# Causes of Current Realities for Classical Music



## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

This is not intended as a political thread but as an attempt to consider current realities. An interview with American mezzo-soprano and opera singer Susan Graham in the “Living the Classical Life” series (July 28, 2017 on YouTube) offers reasons for the state of classical music. Large-scale causes of the decline in performance and recording opportunities she mentions are: (1) the fall in support from individuals, non-profits, corporations and government following upon the financial shocks of 2008; (2) the effects of digital technologies (e.g. internet & YouTube, digital audio, music streaming) that provide free substitutes -- for live concerts, and for new recordings by major media corporations. A third cause from 2020 is the obvious detrimental effect of the pandemic; there are other causes too.

Now, she is speaking from the point of view of a top performer. For the consumer, Cause #2 has produced bargains, but how long that will continue is anyone’s guess. Yet I still believe that within disasters lie seeds of hope and those are what we need to nourish, each as we can. We need good ideas. Here’s a start: it is notable that the above-mentioned causes came at classical music from non-musical spheres of activity. They are not causes inherent to classical music, but are problems caused by outside human, biological, and technological agents. We need to throw whatever we can at alleviating their effects; that is preferable to simply blaming classical music itself for its failings.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I think everything she says is relevant. I recently read there is unemployment among live performers of classical and other music from between 30-80 percent of all performers due to cutbacks from the pandemic.

I think something she doesn't mention is also worthwhile: there hasn't been a classical music composer that shook the world and caused people around the globe to look anew at classical music since Dmitri Shostakovich died 1975. The music that has been written since then may or may not be good -- there were the phenomena of the Three Tenors about 1990 and the Gorecki Symphony of Sorrowful Songs before that -- but just about none of it has caused the world to take notice.

An art industry that goes a whole lifetime without someone like this creating interest or hits or new fans isn't in a very good position to thrive. If you pile all those other elements on top of this you get the state of classical music 2021.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The pie of possible and instantly accessible musics is now enormous. CM must grow used to the idea that its slice of that pie must suffer as multiple other slices are carved out for aficionados of those other musics, some of whom either never are exposed to CM or who make CM a diminished part of their musical diet. YouTube for instance has massively enlarged the universe of available musics.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Technology has outrun the structure that was there for making a living at music.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

consuono said:


> Technology has outrun the structure that was there for making a living at music.


Classical musicians are more or less... manually labouring entertainers who try to sell the same old tricks over and over again to an audience that is ever more distant in time and space from the original cultural context. No wonder it's not economically viable...


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

I've always wondered specifically about how classical record companies are still staying afloat and turning a profit. I think about the general overhead cost and the resources that would go into paying a bunch of musicians and then engineering the album, putting it out there and marketing it, and how that still results in a profit margin.

For instance, to release an album of "Elliot Carter Oboe Concerto" you'd have to pay the conductor, soloist and whole orchestra, pah someone to produce and mix the album, then pay money to distribute it and put it on the shelves, only to appeal to an incredibly, incredibly *niche * market? How does that add up?


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> I've always wondered specifically about how classical record companies are still staying afloat and turning a profit.


Elliot Carter's orchestral music wouldn't make a profit. His inherited wealth, high reputation, plus awards and commissions might have helped his chances with a major recording company, perhaps with some source of added funding, but it wouldn't be easy. Nowadays, some composers are able to subsidize their orchestral recordings, and contract with good eastern European orchestras whose rates are lower than in the West. In some countries orchestras have government support, including recording, but things are very tough now I'm sure.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

This is no mystery. Long gone are the days when orchestras and conductors earned large fees from recording: the '60s was a real boom time with Columbia, RCA, Angel and others racing to record with Ormandy/Philadelphia, Bernstein/New York, Reiner and Solti/Chicago, Szell/Cleveland and so on. The president of Columbia Records, Godard Lieberson, was a classically trained musician and was clear: the pop music side of the business subsidized the classical.

When things started to go south, then you had sponsorships for recordings - and the subsidizers got publicity. So on Neeme Jarvi's recording of Schmidt's 2nd made in Chicago, Chandos put on the cover that the recording was made possible by a generous gift from the Barre Seid Foundation of Chicago.

For some companies, the miserable economic conditions in eastern Europe provided a great resource: you could hire a full orchestra and record a disk's worth of music for under $500. Sometimes badly or indifferently played, sometimes not. That's how Marco Polo got started: hire orchestras and conductors desperate for work on the cheap.

When it became clear that the once big companies were no longer much interested in new recordings, several orchestras started their own in-house company: the only obstacle was getting everyone involved to agree and the unions to back off their insane demands. Now Chicago, Berlin Philharmonic, Cleveland, London Symphony and others produce their own records.

Then here's another reality: an orchestra wants to get something out, so they record it themselves and basically give it away to some company whose only job is to package and sell it. They can put together a disk, booklet and label for under a buck - and sell it for $10 or more - what a deal. I know about this: one orchestra I play with made a recording two years ago and got Naxos to take it up. It got good reviews, and sold less than 1000 copies.

It's not just a problem in the classical world - there is no genre that hasn't had to go through some tribulations. Country/Western artists are really struggling.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

larold said:


> An art industry that goes a whole lifetime without someone like this creating interest or hits or new fans isn't in a very good position to thrive. If you pile all those other elements on top of this you get the state of classical music 2021.


Well, it's not like they aren't trying. There is the whole minimalist movement with Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and for a while John Adams, that has had large audiences and major impact across the board, including operas. There are fine film composers and dance composers who don't get enough recognition. There are also so many niches, as Strange Magic mentions, that it's hard to imagine any classically-based composer having the global impact of Shostakovich, or even of Copland or Britten, today.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

It seems to me that, despite the ready acknowledgement of pressures from the outside on classical music (especially the technology-based "culture of free"), most of the above posts still emphasize internal and inherent aspects of classical music as causes for decline. I don't agree, and will present some other reasons why.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Roger Knox said:


> Well, it's not like they aren't trying. There is the whole minimalist movement with Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and for a while John Adams, that has had large audiences and major impact across the board, including operas. There are fine film composers and dance composers who don't get enough recognition. There are also so many niches, as Strange Magic mentions, that it's hard to imagine any classically-based composer having the global impact of Shostakovich, or even of Copland or Britten, today.


It's the New Stasis in the Arts. Everyone is famous for 15 minutes/no one is famous. The Scorpions: "Satellites transmit the latest thrill; we can't escape the media overkill." Combine enormous populations, limitless input/output, and instantaneous communication and you have today.


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## neofite (Feb 19, 2017)

I know this question has been asked numerous times, but I have never heard a truly satisfactory answer: Why hasn't there been another prolific composer of the caliber of Brahms, Mendelssohn, or Rimsky-Korsakov in the past 70 years? (I am not including Bach or Beethoven in this list, obviously, because there will never be another one. I am also not including composers of the ilk of Glass and Williams for other obvious reasons.) Were one to magically appear, would this help reinvigorate the classical music reality?


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

neofite said:


> I know this question has been asked numerous times, but I have never heard a truly satisfactory answer: Why hasn't there been another prolific composer of the caliber of Brahms, Mendelssohn, or Rimsky-Korsakov in the past 70 years? (I am not including Bach or Beethoven in this list, obviously, because there will never be another one. I am also not including composers of the ilk of Glass and Williams for other obvious reasons.)


There have been numerous one. Their music might just not be to your taste.


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## Ekim the Insubordinate (May 24, 2015)

neofite said:


> I know this question has been asked numerous times, but I have never heard a truly satisfactory answer: Why hasn't there been another prolific composer of the caliber of Brahms, Mendelssohn, or Rimsky-Korsakov in the past 70 years? (I am not including Bach or Beethoven in this list, obviously, because there will never be another one. I am also not including composers of the ilk of Glass and Williams for other obvious reasons.) Were one to magically appear, would this help reinvigorate the classical music reality?


I guess the question to you is how you are measuring this? In terms of popularity? Or in terms of the quality of the music? Because the two aren't synonymous, nor are they mutually exclusive. I think the nature of musical composition these days, frequently, goes into new directions that, while certainly not lacking in genius and ingenuity and novelty, may not be appealing to as many ears, especially in a world where there are so many other options vying for attention. Brahms and Mendelssohn weren't breaking new ground - they were ensconced firmly in the romantic era and the general listening ear was attuned to hearing such things. But more modern conductors aren't necessarily go back to that same well.


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## Handelian (Nov 18, 2020)

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> I guess the question to you is how you are measuring this? In terms of popularity? Or in terms of the quality of the music? Because the two aren't synonymous, nor are they mutually exclusive. I think the nature of musical composition these days, frequently, goes into new directions that, while certainly not lacking in genius and ingenuity and novelty, may not be appealing to as many ears, especially in a world where there are so many other options vying for attention. Brahms and Mendelssohn weren't breaking new ground - *they were ensconced firmly in the romantic era and the general listening ear was attuned to hearing such things*. But more modern conductors aren't necessarily go back to that same well.


I think this is one problem modern composers suffer from in that they feel the need to be original. Composers like Bach, Handel, Mozart, etc, didn't feel the need to be terribly original - they just took what they were supposed to write - or what the public wanted - and applied their genius to it. Of course they hugely developed it but they never felt the pressure to be original all the while. Bach and Handel thought nothing of taking old material of theirs and reworking it. The problem is that feeling you have to be original gets you out of the orbit of the ordinary music lover.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

When you look back, yes indeed, it seems those older composers were really prolific - and it is almost always crafted with professionalism and very often enters into the rarified category of Great. Think of the huge box sets of complete works of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Raff, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, even Wagner. It constantly amazes me how these men had the time to do it. Writing music is time consuming and difficult. I guess they weren't distracted by Netflix, NFL and YouTube. time goes on the amount of music written by any one composer seems to shrink. There are some notorious scribblers - Leif Segerstam has written some 340 symphonies, although the quality of any of them is questionable. 

I do have a theory of my own why composers don't write so much, and why so little new music is any good - most of it isn't, let's be honest. The world is too noisy. It's hard to go anywhere and just enjoy silence. And I believe that quiet is essential to develop the inner ear - to be able to hear in your head and then notate. But with so much noise everywhere, the ear never develops as it used to. Mahler went to extraordinary lengths to find peace and quiet to compose, but nowadays his composing locales in Austria are besieged by noise - outboard motors, boomboxes, aircraft and such.


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> (...)
> Then here's another reality: an orchestra wants to get something out, so they record it themselves and basically give it away to some company whose only job is to package and sell it. They can put together a disk, booklet and label for under a buck - and sell it for $10 or more - what a deal. I know about this: one orchestra I play with made a recording two years ago and got Naxos to take it up. It got good reviews, and sold less than 1000 copies.


1000 copies is not that bad.

https://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2010/01/the-shocking-truth-about-the-classical-charts.html =>
"In the US, classical album sales are now so low that selling just 200 (yes 200) copies can score a top 10 Billboard classical chart position. Hilary Hahn's recent number one album hit the top spot on sales of under 1,000 - including downloads. Even the whole top 25 added together sold only 5,000 copies."


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## neofite (Feb 19, 2017)

mbhaub said:


> When you look back, yes indeed, it seems those older composers were really prolific - and it is almost always crafted with professionalism and very often enters into the rarified category of Great. Think of the huge box sets of complete works of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Raff, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, even Wagner. It constantly amazes me how these men had the time to do it. Writing music is time consuming and difficult. I guess they weren't distracted by Netflix, NFL and YouTube. time goes on the amount of music written by any one composer seems to shrink. There are some notorious scribblers - Leif Segerstam has written some 340 symphonies, although the quality of any of them is questionable.
> 
> I do have a theory of my own why composers don't write so much, and why so little new music is any good - most of it isn't, let's be honest. The world is too noisy. It's hard to go anywhere and just enjoy silence. And I believe that quiet is essential to develop the inner ear - to be able to hear in your head and then notate. But with so much noise everywhere, the ear never develops as it used to. Mahler went to extraordinary lengths to find peace and quiet to compose, but nowadays his composing locales in Austria are besieged by noise - outboard motors, boomboxes, aircraft and such.


Several very good points!

Regarding honesty, too many people, especially music critics, are reluctant to be honest about today's music. (I suspect that there is some career and/or financial incentive for this lack of honesty.)

Regarding noise, although I am very well aware of the severe noise pollution that plagues much of the world today, I had never before thought of its possible relationship to the creation and appreciation of good music. I want to think about this.

Also, thank you for the travel advice. I had been looking forward to visiting Austria, but after reading your description I have changed my mind. (Perhaps I should go to Arizona instead.)


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

neofite said:


> I know this question has been asked numerous times, but I have never heard a truly satisfactory answer: Why hasn't there been another prolific composer of the caliber of Brahms, Mendelssohn, or Rimsky-Korsakov in the past 70 years? (I am not including Bach or Beethoven in this list, obviously, because there will never be another one. I am also not including composers of the ilk of Glass and Williams for other obvious reasons.) Were one to magically appear, would this help reinvigorate the classical music reality?


There is, namely Williams. Please refer to the Williams topics.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Andrew Kenneth said:


> 1000 copies is not that bad.
> 
> https://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2010/01/the-shocking-truth-about-the-classical-charts.html =>
> "In the US, classical album sales are now so low that selling just 200 (yes 200) copies can score a top 10 Billboard classical chart position. Hilary Hahn's recent number one album hit the top spot on sales of under 1,000 - including downloads. Even the whole top 25 added together sold only 5,000 copies."


Is this data really correct? I find it _very _improbable for a country of several hundred million.

For comparison, the expansions of good film scores, which are considered more of a niche market than your typical classical, sell their (usually several thousand, which is considered too few) copies like hot cakes.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

neofite said:


> Several very good points!
> 
> Regarding honesty, too many people, especially music critics, are reluctant to be honest about today's music. (I suspect that there is some career and/or financial incentive for this lack of honesty.)
> 
> ...


There are many destinations around Arizona which are better than Arizona. Santa Fe and Aspen, Colorado, impressive mountains and still somewhat wild.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

No music lover can skip Austria - it's essential. To walk in the steps that Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Berg, Schmidt, Schoenberg...it's breathtaking. Innsbruck, Linz, Salzburg, Klagenfurt, Graz...just amazing. Then to top it all off Vienna. Beautiful - the world's "most livable" city.

Now as to Arizona: the surrounding states certainly have their attractions. I visit them quite often. But AZ is hardly a poor place to visit. Just don't come in summer!


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> When you look back, yes indeed, it seems those older composers were really prolific - and it is almost always crafted with professionalism and very often enters into the rarified category of Great. Think of the huge box sets of complete works of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Raff, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, even Wagner. It constantly amazes me how these men had the time to do it. Writing music is time consuming and difficult. I guess they weren't distracted by Netflix, NFL and YouTube. time goes on the amount of music written by any one composer seems to shrink. There are some notorious scribblers - Leif Segerstam has written some 340 symphonies, although the quality of any of them is questionable.
> 
> I do have a theory of my own why composers don't write so much, and why so little new music is any good - most of it isn't, let's be honest. The world is too noisy. It's hard to go anywhere and just enjoy silence. And I believe that quiet is essential to develop the inner ear - to be able to hear in your head and then notate. But with so much noise everywhere, the ear never develops as it used to. Mahler went to extraordinary lengths to find peace and quiet to compose, but nowadays his composing locales in Austria are besieged by noise - outboard motors, boomboxes, aircraft and such.


Like others in this thread, I hadn't thought about the importance of silence to cultivate the 'inner ear' and I think that's a very compelling notion I'd like to explore more. As for composers having less time to write on account of new distractions - I think that while Netflix, NFL and YouTube have their place in this narrative, the more important difference is that most if not all of the greats you listed had wives and/or servants to do all their cooking and cleaning and laundry and taxes and etc... and while getting married hasn't gone out of fashion (read: financial viability) the way servants have for most people, it's obviously increasingly necessary for both partners to work for pay.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> No music lover can skip Austria - it's essential. To walk in the steps that Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Berg, Schmidt, Schoenberg...it's breathtaking. Innsbruck, Linz, Salzburg, Klagenfurt, Graz...just amazing. Then to top it all off Vienna. Beautiful - the world's "most livable" city.
> 
> Now as to Arizona: the surrounding states certainly have their attractions. I visit them quite often. But AZ is hardly a poor place to visit. Just don't come in summer!


And summer is late April to mid-October? heh heh


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## neofite (Feb 19, 2017)

mbhaub said:


> No music lover can skip Austria - it's essential. To walk in the steps that Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Berg, Schmidt, Schoenberg...it's breathtaking. Innsbruck, Linz, Salzburg, Klagenfurt, Graz...just amazing. Then to top it all off Vienna. Beautiful - the world's "most livable" city.


You have convinced me with this extremely persuasive paragraph to change my plans once again and go to Austria after all. Perhaps even move there permanently. (I will just try very hard to ignore all the noise you described earlier.)


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

mbhaub said:


> When you look back, yes indeed, it seems those older composers were really prolific - and it is almost always crafted with professionalism and very often enters into the rarified category of Great. Think of the huge box sets of complete works of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Raff, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, even Wagner. It constantly amazes me how these men had the time to do it. Writing music is time consuming and difficult. I guess they weren't distracted by Netflix, NFL and YouTube. time goes on the amount of music written by any one composer seems to shrink. There are some notorious scribblers - Leif Segerstam has written some 340 symphonies, although the quality of any of them is questionable.


Composers started to write less with the end of common practice, for obvious reasons. But to say there aren't prolific composers anymore is wrong. Peter Maxwell Davies official catalog is 338 works (I think it's more than 600 if you count everything he wrote). Per Norgard's catalog is 452 works. Hans Werner Henze's catalog is around 350 works. They aren't scribblers.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Composers started to write less with the end of common practice.


Have you got anything to support this claim?


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Have you got anything to support this claim?


Almost all the major composers of the first half of the 20th century have written less than 100 works. The fact someone could ask why is it so is beyond me.


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## Ich muss Caligari werden (Jul 15, 2020)

Many contemporary composers write works when they are commissioned to do so and that is one reason why they don't have larger opus numbers. Of course, beginning composers cannot "afford" to have nothing in their portfolios...


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

As to the whole composer-music and record company things ... composers in Brahms' and Beethoven's days had to write music people would pay to hear performed to be successful. This changed after World War II when the LP made it possible for anyone to write anything and, if a company would record it, they could have it heard by at least the people that bought the record.

This was a generation after the Second Viennese School so it cannot be a single explanation for all changes in music. However it did institute a phase in classical music where composers became separated from public taste and demand.

As to record companies, CM was always a niche market in USA. There was the occasional big hit like Dorati's Hadyn symphonies that would sell millions but most recordings sold a few. The companies that recorded CM also recorded modern artists whose sales in effect subsidized CM which was considered an elitist art form.

I know from many years of attending concerts that most classical music concertgoers were not CM enthusiasts, or at least they weren't record collectors or in any other way fanatic about any element of classical music. They went to concerts because they liked the music, the night out, and the culture.

Today I wonder if anyone needs the form of art any longer we know as classical music. It has become clear over the days of the 21st century that people who consume classical music online want it free and can get it at YouTube or pay a small fee and stream music. This was probably the last element that destroyed the economic vitality of the industry which before survived on recoding and concert sales, both now in substantial decline.

Last is the art itself. I cannot be led to believe that the world's greatest artists are any longer writing classical music. I don't know what art form they are participating in but I am sure it is not CM.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kilgore Trout said:


> Almost all the major composers of the first half of the 20th century have written less than 100 works. The fact someone could ask why is it so is beyond me.


Oh yes, right, first half, I don't know as much about that. Second half have seen some very productive composers like Stockhausen and Rihm and Cage, I think Sciarrino's and Nono's and Richard Barrett's and Elliott Carter's score can't be too far off 100, maybe they exceeded a century. Presumably the big wars got in the way in the first half.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

larold said:


> As to record companies, CM was always a niche market in USA.


That's certainly true. But there was a time when more people were at least exposed to it regularly. In the early days of radio and TV, the networks had their own in-house orchestras that broadcast weekly concerts. The Metropolitan Opera broadcasts were underwritten by Texaco and heard everywhere. When the New York Philharmonic would play concerts In the Park attendance would be in the hundreds of thousands. We had weekly Music Appreciation piped into our schools over the PA systems. Presented by well-meaning but kind of stuffy guys whose names I can't remember. Then came 1957: Sputnik. It was a wake up call to the world and we should, we must, be better and smarter and get serious. One of the results of Sputnik was a sudden influx of things like Record of the Month Clubs - there were several of them. They presented the classical repertoire using lesser-known artists in the hopes of increasing the intelligence, taste, and cultural IQ of subscribers. Did it work? I doubt it; but I sure knew many neighbors who had stacks of these records - probably listened to once. It was also the era of Easy Listening music which was wildly successful. In my area two of the highest rated FM stations were of that genre and they played Mantovani, Kostelanetz, Melachrino and others endlessly. There was always a hope that people who listened to it would appreciate the orchestral sounds and maybe try some CM. Didn't happen. The easy listening people wanted, the musical bubble gum was rock n' roll and Easy Listening and classical were doomed to remain the choice of a very small crowd.


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Oh yes, right, first half, I don't know as much about that. Second half have seen some very productive composers like Stockhausen and Rihm and Cage, I think Sciarrino's and Nono's and Richard Barrett's and Elliott Carter's score can't be too far off 100, maybe they exceeded a century.


Man, I've already named three composer who had big output. For sure, there are others (not Nono, his catalog is small, around 70 works). 
But mbhaub was talking about composers with massive catalogs (like Beethoven, who wrote more than 700 works, Mozart (600 +), Schubert, etc.). To be fair, he also named composers like Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn or Brahms, whose outputs are much smaller.



Mandryka said:


> Presumably the big wars got in the way in the first half.


Context has a role, but I would not put everything on the world wars. Some rather prolific composers like Shostakovich or Britten were still productive during the second world war, while some of the composers who had a small output died before the second world war (Debussy, Ravel), or shortly after (Bartok, Schönberg).


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

A couple of comments about some things discussed in this thread:

*Re: sales of CM recordings. * As is the case for many genres, other than the most popular, classical recordings are more of a promotional item and artists make their living from concertizing. Which is why the pandemic closure of concert venues has been so devastating for most performing artists. And this has effected all musicians working in every genre, not just classical music.

*Re: Composer output, number of works written.* We live at a time when audiences have many ways to hear music, whereas 150 years ago, or more, live music was the only way. This music was generally provided by composers, so there was more demand. Today's composers write fewer works since there is less demand for new classical music.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> 150 years ago, or more, live music was the only way. This music was generally provided by composers, so there was more demand.


Which is exactly why Morricone has composed 600+ works, Williams, E. Bernstein, and Goldsmith 250+ each, and so on. The demand for new music has moved together with the audience's attention to radio, television, and cinema.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Fabulin said:


> Which is exactly why Morricone has composed 600+ works, Williams, E. Bernstein, and Goldsmith 250+ each, and so on. The demand for new music has moved together with the audience's attention to radio, television, and cinema.


Which may be true. However, the music in movies and television is often classical-sounding music, but composed to supplement a larger entertainment production and not to stand alone as an actual classical composition. It will be a tragic loss of culture if it is all that survives from the legacy of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

Does anyone seriously think that the film score of Star Wars stands on an equal artistic level with the orchestral music of Debussy, Mahler, Sibelius, and Shostakovich, to name a few 20th century classical composers?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Some living composers with a higher than average profile:

Hugues Dufourt
Brian Ferneyhough
Krzysztof Meyer
Joseph Schwantner
Péter Eötvös
Georges Aperghis
Michael Finnissy
Pēteris Vasks
John Adams
Jack Gallagher
Salvatore Sciarrino
Tristan Murail
Kalevi Aho
Poul Ruders
Hans Abrahamsen
Wolfgang Rihm
Kaija Saariaho
John Luther Adams
Georg Friedrich Haas
Tobias Picker
Carl Vine
Judith Weir
Pascal Dusapin
Toshio Hosokawa
Sally Beamish
Richard Danielpour
Kenneth Fuchs
Chaya Czernowin
Paul Moravec
Tan Dun
Magnus Lindberg
Bent Sørensen
James MacMillan
Erkki-Sven Tüür
George Benjamin
Osvaldo Golijov
Aaron Jay Kernis
Unsuk Chin
Michael Torke
Jennifer Higdon
Olga Neuwirth
Thomas Adès
Lera Auerbach
Jörg Widmann

There may be a living classical tradition aside from film music composers.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> Does anyone seriously think that the film score of Star Wars stands on an equal artistic level with the orchestral music of Debussy, Mahler, Sibelius, and Shostakovich, to name a few 20th century classical composers?


Yes. ..........


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> Some living composers with a higher than average profile:


What is your definition of average profile and thus, higher than average profile?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

DaveM said:


> What is your definition of average profile and thus, higher than average profile?


My definition of a higher than average profile is 1) I've heard of them, 2) they have been discussed more than in passing on TC and other forums and 3) their music has been recorded a number of times and been reviewed in mainstream media.


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## Durendal (Oct 24, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Some living composers with a higher than average profile:
> 
> Hugues Dufourt
> Brian Ferneyhough
> ...


I fear that you might be in a bubble there...I'm a CM enthusiast and I've heard of exactly 4 of those people. Mainstream people wouldn't know any of them.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Durendal said:


> I fear that you might be in a bubble there...I'm a CM enthusiast and I've heard of exactly 4 of those people. Mainstream people wouldn't know any of them.


I think you are the one living in a bubble. If you were to Google these names you would find that they are not obscure composers, and if you listened to their work you might find some music being written during your lifetime that is enjoyable.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

I've heard some music by 17 of those listed, and some of it was "okay" the same way Joachim Raff or Alexander Zemlinsky are okay.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> Some living composers with a higher than average profile:
> 
> Hugues Dufourt
> Brian Ferneyhough
> ...


Now that the world population is ten times larger than that of 1750, for example, and that the list above indicates the number of piglets struggling to suckle at the teats of CM Fame and Fortune, and given the realities of the New Stasis in the Arts, it is difficult to imagine any gigantic Beethoven or even a Prokofiev arising from the white noise of the current flux. Just how is that supposed to happen?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Strange Magic said:


> Now that the world population is ten times larger than that of 1750, for example, and that the list above indicates the number of piglets struggling to suckle at the teats of CM Fame and Fortune, and given the realities of the New Stasis in the Arts, it is difficult to imagine any gigantic Beethoven or even a Prokofiev arising from the white noise of the current flux. Just how is that supposed to happen?


I can't speak to your idea of "any gigantic Beethoven or even a Prokofiev arising," but can say that these composers are doing some of the best work among their generation, and have been acknowledged by at least some segments of the classical music community, and some even breaking out to wider fame. I just realized I forgot to incude Arvo Pärt.

Our world has changed dramatically since the time of Beethoven, and I doubt any of today's classical composers will ever achieve the cultural significance of a composer like Beethoven.

But at a minimum, I hope we can do better than John Williams, of those composers who will carry the torch of classical music forward for the rest of the 21st century.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> But at a minimum, I hope we can do better than John Williams, of those composers who will carry the torch of classical music forward for the rest of the 21st century.


I also hope for that! :angel:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> it is difficult to imagine any gigantic Beethoven or even a Prokofiev arising from the white noise of the current flux. Just how is that supposed to happen?


It isn't. The same is true for literature I think. One place this is not true is in painting and sculpture, where the objects have a high investment value.

A consequence of the absence of giants, and here I speak personally, is that the world of music and literature is overwhelming and disorienting. Yes, YouTube and The Booker Prize try to steer you in the direction of their sponsors, but they're not a strong force at all.

I like this myself.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> It isn't. The same is true for literature I think. One place this is not true is in painting and sculpture, where the objects have a high investment value.
> 
> A consequence of the absence of giants, and here I speak personally, is that the world of music and literature is overwhelming and disorienting. Yes, YouTube and The Booker Prize try to steer you in the direction of their sponsors, but they're not a strong force at all.
> 
> I like this myself.


I would reverse cause and effect here, and postulate that it is the world of the Arts being overwhelming and disorienting that is the cause, and the absence of giants the effect. You are onto something with painting and sculpture, in that fabulously rich individuals vie with one another to possess symbols of disposable income and vast net worth, with no regard to whether the pieces are of any real interest to them. This drives public interest as one learns that some auction house has sold X to Y The Billionaire for $150,000,000. Literature is another story also, in that a good story, whether fiction or non-fiction, has appealed since Homer. "Abstract" or "non-representational" writing will be always stillborn, and thus be very rarely even contemplated. And to the extent that music is not broadly "tuneful" as conventionally understood, it will struggle to find any audience large enough to sustain it.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Some living composers with a higher than average profile:

Hugues Dufourt
Brian Ferneyhough
Krzysztof Meyer
Joseph Schwantner
Péter Eötvös
Georges Aperghis
Michael Finnissy
Pēteris Vasks
John Adams
Jack Gallagher
Salvatore Sciarrino
Tristan Murail
Kalevi Aho
Poul Ruders
Hans Abrahamsen
Wolfgang Rihm
Kaija Saariaho
John Luther Adams
Georg Friedrich Haas
Tobias Picker
Carl Vine
Judith Weir
Pascal Dusapin
Toshio Hosokawa
Sally Beamish
Richard Danielpour
Kenneth Fuchs
Chaya Czernowin
Paul Moravec
Tan Dun
Magnus Lindberg
Bent Sørensen
James MacMillan
Erkki-Sven Tüür
George Benjamin
Osvaldo Golijov
Aaron Jay Kernis
Unsuk Chin
Michael Torke
Jennifer Higdon
Olga Neuwirth
Thomas Adès
Lera Auerbach
Jörg Widmann

There may be a living classical tradition aside from film music composers._

I agree some of these composers have a profile of varying degrees with people that collect music and/or follow CM closely. I would say there is not one of them that would be known by the average concertgoer who does not dabble with contemporary music.

Furthermore, and more important, none has a big worldwide hit that has created new fans for the genre the way Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrrowful Songs did in the 1980s.

I'm not sure any of these composers could be identified by his or her greatest work by even most of the people that hang around this website. John Adams is probably the "biggest" name here. What would you say is his signature piece of work?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> I would reverse cause and effect here, and postulate that it is the world of the Arts being overwhelming and disorienting that is the cause, and the absence of giants the effect. You are onto something with painting and sculpture, in that fabulously rich individuals vie with one another to possess symbols of disposable income and vast net worth, with no regard to whether the pieces are of any real interest to them. This drives public interest as one learns that some auction house has sold X to Y The Billionaire for $150,000,000. Literature is another story also, in that a good story, whether fiction or non-fiction, has appealed since Homer. "Abstract" or "non-representational" writing will be always stillborn, and thus be very rarely even contemplated. And to the extent that music is not broadly "tuneful" as conventionally understood, it will struggle to find any audience large enough to sustain it.


I just thought I'd post to say that as I read this I was listening to some songs by Kurtag, and I can't imagine anything more tuneful!


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

larold said:


> _Some living composers with a higher than average profile:
> 
> Hugues Dufourt
> Brian Ferneyhough
> ...


I'd say for John Adams, _Nixon in China_. But the other John Adams, John Luther Adams was covered in the mainstream media a few years back for his work _Becoming Ocean_ which won the Pulitzer Prize.

*Magnus Lindberg* was Composer-in-Residence with the New York Phil a while back, *Thomas Adès* has a fairly high profile.

And as I said, I forgot to include *Arvo Pärt*, who has become quite well known and popular.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

As a result of my listening to some music by Paul Moravec Spotify suggested a playlist of 50 classical works composed in the 21st century. It is called *Indie Classical: Composed in the 21st Century*. Many of the names are new to me, others like Nico Muhly I am familiar with but failed to include on my list.

There's some good stuff here, but at the same time some of it I would not consider classical music.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I think that classical music lacks a true leading composer nowadays, someone who could apply the post-Shostakovich's era techniques without compromising musicality and accessibility, someone that made listeners of other genres think that new classical music is actually good and made them turn their attention to it. If all a genre has to offer is some random pretty noises, then I guess that it's clear that this genre will appease only alternative niches of listeners and make many people lose interest for it in the long run.

After all, when an international youtube video called "why modern classical music is bizarre" receives more than forty thousand likes, I think that it's time for the new "classical" composers to reconsider what they're doing, no? And boring pieces like "Become Ocean" won't save it. We need _true_ music. _New_ true classical music, that is, whatever it may be.

_Why modern classical music is bizarre_ - turn subtitles _on_.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I am optimistic about classical music.

While I think the old traditional classical music will survive, as a museum, the future of classical music I think is in the hands of composers such as *Anna Thovoldsdottir*, *Maxim Shalygin*, *Osvaldo Golijov* among others. These composers are are writing a new kind of classical music which has a good chance of attracting an audience from other genres than the traditional classical music audience.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> I am optimistic about classical music.
> 
> While I think the old traditional classical music will survive, as a museum, the future of classical music I think is in the hands of composers such as *Anna Thovoldsdottir*, *Maxim Shalygin*, *Osvaldo Golijov* among others. These composers are are writing a new kind of classical music which has a good chance of attracting an audience from other genres than the traditional classical music audience.


I looked up the first one, and it made me think of horror / thriller scores or tracks by... especially Williams and Goldsmith.

The music field would certainly have been better off had she, and not her compatriot Hildur Gudnadottir scored something and received an Oscar.








*compare :
*


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

*Nico Muhly* is another composer bringing a new audience to classical music. His song cycle _Confessions_ is very interesting; a collaboration with *Teitor*. There is a strong popular song influence going on, but Muhly takes it well beyond that style.









Anna Thorvaldsdottir's latest, _Sola_ is more of what I was describing.











> Sola is inspired by abstract structural elements of solitariness in midst of turmoil-by the desire of calm and focus in chaos. Focusing on intimate materials in a flowing progression that seethe under the surface of disruption, only occasionally observing elements from the surface. The viola and the electronics become one-different sides of the same being-and move together throughout the work. The viola is the constant and the electronics emerge in and out of focus and shadow the materials from the viola. The whole-the connecting materials-expand and contract throughout the process of the piece and are contrasted with fragmented nuanced sound materials that depict various sides of the existing being, showing the core materials through various perspectives.
> 
> As with my music generally, the inspiration behind Sola is not something I am trying to describe through the piece-to me, the qualities of the music are first and foremost musical. When I am inspired by a particular element or quality, it is because I perceive it as musically interesting, and the qualities I tend to be inspired by are often structural, like proportion and flow, as well as relationships of balance between details within a larger structure, and how to move in perspective between the two-the details and the unity of the whole. // Program notes by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, 2019


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

When I began the thread I was looking for extra-musical reasons for the current state of classical music, but it seems most posts bring it back to the composers and the works -- what listeners are most interested in. Fine! When I was working as a composer and lecturer, and involved with new music organizations, there were lots of discussions of modernism and post-modernism, electronic and acoustic music, different styles, performers, funding, audiences and now I realize that I don't want to spend any more time on them. We didn't consider the listener enough back then. On TC I'm impressed by San Antone's contributions of new recordings and works to listen to. Listening, more than debate, is the real strength of TC members and the weekly String Quartet and Symphony discussions are good examples. And I really believe that anyone who is so moved can become a good listener.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

With all due respect to recent comments I want to address this new music from the perspective of a player. As interesting and evocatve as a score like Tharvalsdottir Aeriality may be, it's boring as heck to play. Slow, lots of low and long notes. It's a common problem with many, many modern scores. A lot of people think that Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine is so great - it's dull as heck to play. Musicians spend years studying, you learn to play cantabile lines. Your mastery of technique is at a high level. You acquire technical skills in bowing. And then you have something modern that doesn't tap into those hard won skills. The great masters knew how to write for instruments - they passed melodic lines around and magically made most, if not all, parts interesting to the player: challenging yet playable. This minimalist stuff is just awful to play - repetitious to the extreme and so unrewarding. If contemporary composers want to gain the support of players then they need to start writing music that is actually fun and interesting to play. The only players I know who like a lot of this new garbage are percussionists - they get more to do than they with Brahms. I can be done: John Williams sure knows how to write interesting scores. String players like baroque and classical era music for a very good reason: the composers back then were largely string players and knew how to write good parts for the instruments.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> With all due respect to recent comments I want to address this new music from the perspective of a player. As interesting and evocatve as a score like Tharvalsdottir Aeriality may be, it's boring as heck to play. Slow, lots of low and long notes. It's a common problem with many, many modern scores. A lot of people think that Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine is so great - it's dull as heck to play. Musicians spend years studying, you learn to play cantabile lines. Your mastery of technique is at a high level. You acquire technical skills in bowing. And then you have something modern that doesn't tap into those hard won skills. The great masters knew how to write for instruments - they passed melodic lines around and magically made most, if not all, parts interesting to the player: challenging yet playable. This minimalist stuff is just awful to play - repetitious to the extreme and so unrewarding. If contemporary composers want to gain the support of players then they need to start writing music that is actually fun and interesting to play. The only players I know who like a lot of this new garbage are percussionists - they get more to do than they with Brahms. I can be done: John Williams sure knows how to write interesting scores. String players like baroque and classical era music for a very good reason: the composers back then were largely string players and knew how to write good parts for the instruments.


I get this. I have been a professional musician, for much of my working life. I've worked in orchestras, in the percussion section, counting dozens of measures waiting to play my little part. It was not very much fun. I later became a jazz bassist and found the work much more fulfilling.

But, these composers have a vision that requires musicians inspired to play the music. Despite the manner in which classical musicians have been trained (to play music from previous eras) - new technical skills are required - that is, if classical music will survive as something other than a museum of old scores.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> With all due respect to recent comments I want to address this new music from the perspective of a player. As interesting and evocatve as a score like Tharvalsdottir Aeriality may be, it's boring as heck to play. Slow, lots of low and long notes. It's a common problem with many, many modern scores. A lot of people think that Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine is so great - it's dull as heck to play. Musicians spend years studying, you learn to play cantabile lines. Your mastery of technique is at a high level. You acquire technical skills in bowing. And then you have something modern that doesn't tap into those hard won skills. The great masters knew how to write for instruments - they passed melodic lines around and magically made most, if not all, parts interesting to the player: challenging yet playable. This minimalist stuff is just awful to play - repetitious to the extreme and so unrewarding. If contemporary composers want to gain the support of players then they need to start writing music that is actually fun and interesting to play. The only players I know who like a lot of this new garbage are percussionists - they get more to do than they with Brahms. I can be done: John Williams sure knows how to write interesting scores. String players like baroque and classical era music for a very good reason: the composers back then were largely string players and knew how to write good parts for the instruments.


I'd argue that it's not just boring for the players. This stuff is evocative but rather boring to listen too; all those things you describe, passing melodies around, making most parts interesting, cantabile lines, it's so much of why I enjoy classical music. Evoking a good mood is great, but if that's all that's happened for the past ten minutes then I'm out. To be frank, it seems that "evoking a mood", "creating an interesting soundscape", or "examining new timbres" have replaced good compositional practice.

When I read books that try and create a specific "mood" I still expect them to be well and interestingly written; why would it be any different in music?

I listened to some of _Sola_ I found on youtube as well as a piece by Maxim Shalygin. It is beautiful, and likely to attract more people than the average Babbitt work, but I really don't know how much you can do with this slow-moving-string-music-that-does-a-lot-of-modulating-up-type-stuff. It does get rather predictable rather quickly.

As a final note, does anyone have any idea what "[f]ocusing on intimate materials in a flowing progression that seethe under the surface of disruption, only occasionally observing elements from the surface" means? I'm a bit lost here and I think my reading comprehension is pretty good.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

BachIsBest said:


> As a final note, does anyone have any idea what "[f]ocusing on intimate materials in a flowing progression that seethe under the surface of disruption, only occasionally observing elements from the surface" means? I'm a bit lost here and I think my reading comprehension is pretty good.


What it means is "I have written some dull, derivative nonsense that needs bigging-up to give it some traction and make me sound as if I know something you lesser mortals and musical dullards don't. "

Grrrrrr! It makes me mad!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Barbebleu said:


> What it means is "I have written some dull, derivative nonsense that needs bigging-up to give it some traction and make me sound as if I know something you lesser mortals and musical dullards don't. "
> 
> Grrrrrr! It makes me mad!


Have a listen to Ligeti's San Francisco Polyphony, that quote describes the piece very well.


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## SearsPoncho (Sep 23, 2020)

In the U.S. the government started making massive funding cuts to the arts in the mid-90's. That's when I started noticing significant changes in the concert halls. My local orchestra disbanded. Concert Associations weren't getting as much A-List talent as they used to. I was used to seeing the likes of Pavarotti, Rostropovich, Ashkenazy, Issac Stern, Yo Yo Ma, etc. on a regular basis. Not anymore. There was an excellent local Concert Association led by Judy Drucker, and it also died off. Concert seasons weren't as long as the previous decade. Programs became much more conservative and I started to see more empty seats (I'm not sure why because there was a big economic boom in the 90's led by new technology). Nearly every orchestra was in serious financial trouble, and some did not survive the budget cuts, which led to more Pops concerts with inflated prices. My local opera company, which gave Pavarotti his U.S. debut and featured some of the top singers in the world, was now a shell of itself, to put it mildly. The crazy thing is the U.S. has never spent much on the arts when one looks at the entire federal budget. I believe the entire federal funding for the arts was less than the price of one or two military helicopters, including those which had serious design defects and could not be used because they simply did not work. Of course, the defense contractors were still getting billions to provide more of these inoperable, defunct helicopters. The arts in the U.S. has never quite recovered from these budget cuts, in my opinion, and is increasingly more reliant on corporate sponsorship. When I attend a concert, I usually have to listen to a corporate executive from a company like Blue Cross and Blue Shield drone on about how great their company is before a concert commences. It is now commonplace to attend a concert and see a giant Bank of America banner both inside and outside the concert hall.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Government funding cuts are another factor that came to classical music from an external source -- the ones in the mid-90's were before any that I mentioned in the OP. In Canada I think it was similar; there was a push on for balanced federal budgets at that time. 

Let's not get into a political discussion. You've brought attention to the effects on concert life very well.


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## SearsPoncho (Sep 23, 2020)

Sorry. I really did not intend for it to be a political rant. These were just the facts I observed during the relevant time period. Believe me, the last thing I want to discuss is politics. :lol:


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

SearsPoncho said:


> Sorry. I really did not intend for it to be a political rant. These were just the facts I observed during the relevant time period. Believe me, the last thing I want to discuss is politics. :lol:


No problem, I don't see your post as a rant at all! Because the intent is to see things more clearly and yours helps to do that. Politics would be: what could of, should of, must be done -- with labelling, ideology, maybe party platforms. Its supposed to go in the Groups section if the politics overtakes the music, which I thought might happen here.


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

SearsPoncho said:


> In the U.S. the government started making massive funding cuts to the arts in the mid-90's. That's when I started noticing significant changes in the concert halls.


I believe SearsPoncho is quite on track with these observations. Reduction or loss of government funding (in the USA at both local and federal levels) has seemed to me over the past several decades a key factor leading to the crisis in classical music. The political implications are unavoidable; efforts by supporters to urge major increases in such funding would appear to be crucial.

Unlike popular music, designed to enhance recreation (and procreation?) and provided in 3-5 minute dollops, classical music can be challenging to the public at large, and I include myself. Nowadays, concerts/recitals with pricey tickets can be challenging to many of us financially. But in another sense, unlike popular pieces, personal engagement with a classical work can take a while. Playing a classical recording might take a half-hour to a couple of hours. Concerts, operas, ballets might take 2-3 hours.

As most of us know, the rewards are enormous. But this means a person must make more of an effort and an investment in time.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I think popular music is always going the have a more robust market than classical (or for that matter, art museums or works of great literature, etc.). As with art museums and libraries, symphony orchestras, opera companies, ballet companies, and other classical music institutions are going to need strong government support.

Another major issue in the classical music crisis in my view is that some contemporary trends in composition have drifted toward even less engaging offerings. Many seem to me more intellectually, rather than emotionally, derived; more stylized and cognitive, less diverse in terms of emotion and expressivity.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

What about Jonathan Leshnoff over 70 orchestra's have commissioned him. What do you think about him?


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## jojoju2000 (Jan 5, 2021)

Handelian said:


> I think this is one problem modern composers suffer from in that they feel the need to be original. Composers like Bach, Handel, Mozart, etc, didn't feel the need to be terribly original - they just took what they were supposed to write - or what the public wanted - and applied their genius to it. Of course they hugely developed it but they never felt the pressure to be original all the while. Bach and Handel thought nothing of taking old material of theirs and reworking it. The problem is that feeling you have to be original gets you out of the orbit of the ordinary music lover.


Then what's the problem then with someone like John Williams taking something from The Planets by Hoist and adding it to Star Wars? I'm being serious! People like John Cage, and Phillip Glass, made " Classical " Music that was experimental and atonal and minimalistic, but then it kind of turned people off. It turned the average American off.

And then here comes John Williams often reusing parts from previous classical composers, and people call him a plagarist and unoriginal. BUT THEN HE BECOMES SUPER POPULAR. And then he gets credited for introducing ochesteral music to young children.... Just ask the Royal Philharmonic society. Yes they awarded him the Gold Medal.


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## jojoju2000 (Jan 5, 2021)

Norwegian Composer Marcus Paus is one of my favorites. He reorients Modernist Music toward back to a Tonal Romantic sound, much to our benefit. He's pretty good in my view. 









Guess who he credits as one of his influences ? Guess who ? Guess who ? John Williams. That's right. John Williams.



> Marcus Paus: Coming to MSM was a relief to me, for many reasons. What immediately stood out, was a general absence of ideology, and an appealingly pragmatic approach to craft. My reason for wanting to study in the US was my love for American contemporary composers such as John Williams, John Corigliano, Richard Danielpour, Christopher Rouse and others. To my mind, the entire classical-romantic tradition had been residing stateside since WWII; also, I do have to say, in Russia. Europe, as I said before, was largely trapped in a modernist/post-modernist cage. I was glad to escape!


http://journaliconi.com/index.php/iconi/article/view/89/93


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Now that, Mr Paus is a composer we need more of today. Thank you for sharing.


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## jojoju2000 (Jan 5, 2021)

ArtMusic said:


> Now that, Mr Paus is a composer we need more of today. Thank you for sharing.


What is so diffrent about him is that he bucks the trend and totally embraces John Williams as a Major Composer of today; not just a film composer but an actual composer of Classical Music, and I agree with Mr. Paus. But it's not just Paus; Peter Boyer is another example and he praises Williams profusely;


> " It's true that the musical works of Copland, Bernstein and Williams have been hugely influential on me. ".


https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/09/16/peter-boyer-interview/


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

As far as reactionaries  are concerned, it's worth noting that Alma Deutscher is also a big fan of Williams. In one interview (that is not available online anymore) she suddenly changed the subject just to mention that she had attended his concert in Vienna, and mentioned him among her favourites (Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and R. Strauss) if my memory serves me right.

I also remember an interview where Krzysztof Penderecki said something along the lines that "maybe he should have written a bit like John Williams" but the European classical circles were too hostile towards Williams, so in the end he has never tried.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

With reference to the longer Marcus Paus quote earlier, John Adams wrote that a turning point for him was the afternoon when he was walking back from a mind-numbing class in manipulating tone rows, and a dorm window was opened and Jimi Hendrix's solo guitar version of the American National Anthem came wafting out... :lol:

That is, this one:


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Just lay the whole thing at capitalism’s doorstep. I’m not necessarily saying there’s an alternative. But capitalism cheapens everything eventually. Look at this: even a child can do it! It might as well be a hamburger. 
Just look at what’s happened to pop music. It’s horrendous and it’s all made by a team of technicians and managers. I live in Asia where youth listen to music designed by middle-aged men! And classical musicians are basically hobby-ists. When classical music becomes the domain of nerds and failed mathematicians, you know it’s dead. Did Bach have to account for how many buns were in the pews? I know he had to teach Latin...


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> What about Jonathan Leshnoff over 70 orchestra's have commissioned him. What do you think about him?


I listened to portions of:

Kansas City Symphony performs Jonathan Leshnoff's Symphony No. 3





Jonathan Leshnoff (b. 1973) - Symphony Nº 4 ''Heichalos''





Definitely passes the "hair stand on end" test. If a composition has enough poignancy, pathos, and excitement to cause some of my hair to stand on end, it makes the cut.

A very bizarre test, to be sure. But it works.


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