INVISIBLE CULTURE

posted by James Reel

    Veteran San Francisco music critic Robert P. Commanday offers a pointed criticism of the state of classical music coverage in American newspapers:

    Pick any city, look at its newspaper, and you'll find attention to classical music diminished to the basic minimum. It will focus on the "big ticket" events — which, in the Bay Area, means the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, and Ballet, plus the most celebrated visiting artists. As is well-known to any person interested in classical music, such coverage just skims the surface.
    Who's responsible? Newspaper publishers and their editors who have a hand in setting policy and then executing it. ….
    [The] "think piece" has taken the biggest hit. You likely will look in vain for a music essay in the weekend paper. If a Sunday music article is to be found, it will be an exception and probably an advance or "puff piece," meaning a celebrity interview or, at best, a column of CD reviews. The think piece, in contrast, can be on any musical subject—a significant composition, composer, or performing group; an issue or controversy; an unusual or provocative upcoming event or a notable musician involved in it—so long as it is a thoughtful discussion involving interpretation, history, or analysis. It is not an article that is essentially a recycling of publicity material.
    Then there's the decline of investigative music journalism, the hard news that music critics should be responsible for. It was the first to go, and it has all but disappeared. When you read the obituary of a symphony and learn about its bankruptcy, that is usually when you first discover that the orchestra had been in trouble for a long time. The reporting on those facts should have occurred long before, but in fact the coverage of the ineptness of the manager and the incompetence and inattention of the board never appeared.

    In our fair town, the Tucson Citizen doesn’t even recognize the existence of classical music, and the Arizona Daily Star’s coverage is so naïve that local musicians merely smirk and roll their eyes—at least those are the polite responses—when the subject comes up. And this is the response to reviews that are unfailingly rapturous. When musicians don’t take positive coverage seriously, you know there’s trouble.
    Read the rest of Commanday’s commentary here.