in gold, you'd think it was pretty special. But if they paved all of the streets in the city with gold, it'd be just another street and you'd cease to notice it.

That's what I mean when I say that music has become the wall paint of our life. It's just not as special as it once was.

[Dan Castillo]

Sunday afternoon would be a great time for a concert.

I dunno Chuck....that would mean having to pull people away from watching football during the fall.

[andrew the tuba player]

[quote="Chuck(G
That's what I mean when I say that music has become the wall paint of our life. It's just not as special as it once was.[/quote

So, we as musicians need to 'repaint' the wall. We need to make it speacial. I agree with you...But, I also reconise this to be a problem. I mean, if we don't even at least try to make it speacial then yes...like Pink Floyd said...We're just another brick in the wall. We just make up the musical part of soceity. But, we have to make ourselves the orange brick among the brown. We have to be notied as haveing something that people can't get by turning the radio on. Other wise, Classical music and orcastras will fall to the radio. Most people would rather just turn a dial then come to a concert. But, if we give them something more then they will come. We can't be another brick in the wall if we want a larger audiance. (I'm a major Pink Flyod fan if you couldn't tell )

[andrew the tuba player]

AWW!!! I spelled it wrong...what a shame Pink FLOYD

[DaTubaKid]

We have to be notied as haveing something that people can't get by turning the radio on.

You suggest intermixing jazz with classical music (as an example) as a solution to the "problem."

And they can't do this on the radio how?

[andrew the tuba player]

Not at all...Those are two different points...But thanks for pointing that out. Actually I was saying that we as musicians need to add more feeling and life to our music. I don't think that any speaker can match the emotional strength that a song has that is played right in front of you.....We need to bring that feeling into our music so that the audieance knows this.
As far as the jazz and classical, That was just to liven the setting up a bit. People get bored really easy. Take me for example. I love classical music. I go to a concert ever chance I get. But, once again even I tend to find my self doseing of after the second or third three movement long songs. If you threw a little jazz in here and there, then it's be alot less boreing.

[DaTubaKid]

I played jazz all through high school. I was lead trumpet in our top ensemble for three years (I'm not bragging, that only shows that our band program wasn't very good). I also played with a local youth symphony orchestra. Guess what concerts my dad fell asleep during:

Jazz concerts.

As far as livening up concerts, that's just called good programming. I actually just had my last concert with a municipal band tonight. We've played some really good stuff. Berlioz' Hungarian March, Malcom Arnold's Tam O' Shanter, Schumann's Traumeri, heck, we've even played a few pieces by Charles Ives (so they we're accepted that well..). We also spent a lot of time playing the crowd pleasers. A whole bunch of works by Warren Barker, Sousa marches galore, you name it. The band balances serious works with the crowd pleasers. I certainly don't mean to discredit your idea for intermixing jazz and classical. But it's not (completely) necessary. A good mixture of pieces the crowd will like should do it just fine.

I've been brought to tears by an incredibly moving recording of Barber's Adagio for Strings (sung by a choir). I don't believe for a SECOND that recorded music is not emotionally stimulating. Live music has the advantage of being more personal, but I highly doubt that any professional musician simply plays the notes on the page without any sort of emotion*. Yea there are those who simply show up to play the notes and receive their check. People play notes. Musician play beyond the notes.

* I make this statement as an aspiring college student who knows very little and believes that making music out of ink is the art, not playing the ink.

[Donn]

Nowadays, robustus beans are a quaint thing of the past, but for some of the really rotgut brands. The coffee that you brew in your home is yards and miles better than what you used to be able to get. But it's just another cup of coffee all over again. It's not special.

You hit that one right through my window! Latest shipment of green coffee beans arrived via UPS 4 hrs ago, and I've already roasted a couple small batches, in a hot air popcorn popper from the '80s. I've been doing this for several years, and maybe it isn't as special as it was the first month, but ... the first batch I roasted this evening was a Brazilian dry process from an estate in the Sul de Minas area, that's described by the on-line retailer in glowing terms that could only be compared to a wine review, and over the next month or two it will be interesting to see if I can pick out any of what he's talking about (goldenseal?) Tomorrow or Saturday I will probably roast a batch of the Sidamo dry process that arrived today, also new to me but I know from experience with Ethiopian coffee that I can expect an exotic treat of some fairly bold kind - my all-time favorite was the Sidamo I used to be able to get a couple years ago that had a prominent flavor like dried apricots, though you'd really have to taste it. I don't know if I can wait until Saturday.

So, well, I see what you're saying and it makes sense to me, but I guess it depends on the person. There really are millions of people who like thin, percolater brewed "can" coffee (which I believe does contain a lot of robusta, they have a steaming process that can make an inoffensive coffee-like substance out of just about any trash.) There are plenty of people like yourself, who have opted for something better, and there are a marginal few like myself who let it kind of get out of hand.

The same people listen to music. It is special to most of us, despite all the music we listen to. To others out there, it wouldn't be all that special even if they lived back in Sousa's day (Sousa railed against the recording industry, rightly of course), because they're just not there for music.

So I think I would have agreed, until you laid out that coffee analogy.

In my view this evening, the Renaissance was the golden age of what we loosely call classical music: not coincidentally, right at its beginning. What we loosely call classical music, we might more accurately call music of the aristocracy, because aristocratic patronage was its defining attribute. By the Renaissance, this hadn't screwed things up too much yet, hadn't had time. Today, it's no wonder music of the aristocracy is in disarray, since today's aristocracy is relatively ignorant and self-absorbed. I think there may be a case to be made, that we are ready to leave this model behind, and look for serious music in the forms of popular music as the Renaissance composers did. Education is the missing link.

[tofu]

-

[LoyalTubist]

What did he say?

[LoyalTubist]

If anyone here remembers Liberace, he made tons of money on playing serious music (and lawsuits, too--his most famous quote was, "I cried all the way to the bank!")

But he said something that all musicians need to remember now, some twenty years since he died:

It's called show business. Without show there is no business.

[lgb&dtuba]

I wonder if there's another factor contributing to the decline of classical music that we haven't really dealt with much here. Boredom.

By that I mean that there is pretty much a set repertoire. There is very little, if any, new orchestral music being written outside of background music for movies. Just how many times can you listen to the same pieces before you just plain get bored at hearing them? Where would rock music performers be today if all they played was the best of the Beatles? (Answer - on a forum like this bemoaning the death of the rock combo.)

I'm intentionally leaving out all the experimental "modern" stuff. Does anyone other than musicians really like that stuff anyway?

I used to listen to classical music all the time. Just like I used to listen to the oldies station on the radio. Eventually it just got boring to listen to each orchestra's nearly indistinguishable recording of the same works over and over.

If there's going to be any kind of resurgence in orchestral music popularity it seems to me that it's not up to the musicians. It's up to the composers. Can anyone name a great living and working composer of orchestral music other than those few working for the movies? Or name a popular symphony composed in the past 20 years? Where are the Bachs, Beethovens and Brahms of this generation?

[lgb&dtuba]

There has been a homogenization of sound. You can't discern one orchestra from another to the degree you could in the past.

Especially if they're just all playing the same stuff.

[George]

Have you ever tried to ask people if they've been to an orchestra concert before? Thier response is hardly ever, "It's too boring", or "They all sound the same", or "They need to play selections from the Romantic era," when I ask it's almost always, "I've never thought about it."

As far as most people know we don't exist, very few people know what a tuba is and if they do they're thinking of Omm-Pah.

No one really knows what an orchestra plays, if you tell an orchestra is on most movie scores they usually seem surprised.

We need exposure, every other potential issue pales in comparison.

[lgb&dtuba]

Have you ever tried to ask people if they've been to an orchestra concert before? Thier response is hardly ever, "It's too boring", or "They all sound the same", or "They need to play selections from the Romantic era," when I ask it's almost always, "I've never thought about it."

As far as most people know we don't exist, very few people know what a tuba is and if they do they're thinking of Omm-Pah.

No one really knows what an orchestra plays, if you tell an orchestra is on most movie scores they usually seem surprised.

We need exposure, every other potential issue pales in comparison.

Well, I haven't asked anyone under the age of 21.

I don't know anyone approaching my age (60) who hasn't been to a concert at least one time during their lives. And the most common reason that they don't go regularly or at all is that they do find it boring. Not especially entertaining.

For what it is worth, the NC Symphony seems to be well attended around here. Not by me. But by quite a few.

[lgb&dtuba]

I'm not going to say all classical music is great, but I can say with confidence that much more time, preparation, and musicianship goes into a classical music performance that other genres, such as rock/rap/pop.

Really?

Do you think that a top end rock band spends less time, preparation and has less musicianship or are you trying to make your comparison against a garage band?

I would contend that a top end rock band member spends more time (or at least as much time) as the average orchestral member on his music. After all, it's not a union job.

Or do you think Eric Clapton just picked up his guitar and started playing?

The actual truth is that a really good musician, regardless of the instrument or genre, will have spent most of his waking hours working on his skills. That "we play classical so we're better than anyone else" crap certainly doesn't do a lot to attract an audience.

[lgb&dtuba]

Miller, er Franziskaner time!

[andrew the tuba player]

I will agree with him on that one. Like I said before, everyone has there own mind. If we don't except there ways of expressing it, then how can we ever expect people to except ours? And, yes I can tell you, on the pieces that i have written, I spent just as much time and effort writeing out a rock song as a full band score.
And, yeah, we do need some people to step up and write some really good classical style music. I afree on that going to three concerts and hearing the same songs over and over again gets old in a hurry (although, if you're still wondering where a band that played only the best of the Beatles would be, they'd hopefully be in my liveing room )
Exposures a good topic to. If you dont know anything about something then you probably won't go to it. If the average Joe sees a sign that says 'bassoon recital' he's probably not going to go because he has no idea what it is.