# Progressive Programming



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

In some of our discussions on modern music, people have commented that overly conservative audience tastes are partly caused by the repetitive, warhorse programming of radio stations and concert halls. It would seem, however, that it hasn't always been this way, and I wonder if you have any thoughts on it.

I ask because I'm reading an interesting essay at the moment about the BBC maintaining a 'blacklist' of tonal composers after WWII. Apparently because of this, a large number of tonal composers found it extremely difficult to get their works performed because the establishment was constantly pushing for the most progressive, atonal works.

Ruth Gipps was a vocal opponent of this, claiming to have been on the blacklist herself:

"My music is a follow-on from Vaughan Williams, Bliss and Walton … I say straight out that I regard all … so-called avant-garde music as utter rubbish and indeed a deliberate conning of the public…"

Her views are a bit strong, but she clearly saw herself not as a reactionary, but as a progressive composer simply writing music in a tonal medium, unnecessarily marginalised by a huge corporation.

Do you think broadcasters and orchestras are much more conservative now? If so, did you know about this, or did you think that these institutions have always been conservative? Do you think we should return to more forceful promotions of avant-garde music - a kind of affirmative action for modern music?


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## Guest (Dec 30, 2011)

Polednice said:


> In some of our discussions on modern music, people have commented that overly conservative audience tastes are partly caused by the repetitive, warhorse programming of radio stations and concert halls.


I would say that the programming of radio stations and concert halls are partly caused by audience tastes, not the other way round.

As for "conservative," audiences began rejecting "modern" music around 1800.



Polednice said:


> I'm reading an interesting essay at the moment about the BBC maintaining a 'blacklist' of tonal composers after WWII. Apparently because of this, a large number of tonal composers found it extremely difficult to get their works performed because the establishment was constantly pushing for the most progressive, atonal works.


Who's the essay by? How detailed (and how well supported) is the evidence. I've heard a lot about this so-called blacklist, but is it really true?

First thing someone needs to do is look at what the BBC was actually programming in the Glock years. (Glock is the one usually blamed for blacklisting tonal composers.) Were tonal composers really not being played? I ran across an essay by David Wright in which he mentions that Glock programmed seven of Ruth Gipps works during his tenure there, as well as many other quite conservative, tonal people. (Wright claims that Glock didn't personally like avant garde music.)

But let's say for the sake of argument that the impression that the BBC was playing only avant garde and experimental music is a true one. One, is that necessarily a bad thing? If your goal is to promote new music and you play new music, then job done, eh? Two, if you're not writing new music, and thus aren't being programmed by the BBC, you're very likely to be disgruntled by this. To turn that very natural state of affairs into some sinister plot to destroy the careers of people writing tonal music seems a trifle extreme to me. But that is what seems to have happened.

In any case, what I would like to see disappear is the automatic implication that programming new music is necessarily a bad thing.

I also wonder about the sense I get that a British composer, regardless of the quality of his or her music, is somehow entitled to be performed by the BBC. That the BBC is obliged to program their music. That if the BBC programs something else, then the BBC establishment is engaged in musical sanctions against tonal composers. That may seem an OK thing to imply, but does it seem so valid when stated explicitly like that?

From around 1800 (or before: even Mozart came in for some hard knocks), "modern" music was increasingly seen as dangerous and destructive, as something to be fought against, as something to be marginalized. Anti-modernism mostly won, at first. And by the time it had lost (i.e., by the time the Beethoven's and Chopin's and Berlioz's had been accepted), there was always a new crop of dangerous moderns to destroy. (Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Debussy--then Schoenberg, Berg, Webern--then Cage, Stockhausen, Boulez--and so forth.)

The targets, that is, change from era to era; the negative reactions remain the same. If anyone ever has a right to complain about draconian programming decisions, it's got to be the modernists, in whatever era.

Clever of the reactionaries to have come up with the victim profile as part of their attack, but not terribly convincing if you take a synoptic and fairly neutral view of the matter.


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

I don't usually agree with *some guy*, but this time I do! Must be a new year coming!


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

First of all, let me state that _nowhere_ in my OP did I imply that programming new music, or even favouring it greatly, is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. A desirable thing. So I understood your misgivings about people's thoughts on that, but those thoughts aren't mine. 



some guy said:


> I would say that the programming of radio stations and concert halls are partly caused by audience tastes, not the other way round.
> 
> As for "conservative," audiences began rejecting "modern" music around 1800.


It seems that the two statements above are partly in contradiction. If conservative audiences have been rejecting modern music since 1800, _and_ audience taste informs programming, how was the BBC's atonal bias sustainable (if true)?



some guy said:


> Who's the essay by? How detailed (and how well supported) is the evidence. I've heard a lot about this so-called blacklist, but is it really true?


The essay is a university dissertation by someone I know, which is why I was unable to link to it. It is nonetheless extremely good, and makes use of practically all the available information on the topic (which is very slim), with the exception of some BBC archival material. It does, however, reference archived Proms programmes, which were made available online recently and demonstrate some of the key points raised.



some guy said:


> First thing someone needs to do is look at what the BBC was actually programming in the Glock years. (Glock is the one usually blamed for blacklisting tonal composers.) Were tonal composers really not being played? I ran across an essay by David Wright in which he mentions that Glock programmed seven of Ruth Gipps works during his tenure there, as well as many other quite conservative, tonal people. (Wright claims that Glock didn't personally like avant garde music.)


Indeed, the essay acknowledges the Wright essay and its conclusions, but though Gipps got her seven performances, this was hugely disproportionate with the number of performances avant-garde composers were achieving.



some guy said:


> But let's say for the sake of argument that the impression that the BBC was playing only avant garde and experimental music is a true one. One, is that necessarily a bad thing? If your goal is to promote new music and you play new music, then job done, eh? Two, if you're not writing new music, and thus aren't being programmed by the BBC, you're very likely to be disgruntled by this. To turn that very natural state of affairs into some sinister plot to destroy the careers of people writing tonal music seems a trifle extreme to me. But that is what seems to have happened.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be defining "new music" as music which does not sound like old music. I would prefer the definition of music written by someone who is alive. Therefore, no, I do not think playing _new_ music is bad - I think it is good - but I do think playing avant garde and experimental music to the detriment of _new_ tonal music is bad. It's clearly pushing a certain aesthetic ideology rather than giving a fair representation of current trends.



some guy said:


> I also wonder about the sense I get that a British composer, regardless of the quality of his or her music, is somehow entitled to be performed by the BBC. That the BBC is obliged to program their music. That if the BBC programs something else, then the BBC establishment is engaged in musical sanctions against tonal composers. That may seem an OK thing to imply, but does it seem so valid when stated explicitly like that?


I haven't encountered this sense of entitlement, and this seems to equate British composers of the period with tonal composers, which isn't entirely accurate.



some guy said:


> The targets, that is, change from era to era; the negative reactions remain the same. If anyone ever has a right to complain about draconian programming decisions, it's got to be the modernists, in whatever era.


Except for post-WWII BBC programming, obviously!



some guy said:


> Clever of the reactionaries to have come up with the victim profile as part of their attack, but not terribly convincing if you take a synoptic and fairly neutral view of the matter.


Lies and conspiracies?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

itywltmt said:


> I don't usually agree with *some guy*, but this time I do! Must be a new year coming!


_Some_guy_] takes a "fairly neutral view of the matter"? Absolutamentally!

The avant garde is not encircled by sweetness and light here. You could examine their condemnation of Bartók post WW2 if you feel adventurous.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Concert-going, movie-going, event-going in general is off.

Exceptions are auto racing and mixed martial arts--where the need to see mayhem and pain inflicted, rules.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

some guy said:


> As for "conservative," audiences began rejecting "modern" music around 1800.


You say this a lot, but I wonder how true it is. Beethoven's more ambitious works were sometimes rejected by some critics, but to pick a couple of examples the 7th symphony was extremely well received by the public at its premiere and the Allegretto was encored, and the story of the audience ovation at the premiere of the 9th is well known.

You like Berlioz, probably you've read his Memoirs; he complains towards the end (so we're in the 1850s-1860s) of a lack of interest in new music in Paris, but look how well received he was by the public in Russia, Germany and Prague (the famous Russian concerts right at the end of his life in 1867 were the most successful of his career). The critical reception of his music was always a much bigger barrier to him than the public's. Berlioz also mentions a large public interest in attending virtuosi concerts, and of course at that time the music was written by the performers themselves and was thus modern in style.

In fact, as far as I can see much of 19th saw the opposite of what you are describing: a marked hostility to older works. Operas especially went out of fashion very quickly; in Stendhal's _Life of Rossini_ he remarks "What will happen in twenty years' time when The Barber of Seville [composed in 1816] will be as old-fashioned as Il Matrimonio Segreto [1792] or Don Giovanni [1787]?" Berlioz loathed Handel, and was strongly averse to Bach until very late in his life. Mendelssohn's Bach revival took time to spread through Europe; Berlioz mentions in his Memoirs (in his German travels, so around 1840) that the worship of Bach was a religion in Leipzig, but there was little taste for him elsewhere.

Strauss' Salome (premiered 1905) was so successful that it appeared in fifty opera houses within two years of its first performance.

The premiere of Mahler's 8th in 1910 sold out a 3200 seat concert hall, and was hugely successful; the audience applause lasted for twenty minutes.

Now it's true that towards the end of the 19th century audiences and programmers began to conform to the canon of past music; I don't have figures with me at the moment but I recall reading in Ross's _The Rest is Noise_ about quite a large decline in the number of new operas put on in a particular theatre between 1860 and 1890, or something similar. But you, I think, are very disingenuous about the whole issue. It wasn't just an audience issue - it was largely an issue with serialist and C20 avant garde music itself. It's over a hundred years since Schoenberg's _Drei Klavierstucke_ was published, and since then there isn't a single atonal or expirimental work I am aware of which has had a large positive impact on concert audiences.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

In general, culture has devolved and deconstructed to the point that there is no lower of a lowest common denominer to cater to. Implementing a campaign of enforced listening to the music that alienated a whole generation isn't going to help. Audiences have the memory of a gnat and an attention span to match. There is no such thing as a "warhorse" in classical music any more because other than snippets of melodies used in cartoons, the average person is completely unaware of classical music. All classical music is irrelevant to them.

It isn't just music though... Every creative artform has crumbled over the past half century. We've traded Mozart and Picasso for Lady Gaga and Jeff Koons. Our only hope is to go back to basics... Return to the roots of our cultural history and revive the dead warhorses. Make the classics relevant to modern audiences. Build the present on the past instead of building it on the sand foundation of "post modernism".

If we can slowly rebuild and restore, hopefully we won't head down the same blind alleys that contemporary creative artists led us down.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Thank you very much, jalex, for that insightful post. Some guy's claim is one that I have always felt intuitively is a misrepresentation of the historical trend, but I haven't been able to substantiate my feelings properly like you just have.


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2011)

The idea about audience is not mine. It's well documented historical fact.

I get my remarks on the subject largely from a book by William Weber who has examined thousands of programs from Haydn's time to Brahms. And throughout the nineteenth century there was a clear trend away from programming living composers, peaking in the '60s and '70s, when the ratio of dead to living composers in concerts got as large as 96 to 4.

And from reading books by and about nineteenth century composers.

Of course there were very popular pieces by living composers. And there was a lot of antagonism. If you, jalex, have read Berlioz _Memoirs_ yourself, you already know that. You also know how much of an effort it was to convince audiences around the world, even in Germany, to listen to pieces by Beethoven, especially the late ones. One could say that Cage's music was well-received in his time by carefully selecting certain concerts attended by dedicated Cage fans. (He was mobbed* in Finland shortly before his death as if he were a rock star.) We could probably do the same for Schoenberg, whose music was also well-received by some.

But we all know how real and how widespread the antagonism is for those guys and many more like them.

As for the nineteenth century's hostility towards older music, the evidence you present is very feeble. The eighteenth century had an attitude towards older music; it was one of relative indifference. New music was what eighteen century audiences wanted and what they got, too. Stendahl and Berlioz were both early nineteenth century figures, so their individual (and in Stendahl's case hardly hostile) attitudes could easily be seen as a carry-over of eighteenth century attitudes. Berlioz championed older music all his life, especially Beethoven and Gluck. But he was a modern composer and he championed newer musics, too, as well as deprecating the ones he saw as simply recycling the familiar patterns and sounds of the past.

The things you describe from 1905 and 1910 could be seen as evidence that the hostile attitudes towards living composers from the previous century had started to change. Or they could be seen as one offs, like any number of individual concerts by Cage or Stockhausen or Xenakis that were well attended and well received. Or they could be that certain living composers always manage to find receptive audiences, whether the _general_ trend towards them is hostile or favorable. Or all of the above. In any event, Weber's book traces concert life up to the 1870s only, though there's a brief coda that covers 1870 to around 1920, as I recall.

Anyway, you know how easy it is to forget things, especially bad things. The bad things of today always seem the worst, unparalleled, unrivalled. So the nineteenth century, which saw incredible violence and turmoil and destruction, is now seen as relatively calm and placid and peaceful. The good old days, as it were. A simpler time, when people had values.

Right. Well, the people living it at the time didn't find it to be all that nice. They felt just as traumatized by their times as people who lived through one or the other (or both) world wars in the twentieth century felt about theirs. Rebellions and revolutions. The breakdown of religion and morality. A bloody Civil war. Yeah, those were all nineteenth century things. And, aside from the American Civil War and the industrial revolution,** they were things of the 18th and 17th and 16th and and and as well.

Anyway, Polednice, your intuition is, I fear, simply your general feeling that I'm wrong and you're right. So anything that appears to support your own antagonisms toward avant garde music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, anything that appears to undercut my appreciation for and delight in avant garde music or my contention that the antagonism cuts much deeper and is much older than Schoenberg, is of course going to seem like a good thing to you! Only human nature, eh?

*I mean that in a good way!

**Which started in the 18th century, you'll recall.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

some guy said:


> Anyway, Polednice, your intuition is, I fear, simply your general feeling that I'm wrong and you're right. So anything that appears to support your own antagonisms toward avant garde music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, anything that appears to undercut my appreciation for and delight in avant garde music or my contention that the antagonism cuts much deeper and is much older than Schoenberg, is of course going to seem like a good thing to you! Only human nature, eh?


You're right, some guy, because I am mentally ill and have an absolutely obsessive fixation with your likes and desires and want nothing more in this world than to come onto this website and do my utmost to shatter them and tell you how bad the music is you listen to. I am in serious need of help and I do not know where to turn. This insane passion is consuming me and there is no one around for me to lean on! No one to properly psychoanalyse me and give me the drugs I need. Someone, please help! If I can't be stopped from my continuing war on avant-garde music, I fear I shall murder someone! I shall kill all avant-garde composers who I evidently despise without any rationale (and without having actually said that I do); I shall kill all pompous, needlessly defensive listeners whose complete inability to listen to anything I say gets on my t!ts like nothing else; and then I shall murder myself! I am not long for this world!

HEEELP ME!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Planning the programming for a season of any given orchestra is one of the most
difficult and thankless jobs on the planet . You're damned if you do and damned if you don't . The music director has to coordinate programming with the administrative staff and 
board of directors , and plan long in advance.
. It's absolutely impossible to please every one with your programming if you're the music director of an orchestra . No matter what you and your guest conductors choose, 
some one will complain bitterly , and accuse you of this or that , wither individual subscribers
or music critics .
If you are a committed advocate of contemporary music , many subscribers will hate it.
They need their beloved warhorses by Beethoven,Brahms,Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov 
the way some small children need their security blankets . 
If you pander to the audience by sticking to the same old warhorses , music critics and composers will blast you for neglecting contemporary music . 
If you have the courage to play something really challenging by Carter, Boulez, 
Schoenberg, Weber,Berg , Messiaen etc, many subscribers will send you hate mail 
and threaten to cancel their subscriptions. If you program conservative contemporary music by composers who are trying to be accessible , critics and composers will blast you for pandering to audiences with "easy listening ". 
It's a no win situation . Unfortunately , too many orchestras a re held captive by 
their conservative audiences .


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Superhorn (and others), have you ever had the sense that a broadcaster or orchestra has managed to tread the fine line well - favouring a proper spread of warhorses, obscure oldies, contemporary 'conservative' and boundary-pushers?

My sense is that the best thing for orchestras to do is to programme new music alongside old music in the same concerts, with the new stuff coming first so people don't just stay for the first half. Softening the blow, I suppose. A little patronising, but then we're up against people who have acquired a prejudice that all new music is bad.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

some guy said:


> x


Okay, thank you for that information. You are quite right that my evidence was quite thin on the ground and hardy conclusive, I didn't mean to present it otherwise: that was all the evidence I had to work with. I wasn't saying anything more than that your assertion didn't really fit with the little information I had. The 'hegemony', as Weber calls it, did indeed begin earlier and was more pervasive than I thought.

What if we look at this from a slightly different angle: the ability of new works to enter the standard concert repertoire? Even though I concede that audience disinterest in new music was a bigger problem than I originally thought, it was certainly true through the C19th, even in the darkest days of concert programming, that new works were capable of generating a lot of interest and of being assimilated in to the core repertoire. The same can also be said of the major works of the C20 which can broadly be described as 'tonal' to a greater or lesser degree - the ballets of Prokofiev, the symphonies and string quartets of Shostakovich, the operas of Britten, assorted works by Vaughan Williams and Copland, and even certain pieces by Bartok and the early ballets of Stravinsky are now as central to the repertory as the symphonies of Beethoven and the operas of Mozart. But where are the serialist and experimental pieces which are capable of drawing a large audience of regular concert-goers? I stand by my assertion that no serialist or other C20 avant garde work has gained a noticeable degree of popularity - the closest perhaps being Berg's Violin Concerto and Wozzeck, and of course Berg's music of all C20 avant garde carried the strongest echoes of Romanticism. The VC isn't even entirely atonal.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

superhorn said:


> If you are a committed advocate of contemporary music , many subscribers will hate it.
> They need their beloved warhorses by Beethoven,Brahms,Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov
> the way some small children need their security blankets .
> If you pander to the audience by sticking to the same old warhorses , music critics and composers will blast you for neglecting contemporary music .
> ...


Given other posts that describe the situation in similar terms, the programmers don't have much of a choice. Critics and composers do not fund orchestras. If orchestras want to exist, they'll program what their paying audience plus sponsors want. I guess one question is to what extent sponsors care much about the programming. But as long as the paying audience contributes a significant percentage of overall funds, I think there's still little choice for now.

Other threads have discussed options for bringing in new customers who may like contemporary music as much (or better) or introducing much contemporary music without driving away many customers. I have not heard any suggestion that I feel has a good chance of working, but I'm obviously not an expert.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

To be honest, I see very little link between traditional classical music and atonal music. It would make a lot of sense to have two concurrent seasons running with separate subscriber bases so the standard classical music fan isn't subjected to the "noise music" and the contemporary music fan isn't subjected to the "moldy old warhorses".

The problem is that it would be very hard to come up with an audience to support a full series of contemporary concerts. So the avant garde programs get sprinkled into the regular season so the subscribers can take their medicine whether they want it or not.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

bigshot said:


> To be honest,* I see very little link between traditional classical music and atonal music*. It would make a lot of sense to have two concurrent seasons running with separate subscriber bases so the standard classical music fan isn't subjected to the "noise music" and the contemporary music fan isn't subjected to the "moldy old warhorses".
> 
> The problem is that it would be very hard to come up with an audience to support a full series of contemporary concerts. So the avant garde programs get sprinkled into the regular season so the subscribers can take their medicine whether they want it or not.


Those links would be Schoenberg and Webern...


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2011)

jalex said:


> [T]he ability of new works to enter the standard concert repertoire?... [T]hrough the C19th, even in the darkest days of concert programming, that new works were capable of generating a lot of interest and of being assimilated in to the core repertoire. The same can also be said of... the ballets of Prokofiev, the symphonies and string quartets of Shostakovich, the operas of Britten, assorted works by Vaughan Williams and Copland, and even pieces by Bartok and the early ballets of Stravinsky.... But where are the serialist and experimental pieces which are capable of drawing a large audience of regular concert-goers?


I'm not sure that there are all that many twentieth century works that will "pack 'em in." I don't know if anyone would try to program an all twentieth century program just to see! Even fairly popular twentieth century pieces are always surrounded by 18th and 19th century favorites.

And I'm pretty sure a concert entirely of 19th century pieces that aren't in "the core repertoire" would also be scantily attended. And those would all be tonal pieces. I really think "tonal" is a red herring. But as the example I just made is purely a guess, I don't know how convincing my thought will be. I've just noticed that you can get the same patterns of rejection if you consider _only_ tonal pieces. I don't think a concert of Váša Suk's _Jan Hus_ and Franz Berwald's piano concerto and Saint-Saens' symphony no. 2 would really pack 'em in, either, do you?

Anyway, a couple of things happened in the twentieth century that were crucial. The first was recording. This technology made something possible that had never been possible before, the reproduction of music for playback in the home. In all of the nineteenth century, to hear music you either had to attend a concert or you learned to play an instrument. In the twentieth century, you did not have to do either. You could listen to the radio (although this started out, in the twenties, as very radical) or play records at home. As the technology improved, one could hear all sorts of music without ever leaving home. Concerts had a rival. Audiences could reject new music in a way they could never do before, simply by going home and putting on a nice Vivaldi or Brahms album. Concerts could not woo these people out of their home with Xenakis or even Bartok.

And you know what happened. Musicians began to be increasingly marketed as stars. Instead of a Liszt here and a Paganini there, you had dozens, hundreds of Liszts and Paganinis. Conductors were increasingly non-composer stars as well. And you could pack 'em in as much with the glamorous stars as with the music. (And the music narrowed even further to the tried and true. So as not to offend the audience and so as to not interfer with the stars' glamor.)

All of the above is a pretty gross simplification of a complex situation. But it is broadly true, I think.

Anyway, if you're not exhausted by now, there's one other crucial thing to mention. In the twentieth century, composers began seeking other ways to get their music played than the (only recently) standard symphony orchestra. Smaller ensembles got the bulk of new music composers' attention. And the same recording technology that allowed consumers to stay at home if concert programmers didn't behave also allowed composers to make music without any performers at all. Although almost everyone saw the lone tape recorder spinning away in a darkened hall as somewhat less that desirable. So human cooperation never went quite away! In any event, there grew up whole musics that had nothing to do with symphony orchestras at all.

So if the standard repertoire consists largely of orchestral music, with some solo piano stuff and a string quartet or two thrown in for good measure, and your composers are writing music for tape recorders and synthesizers and laptops, or maybe for turntables and cheap electronic circuitry. If those works are played in museums and bars and coffee shops and abandoned factories, then it should come as no surprise that they're not entering "the core repertoire" of music that symphony patrons would have ever heard or even heard _of._

The notion of a "core repertoire" is not a very old one, and it had about a hundred and fifty year run. In another thread, someone asked what the most recent orchestral piece to enter the repertory was. The best guess of all those posters? Bartok's _Concerto for Orchestra._ 1943.

The world has changed. The symphony orchestra may still be at the center of musical life for many classical listeners. But it has not been seen in that regard by new music composers (with few exceptions) for quite a number of years now. Perhaps fifty. Maybe even more.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

The world has changed. The symphony orchestra may still be at the center of musical life for many classical listeners. But it has not been seen in that regard by new music composers (with few exceptions) for quite a number of years now. Perhaps fifty. Maybe even more.

I have noticed that phenomenon. I've wondered how much of that is because the new music composers see little chance of getting a symphony mounted. Or any work for more-than-chamber orchestra, for that matter. Maybe it would require a 'special subject', as for Lees' symphony? The 'name' moderns, like Lutoslawski, Ligeti, Henze, have managed to accrue reputations. Maybe that accrual has always been a prerequisite?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

bigshot said:


> To be honest, I see very little link between traditional classical music and atonal music. It would make a lot of sense to have two concurrent seasons running with separate subscriber bases so the standard classical music fan isn't subjected to the "noise music" and the contemporary music fan isn't subjected to the "moldy old warhorses".
> 
> The problem is that it would be very hard to come up with an audience to support a full series of contemporary concerts. So the avant garde programs get sprinkled into the regular season so the subscribers can take their medicine whether they want it or not.


Part of the problem is obviously how well-informed the audience is about the connections between the superficially disconnected worlds of tonal and atonal music. I'll let the Wagnerites deal with that.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

It's not a matter of education or applying labels to listeners or types of music. It's a fundamental disconnect between composers and audiences. It isn't just classical music. Jazz committed suicide by abandoning its audience too. It went from being the dominant music of the modern age to being a marginalized sub-genre of popular music. How did that happen? Jazz musicians stopped playing for the benefit of audiences and tried to cater to music critics.

Great music expresses culture. It can't exist in a vacuum, no matter how rarefied and refined it is.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

some guy said:


> The world has changed. The symphony orchestra may still be at the center of musical life for many classical listeners. But it has not been seen in that regard by new music composers (with few exceptions) for quite a number of years now.


if one's definition of "classical music" is based on performance by live musicians playing the acoustic instruments that have been refined and arranged for over hundreds of years, one might say that there is no more classical music.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

some guy said:


> As for "conservative," audiences began rejecting "modern" music around 1800.


That's a dangerous and misleading generalisation. Take opera for example, the thousands of operas written in the first half of the 19th century in say Italy, Austria and Germany went through phases of fashion and upheavels just like many other genre. Composers saw their own pieces and their contemporaries succeed and flop in public and private concerts.

I'm not quite sure whether this line I quoted is simply a vacuous attempt to defend the rejection of contemporary "art" music today and or is it a deliberate attempt to propagate the rambings out of William Weber's book.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I feel like the Berlin Philharmonic does a great job at reaching a wide audience. I'm subscribed to them on youtube and they regularly post excerpts of a piece from their concerts. Their last two of these videos they posted were Rachmaninov's 3rd piano Concerto and Takemitsu's "From me flows what you call time". This is not unusual for them either.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

some guy said:


> x


I'm not seeing anything more than a smokescreen in that post. Schoenberg and Webern and Berg wrote atonal music in the traditional formats; nothing has caught on and nor has any music in traditional formats by later avant garde composers (say Boulez's piano sonatas), so never mind the even more avant-garde fellows with their laptops and turntables and whatever. From the twentieth century, the only pieces which can really be said to have gained audience followings are tonal pieces. Why?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I think that the music of both Schoenberg and Berg has 'gained audience following', at least the 'audience' for recordings. Webern not so much because, I think, the forms and patterns in his music are more difficult to sort out. Which brings me to suggest that discernible forms and patterns are as important as tonality when 'making music'.

I suspect that 'listening to the long line' when hearing a work for the first time is often helpful _because_ it is a way to locate patterns, and from them to discern forms.

by 'forms' I do not mean the musical term (i.e. sonata form), but a music 'shape'. Unfortunately, I don't have the education to elaborate sensibly.

:tiphat:


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Polednice said:


> Do you think broadcasters and orchestras are much more conservative now? If so, did you know about this, or did you think that these institutions have always been conservative? Do you think we should return to more forceful promotions of avant-garde music - a kind of affirmative action for modern music?


I listen to my local classical radio station regularly. I have no idea how they decide what to program, but much of it is old music, and not very interesting imo. Many of these pieces are followed by vapid remarks from the announcers exclaiming "wasn't that nice?". I hear more interesting stuff on the nationally syndicated programs they carry, than from the local programming. They devote just one hour a week to new and or avant garde music. Even better known 20th century composers get very little air time. If I depended on this station for my exposure to orchestral/chamber music, I'd never have heard of Webern, Berg, Lutoslawski, Schnittke, Varese, Schoenberg, Penderecki, Ligeti, etc. But I would in fact get to hear Dvorak's 9th at least once a month!


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

Great topic *Polednice*, I am not *British* so I don't know much about the history here I do know that it's not the first time I've heard of a *BBC* "blacklist". I am not anti-*BBC* I quite enjoy the odd program on *BBC 4*, *Radio 3* and *Radio 4* from time to time. I do think the *BBC* is a very pro-establishment conservative organization and I'm not surpised they have a music blacklist.

I got sick of *Radio 3* very quickly when I first started to tune in. It becomes quite clear who is liked and who isn't and it explains why the top 10 of the best seller list on *Amazon* etc is always filled with less than stellar classical CDs. This isn't just a *British* or *English* thing. The "establishment" in *France* and the *French* speaking parts of the world do the same thing and I'm sure it's the same globally.

I'm very fortunate in that I come from a well off, well educated background with all the privileges that doing so entails. I am not grinding an axe here just saying what I believe to be true.

Any chance you could link me to the article? Don't worry If your reading from a hard copy.


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

violadude said:


> I feel like the Berlin Philharmonic does a great job at reaching a wide audience. I'm subscribed to them on youtube and they regularly post excerpts of a piece from their concerts. Their last two of these videos they posted were Rachmaninov's 3rd piano Concerto and Takemitsu's "From me flows what you call time". This is not unusual for them either.


*Violadude*! This is very interesting I've never had a *Youtube* account I'm not really into all this "social media" but I'd consider getting one now thanks.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

superhorn said:


> Planning the programming for a season of any given orchestra is one of the most
> difficult and thankless jobs on the planet . You're damned if you do and damned if you don't . The music director has to coordinate programming with the administrative staff and
> board of directors , and plan long in advance.
> . It's absolutely impossible to please every one with your programming if you're the music director of an orchestra . No matter what you and your guest conductors choose,
> ...


This is a particularly American problem. I came across it in Cleveland when two little old rich ladies told me that the concert had been fine accept for that toneless modern stuff. It was Vaughan - Williams for Heaven's sake.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Superhorn (and others), have you ever had the sense that a broadcaster or orchestra has managed to tread the fine line well - favouring a proper spread of warhorses, obscure oldies, contemporary 'conservative' and boundary-pushers?
> 
> My sense is that the best thing for orchestras to do is to programme new music alongside old music in the same concerts, with the new stuff coming first so people don't just stay for the first half. Softening the blow, I suppose. A little patronising, but then we're up against people who have acquired a prejudice that all new music is bad.


That's exactly what they do at the Proms.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

bigshot said:


> To be honest, I see very little link between traditional classical music and atonal music. It would make a lot of sense to have two concurrent seasons running with separate subscriber bases so the standard classical music fan isn't subjected to the "noise music" and the contemporary music fan isn't subjected to the "moldy old warhorses".
> 
> The problem is that it would be very hard to come up with an audience to support a full series of contemporary concerts. So the avant garde programs get sprinkled into the regular season so the subscribers can take their medicine whether they want it or not.


I think you've just condemned yourself--I would rather pay for what I wish to hear, that idea is rather Big Brother. Maybe they should put loudspeakers everywhere and play the medicine at everyone all day and night. Anyone trying to escape will be exterminated !


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I'm with you, but try to explain that to the handful of contemporary classical music devotees who feel that their music deserves a position on the program where the audience isn't likely to walk out!


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## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

I would not say that my local radio station is overly conservative. They play a good blend of all eras and styles of classical music. Sometimes I think that it is a little bit too progressive. This may be different in other regions though.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

bigshot said:


> I'm with you, but try to explain that to the handful of contemporary classical music devotees who feel that their music deserves a position on the program where the audience isn't likely to walk out!


Funny you say that - "walking out."

Last year, on the very day that Mahler died (it's 100th anniversary), there was an exodus during a performance of his 9th symphony. Two acquaintances saw this happen at the concert given by the Sydney Symphony Orch. under Maestro Ashkenazy. Now is that symphony horrible avant garde atonal noise or something? No, I think that those people who walked out are basically inflexible. That's what conclusion I can make.

The other one is that this happens all the time. At a concert a few years back, the second half was R. Strauss' _Metamorphosen_. During interval, about a quarter to a third of the audience left. Again, if these people have "issues" with music written in the 1940's, then what hope do they have to give a chance or access classical music of today?

Basically, the problem is ideology. These people have hard conservative ideology. Stuck in 1900 or maybe even 1800. How many times do we hear that Beethoven's late quartets are gobbledigook from the likes of these jurassic dinosaurs.

The other side of the coin is what happened in the 1950's and '60's. The total serialist ideology which hardened into a dogma. I go on about this all the time on this forum. These are not only progressive listeners, or theorists or whatever, they're radical dogmatists. Basically zealots. Any sign of melody or things like more traditional counterpoint in music, or mixing high and low art, it's labelled by them as a sell-out and anachronism or whatever. Just the usual double standard junk.

Both sides are no good, both I believe are extremes. Most people did stay in those halls to hear Mahler's 9th and_ Metamorphosen_. I think programmers should pitch for the middle ground, which is the vast majority of listeners. AS people said, it's already happening, eg. the UK Promenade concerts. Here in Australia too, some groups are performing works beyond the warhorses, music both old and new. But some flagship groups are not pulling their weight to modernise their programs. This can lead to the death of classical music, if it becomes a museum piece, a dead and not living art.

So basically it's about balance and not listening to the extremists. Let them walk out, it's their loss. Let's not be scared of them, they are holding us hostage. Let's move on and listen to our old favourites as well as to new music that in decades may well become equal favourites...


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2012)

bigshot said:


> [T]ry to explain that to the handful of contemporary classical music devotees who feel that their music deserves a position on the program....


Yes, please do.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Sid James said:


> But some flagship groups are not pulling their weight to modernise their programs. This can lead to the death of classical music, if it becomes a museum piece, a dead and not living art.


I believe when it comes to composition of new works, classical music *IS* a dead art. Modern classical music marginalized itself by ignoring its audience and pandering to critics. The efforts in the 20s and 30s to interest the common man in the rich history of classical music has been totally undone by composers who couldn't care less about the common man. The people who should have been writing operas and symphonies and chamber works are providing the soundtracks to movies and television instead. That music is more relevant to people than a bunch of carefully scripted noises performed to an audience of the elite in hushed, reverent silence. The main problem is that purveyors of modern music look at the audience as a bunch of ignorant yahoos. And instead of working to win them over like any rational performer would, they try to further alienate them and insist that they deserve "equal time" with historical composers to whom they wouldn't be fit to shine their boots.

The composition of modern classical music committed suicide, and trotting out the corpse and programming it as if it was medicine for an ignorant audience isn't going to help.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

bigshot said:


> I believe when it comes to composition of new works, classical music *IS* a dead art. Modern classical music marginalized itself by ignoring its audience and pandering to critics. The efforts in the 20s and 30s to interest the common man in the rich history of classical music has been totally undone by composers who couldn't care less about the common man. The people who should have been writing operas and symphonies and chamber works are providing the soundtracks to movies and television instead. That music is more relevant to people than a bunch of carefully scripted noises performed to an audience of the elite in hushed, reverent silence. The main problem is that purveyors of modern music look at the audience as a bunch of ignorant yahoos. And instead of working to win them over like any rational performer would, they try to further alienate them and insist that they deserve "equal time" with historical composers to whom they wouldn't be fit to shine their boots.
> 
> The composition of modern classical music committed suicide, and trotting out the corpse and programming it as if it was medicine for an ignorant audience isn't going to help.


I don't _entirely_ disagree with you, but it should be obvious even to yourself that the entire artistic establishment is _not_ in on this elitist conspiracy. The numbers don't work. You just haven't found anyone you like, and I think you present the opposite extreme (all extremes being problems) where you would instead have composers ignoring critics and pandering to the audience. This is quite succinctly demonstrated in your use of the term "modern classical music." Of course "modern classical" _ought_ to be dead because it implies a hankering for repetitions of the past, and there is no art in that.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2012)

bigshot said:


> Modern classical music marginalized itself by ignoring its audience and pandering to critics.


It did nothing of the sort. One, the concert audience had been hostile to living composers, even the ones who tried to pander to them by writing older sounding music, long before 1900. Two, I am in the audience that enjoys modern classical music. So I don't feel ignored at all. (Why does the audience I'm in always get ignored in these conversations? Because to count it would be to give up the precious chimera that modern classical music marginalized itself.)



bigshot said:


> The efforts in the 20s and 30s to interest the common man in the rich history of classical music has been totally undone by composers who couldn't care less about the common man.


Say what? How could any efforts to interest people in history be undone by composers, regardless of who they care about?

Just what were these efforts in the 20s and 30s to interest the common man in the history of classical music?

Just what is "the common man"? (I was born in 1952 to Eisenhower Republicans who were very distinctly lower middle class. My mother, when she worked, was a bookkeeper, my father was a fireman. There were few books in our house, no paintings, and little music, all of it lounge music. Common enough for ya? And yet I grew up to be interested in 18th and 19th century art music, at first, and then 20th century art music, including (especially) the electronic and experimental forms.)

As humans, composers care about other humans, common or not. As consumers, composers care about all sorts of musics--an electroacoustic composer of my acquaintance listens to top 40 radio when he's in his car. Another one thinks Bach is the supreme composer of Western culture. As composers, composers care about sounds. About either how to combine them in interesting ways or about how to stay out of their way and let them be themselves. Of course, every composer wants to be heard. That's just common sense. But deciding which sound to use and which other sounds to put with it on the basis of guessing which people will like that and which not, well, that's a mug's game. When you're doing work, you concentrate on the work itself. Guessing about reception just doesn't enter into it, not if you're serious about the work.

Between "pandering" to critics and "pandering" to the common man I don't see a ha'pence worth of difference.



bigshot said:


> [A]n audience of the elite in hushed, reverent silence.


A very good description of a symphony audience listening to Mozart's 40th.



bigshot said:


> The main problem is that purveyors of modern music look at the audience as a bunch of ignorant yahoos.


How many "purveyors" do you know well enough to be able to read their minds accurately enough to make this bold assertion?

I know hundreds of new music people, composers and performers. They all respect their audiences very much. They know their audiences are not the only audiences, but they don't spend any time fretting that Lady Gaga fans aren't coming to their concerts! And while they wouldn't mind if symphony concert audiences would be a little more receptive, they don't spend too much time fretting about that, either. Is that it, bigshot? You want contemporary composers to fret about your indifference or your antagonism?

Modern classical music is quite healthy, thank you very much, and its audience is quite happy with what they get to hear. Not quite so happy that opportunities to hear it are so infrequent and so hedged about with timidity, of course, but happy with the music itself, yes. Very much so. Why your dislike of the music we like should turn into attempts to make us disappear and to characterize the living music we enjoy as moribund is a bit puzzling. Indeed it is.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

some guy said:


> Just what were these efforts in the 20s and 30s to interest the common man in the history of classical music?


Radio opened up the concert hall and made classical music available to the masses. Conductors like Stokowski were spearheading the efforts. Classical music began to be a part of popular culture, not just for the elite any more. Then in the sixties, it all took a nosedive. Like I said, it's not just classical music. Our entire creative culture took a dive at the same time. Today, orchestras are going bankrupt. The average person has less day to day contact with classical music than in the past 100 years. There are two culprets... Mass media and lazy creators. Mass media has stopped promoting back catalog and instead is focusing entirely on corporate product. Creators have lost touch with the mass audience and create self indulgent emptiness for an ever dwindling group of cognescenti. Creators with big ideas, skill and talent don't go into classical music any more. Why would they want to? There are better ways to starve.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Well, I guess that explains Andre Rieu.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

bigshot said:


> Radio opened up the concert hall and made classical music available to the masses. Conductors like Stokowski were spearheading the efforts. Classical music began to be a part of popular culture, not just for the elite any more. Then in the sixties, it all took a nosedive. Like I said, it's not just classical music. Our entire creative culture took a dive at the same time. Today, orchestras are going bankrupt. The average person has less day to day contact with classical music than in the past 100 years. There are two culprets... Mass media and lazy creators. Mass media has stopped promoting back catalog and instead is focusing entirely on corporate product. Creators have lost touch with the mass audience and create self indulgent emptiness for an ever dwindling group of cognescenti. Creators with big ideas, skill and talent don't go into classical music any more. Why would they want to? There are better ways to starve.


Add to it that we are often reminded today that "all art is good, none are bad" with the usual mumbo-jumbo that justifies anything can be art, and anything that sounds like a chainsaw is also music just because there are a minority of folks who love it, it's not difficult to see why art music further alienates my next door neighbour.

But at least there are re-discoveries now more than ever before of older music with steady increases in live performance and recordings of music, albeit in a consumer oriented market. I'm looking forward to Australia's first ever (and period instrument) performance of Monteverdi's _L'orfeo_ right here in Sydney later in the year.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

bigshot said:


> ...classical music *IS* a dead art...


Yeah it is, or has potential to end up that way. But you're twisting what I'm saying to suit your ideology (but not admitting your bias). Warhorses presented by flagship groups here, year in year out. Even things like Berg, Bruckner, Mahler, R. Strauss are considered "risky" programming because of a few hard core conservatives holding us hostage.

These groups have lost my patronage ages ago and talking to even people in the middle ground who still subscribe, they are bemused at the extreme conservatism of the programming. If a big name pianist comes here, he'll always play say the 2nd or 3rd concertos, or the Paganini Rhapsody, not the 1st or 4th concertos, if he's playing Rachmaninov. That's just an example.

The hard core conservative side is winning, so you shouldn't be worried. If we go on like this, with no vision whatsoever, classical music - in the live format of large symphony orchestras playing generalist repertoire, old and new - will be dead. & you can be happy & blame it on the "modernists." Well, yeah, the only "contemporary" music these groups play are "safe" rehash things like Arvo Part. Is that horrible atonal noise? Me no thinks so.

Anyway, I won't go on. I've said what I've said. As the chef Gordon Ramsey says about cooking, "where the hell is the passion?" If listeners just want to hear what fits their idea of what is music, their limited ideology, what hope is there for the majority who are more inquisitive and adventorous, with both old and new music? No hope (& of course, Mr. Ramsey would have used another word instead of "hell," my substitution!)...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> ...Even things like Berg, Bruckner, Mahler, R. Strauss are considered "risky" programming because of a few hard core conservatives holding us hostage.
> ...


That's very misleading. I think you might like to qualify your opinion there, Sid James. I'm not entirely convinced. It's a bit disappointing to read your constant bashing of our top professional orchestra. A glance at this year's Sydney Symphony Orchestra programme shows reasonable amounts of 20th century music, all in consecutive concerts:-

*February* - Strauss, _Metamorphosen_, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ under Ashkenasy
*May* - Poulenc, _Gloria_
*June* - Shostakovich, _Symphony #6_
*July* - Vaugh Williams, _Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis_, *Thomas Adès* (born 1971), _Violin Concerto_
*August* - Rachmaninoff, _Symphonic Dances_
*August* - *Carl Vine, Piano Concerto #2*, world premiere
*September* - *Dutilleux * (born 1916), _Mystere de l'instant_, Australian premiere
*November* - Rachmaninoff, _Piano concerto #4_

Have you listened to these all of these pieces performed live? I haven't, and I'm looking forward to supporting them at the concerts. As you would notice, one of these pieces include Australian composer Carl Vine's premiere of his 2nd piano cncerto. So I certainly do not agree with the suggestions you made.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Richard Gill once included some dodecaphonic Schoenberg in a concert for schoolchildren aged 5-8.


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