HAIL TO THE NICHE

posted by James Reel

Journalist Greg Sandow has spent the past few years blogging for change in the classical music sphere—opening it up, in various ways, to broader culture, and indeed making it more like pop culture. Here’s a recent explanatory post of his:

From my heart, I'd say that I'd love classical music to change, that I live in the wider world, and want classical music to fit with all the lively, creative, artistic things happening in so many other parts of life. I want to see those reflected in the classical music I hear, and the classical music performances I go to.

You’ll find the full post here. I’ve followed Greg’s arguments with interest for a long time, but in the end, I think his campaign is wrongheaded. Almost everything in our culture today is predicated on the niche—specialty radio stations, specialty TV channels, specialty magazines, each focusing on a narrow interest and marketed as a small piece of a huge cultural smorgasbord. There’s no reason to draw classical music into the overall culture, because the overall culture already embraces what classical music is: a genre appealing to a particular audience. Altering the way classical music is presented in silly ways, like encouraging chatter and disruptive applause, is not going to make it fundamentally more attractive to new audiences.

I do agree with one of Greg’s more important points, that concerts should be more engaged with the music of today, especially since the classical music of today is no longer alienating, for the most part. At the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, we commission and premiere two or three new works each season, and on every concert we strive to include some fairly recent music, depending on what the touring artists are offering. And guess what? Our core (older) audience receives it very well, usually with great interest. But just playing new music doesn’t seem to draw younger audiences. In fact, hardly anything seems to draw UA students, and UA fine-arts administrators have all sorts of theories about this, all of them having to do with the students’ busy lives—nothing we can address at the presenter end.

So, no, I see no urgent need to make classical concerts more relevant to the larger culture. Yes, we need to market what we do in a way that conveys what we’re really about in a way that connects with people who don’t already come to our concerts, but it’s no tragedy if the majority of them decide that they can get what they want only from, say, Keith Urban or Flo Rida or Incubus or the Fray or whoever else is topping one or another Billboard chart. Keith Urban isn’t going out of his way to attract the classical audience, so why should classical presenters worry about attracting Keith Urban fans? None of us should try to be all things to all people. We just need to do what we do well, in a cost-effective manner, and make ourselves known and accessible to potential audience members. And by “accessible,” I mean in terms of ticket price and convenience of purchase and attendance, not in terms of tolerating boorish behavior that is inappropriate in any number of venues—movie theaters, playhouses and, yes, classical concert halls.