LARGE AUDIENCE, NOT MASS AUDIENCE

posted by James Reel

Here's the most sensible thing I've read in a long time about the classical audience:

So much effort goes into trying to find a mass market for classical music, all with remarkably little success. Could it be that there is a large market for classical music, but not a mass one? Could it be that classical music is granular and is made up of lots of connected but different niche markets? Could it be that there is no such thing as 'one size fits all' classical music? Could it be that when classical music is homogenised for the elusive mass market it loses its essential appeal? Could the mass market fallacy explain why so much classical music today is bland and unappealing? Could it also explain why creativity continues to flourish in genres such as world music and jazz which have shed their mass market pretensions?

That's courtesy of the blogger known as Pliable. He offers some fodder for argument from a British perspective here.