Snapchat is a domain ruled by celebrity royalty like DJ Khaled and Kylie Jenner, as well as engagement machines like Buzzfeed and MTV. There’s a reason everybody’s getting on board: Snapchat boasts a jaw-dropping 8 billion video views per day and rising. It’s the messaging app whose 100 million daily users spend an average of 30 minutes a day using it.
So…. question: with all that action, where are the classical musicians?
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences held its 58th annual GRAMMY Awards last night. See all the classical nominees and winners (in bold) below.
Sir Simon Rattle conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony for 18 years. After him, Sakari Oramo and Andris Nelsons both held the position.
Now it’s Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s turn.
A while back a CDA reader recommended I read Blair Tindall’s book Mozart in the Jungle for a look at the seedier side of classical music. I never got around to it, unfortunately. The book was turned into an Amazon TV series, nabbed Bernadette Peters & Gael García Bernal to star, and turned into a hit for Amazon TV.
But wait — the show’s won a couple Golden Globes, and classical stars like Lang Lang & Gustavo Dudamel have made MitJ cameos? Okay, I’m paying attention. Should I be watching this?
I highly recommend reading violinist Hilary Hahn’s Slate piece about her two favorite music teachers — Klara Berkovich & Jascha Brodsky.
When Mr. Brodsky fell ill at 89, I visited him at a care center. Two nurses brought him to a large room, and he sat at a conference table. I assumed we were only there to chat, but I had my violin with me just in case. Sure enough, one of his first questions was, “Sweetheart, what did you bring to play for me today?” I reminded him of the repertoire I was working on, and he proceeded to give me a two-hour lesson. He leaned forward in his chair, singing examples, shaping my phrasing with interpretive gestures, and interrupting me to offer suggestions and corrections. For Mr. Brodsky, teaching was an unstoppable impulse.
If I were in the National Symphony Orchestra I’d be chafed at Anne Midgette right now.
Anne Midgette is chief classical music critic at the Washington Post, and she’s got strong words for her city’s resident orchestra, which is in the middle of a search for its next music director.
The inimitable Norman Lebrecht points to an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press by Detroit Symphony conductor Leonard Slatkin. Slatkin asks why there aren’t more African American classical musicians in the game.
When it comes to the African-American sector of the classical music workplace, the changes are barely significant. There remain but a few who are in the forefront of the industry. Many attempts to alter this situation have seemed patronizing, and, in many cases, unfair to all musicians.
I’d say, given a music that is rooted in white, middle-to-upper-class European historic tradition (and throw “male” in there, too), it’s unsurprising that proportionately fewer African Americans have found purchase in the classical music industry.
That’s not to say there are zero African Americans (or Hispanic Americans, or insert-your-group here) but looking out at the sea of faces at a Saturday night show is like observing the Great White Musical Consensus.
Let’s see. Where to start? Slatkin kind of shrugs his shoulders here:
All music is not for everyone, as different people gravitate to what their hearts and souls tell them is meaningful. But each person must have the ability to pick and choose.
Translation: we have failed to garner a significant portion of the audience whose ethnicity and heritage doesn’t jibe with the white-bread pedigree of classical music. And that sucks.
I’m not criticizing Slatkin because it takes courage to write this, to acknowledge there are essential disparities at the heart of his profession. But damn, if this doesn’t tell you we need better programming, a defter touch to our community work, and a new tack when it comes to marketing this stuff, then nothing will sway you.
Classical music is NOT white people’s music. It’s not music for rich people, and it’s not just for high society. What a snooze that list is just to type. If that’s the reason you’re on this trip, get off.
Classical music is democratic. It’s for the people like Wu-Tang is for the children. Classical music is the movie soundtrack you listened to and loved. It’s the string breakdown in the middle of your favorite pop song. It’s a space where friends kick it to Beethoven quartets and get lost in the sound and a cloud of smoke. It’s snacks and box wine on the lawn at the Pops. It’s the best.
Good music is good music. It will be self-evident when we get it out there. Slatkin is off to a good start by owning up to some seriously troubling demographic trends. The best news is that we’re basically at rock bottom — nowhere to go but up.Further reading: head to Norman Lebrecht’s page because Slatkin is mixing it up in the comments section. Here’s Slatkin’s original piece, “How African Americans changed classical music.”
[**Note: Huffington Post inexplicably yanked Alexander Spangher’s article about composers killing classical music. Possibly because they were feeling mischievous. I’m keeping this up. Expect updated links if/when the article is recirculated.]
Columbia University student Alexander Spangher has pronounced classical music dead. Finito. Detective Spangher fingered the culprit, too: Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a knife-wrench.
Just kidding. The killer was the composer, with a boring piece, in a drafty orchestra hall:
Ultimately, current classical composers are greatly failing their field. With some notable exceptions, most of current composers seem intent on creating complex and “innovative” music at the expense of aesthetic tolerability. What could be an exciting and revitalizing branch of classical music is ultimately a failure.
Spangher is following a recent spate of death pronouncements from various corners of the web. I won’t link to them, but suffice to say, googling “death AND classical music” will get you where you need to go.
Alexander Spangher, P.I. does have a point, I suppose. The trend arrow heads towards complexity, inscrutability and ponderousness in new classical pieces, at least the ones I’m privy to. We play a music rooted in catchy hooks (“aesthetic tolerability” in Spangher’s parlance), and composers have been running away from them.
But you can’t just lay this one at the feet of the ones writing the music.
They’re responding to a market demand. We just need to start demanding different things. Quit commissioning stupid commemorative works that get archived and quickly forgotten. Quit accepting pieces blindly if they don’t move you (and your audience, by extension). Quit playing boring music.
My solution?
Listen to hip hop, and steal marketing ideas, fast as you can.
Start pushing out mixtapes. Start playing house shows and pop-up shows. Meet your audience where they live, and invite them to come to your orchestra hall performances. When they know you’ve tapped into something exciting they’ll be thrilled to try to get in on it.
Don’t blame composers. (But seriously composers: bring your A-game.) Quit making all these damn death pronouncements. Enough finger-pointing, B.D. Wong. Let’s make something.
Classical Dark Arts 