# To what extent is classical music programming ascertained by the powers that be?



## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

After a close pondering over this week and reflecting on the revolutionary nature that the chat room has on my classical music listening habits have changed dramatically, I realize that the old model of tuning into classical music radio or attending concerts hasn't been the same to me anymore. I listen to about 20% of my classical music privately now...

For example, the Utah Symphony opens up its 2015-2016 season with four straight days of all of the Beethoven symphonies with

September 11, 2015
Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Symphony 4, Symphony 5

September 12, 2015
Beethoven Symphony 8, Symphony 6

September 18, 2015
Beethoven Symphony 1, Symphony 3

September 19, 2015
Beethoven Symphony 2, Symphony 7

December 4/5, 2015
one of which is Beethoven Symphony 9.

What is key here is that initially I was puzzled why feature all of the Beethoven symphonies so quickly in one shot? And I love these symphonies so don't get me wrong but this is pretty imbalanced programming.

So I spoke to Ben and my dad regarding this issue and it seems like of our symphony corporate sponsors OC Tanner is behind all this and probably subsidizing... which gave me an idea about the whole workings.

I realize more strongly that the programming on classical radio, Pandora, orchestra concerts, and opera houses are corporately controlled so the powers that be determine what we listeners enjoy and listen to.

So apparently it wasn't that Takemitsu piece on October 23/24, 2015 that had corporate sponsorship I realized and the Utah Symphony could be losing money over that concert.

For me, having spent a great deal in the TC chat room, I realized that there has been a huge change in the way I listen to classical music. Gone are the days when I would be alone in a room spinning endless mp3's on an iPod touch or iPhone... The chat room and YouTube have been part of the communal experience of listening to classical music together.

I would like to thank those who have shared with us on the journey in the chat room because I have seen composers that I have never even heard of. And there is no powers that be that says, "Hey, we are going to make you listen to this pieces or that." We get the power of choice here in fact.

For example, ten months I would have been like Musrail who? Spectralist music what? Or even Morton Feldman huh? Those names never have appeared in any major programming I have seen and I have been to Carnegie Hall, Met Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Utah Opera, etc.

For me, I realize that the future of classical music and hearing it lies in a communal experience and not isolatingly being protective of it. It's about being open to new ideas and keeping ears open to each other. And laughing when one of the guys says, "Oh, it's that Feldman guy coming on again." It's about the fabric of humanity.

And for me, that is what classical music is all about... it's about all of life and not about some powers that be ascertain what pieces pre-determined can proffer us.

For the people who are in that room are their own curators. They are their own artists. And for that experience, I thank them deeply. And making classical music listening a much more democratic process.

So thoughts regarding listening habits in regards to the radio DJ's, corporate sponsorship, mass media, etc. etc.?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

They need money. Most concert goers are conservative. Concertgoers pay for the tickets. Hence they are forced to give the people what they want to hear; not what they prefer to play. Hence, a lot of Beethoven and Brahms, like it or not!


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> So thoughts regarding listening habits in regards to the radio DJ's, corporate sponsorship, mass media, etc. etc.?


I pretty much missed what you are driving at  I don't go into chat rooms and others don't dictate my listening. I am open to influences here on TC, but I am the one who selects which suggestions and mentions I will pursue. Radio, corporate sponsorship and mass media don't have much bearing on my listening, except insofar as they influence the availability of CDs.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> I pretty much missed what you are driving at  I don't go into chat rooms and others don't dictate my listening. I am open to influences here on TC, but I am the one who selects which suggestions and mentions I will pursue. Radio, corporate sponsorship and mass media don't have much bearing on my listening, except insofar as they influence the availability of CDs.


Yes, but I am actually thinking that if we could get orchestra concerts to be crowdsourced rather than curated by say, only the conductor or the board members whether we would get more variety in programming?

You can choose CD's/mp3's in a room alone which is what I had been doing but for me, I am realizing how much interactivity can play in illuminating works and aspects that one hasn't realized before. mahlerian has provided me with so much insight of Mahler's works that I thought I had a handle on but now I realize how little I know.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

If nothing else, it's easier for orchestras to play works they've played many times before than to learn something new. For more recent works, there's the issue of royalties.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Here I did a collation of what composers the Utah Symphony will be featuring next season:

1) Beethoven
2) Debussy
3) Takemitsu*
4) Orff
5) Andrew Norman commission*
6) Mahler
7) Ravel
8) Haydn
9) Nico Muhly commission*
10) Mozart
11) Dalbavie*
12) Bizet*
13) Wagner
14) Bartok
15) Weber
16) Mendelssohn
17) Stravinsky
18) Falla
19) Gershwin
20) Gottschalk
21) Pintscher*
22) Saint-Saens
23) Rachmaninoff
24) Respighi
25) Ligeti*
26) Scriabin
27) Holst
28) R. Strauss
29) Prokofiev
30) Barber
31) Dvorak

Now compare this to the composers we had featured on TinyChat for the past 2 days

1) Schumann
2) Feldman
3) Lizst
4) W.F. Bach
5) Haydn
6) Bruckner
7) Webern
8) Unsuk Chin
9) Varese
10) Ferneyhough
11) Xenakis
12) Ravel
13) Hava Naglia (traditional)
14) Elliott Carter
15) Scriabin
16) A. Scarlatti
17) Brahms
18) R. Strauss
19) Mahler
20) Frescobaldi
21) Murail
22) Mozart
23) Beethoven
24) Bartok
25) Elgar
26) Martinu
27) Dufourt
28) Schoenberg
29) Wagner
30) J.S. Bach
31) Sibelius
32) Gerhard
33) Schnittke
34) Cemal Resit Ray

So if you want, you can check my listening diary for more details but this is proof that our chat room has managed to play more variety of composers within the span of two days than the whole year of the Utah Symphony for next year!


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

So: this is just another advertisment by you for TinyChat - which means its just another request to have people divert their attention from TC to be somewhere else. I find this offensive and I don't know why its been tolerated for so long.

TinyChat is *not* "the TC chat room" as you call it in the OP, and if it were then TC would probably owe some royalties for all these public broadcasts.

I am utterly, utterly sick of hearing about it.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

SimonNZ said:


> So: this is just another advertisment by you for TinyChat - which means its just another request to have people divert their attention from TC to be somewhere else. I find this offensive and I don't know why its been tolerated for so long.
> 
> TinyChat is *not* "the TC chat room" as you call it in the OP, and if it were then TC would probably owe some royalties for all these public broadcasts.
> 
> I am utterly, utterly sick of hearing about it.


And you didn't have to read this post . Look I am interested in no confrontation here okay and taking the peaceful road out. My focus here is to discuss the variety of programming and not have to rail against the tools being used to listen to and share classical music.

TinyChat is a tool for sharing classical music with large groups of people and not an advertisement adjunct. And my references to it is no different than using the term Facebook or Twitter. I am trying to have a serious discussion on this topic so I'm returning back to feedback regarding the issue I posted about originally.

Thank you very much and taking the diplomatic gentleman's bow out.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> Yes, but I am actually thinking that if we could get orchestra concerts to be crowdsourced rather than curated by say, only the conductor or the board members whether we would get more variety in programming?
> 
> You can choose CD's/mp3's in a room alone which is what I had been doing but for me, I am realizing how much interactivity can play in illuminating works and aspects that one hasn't realized before. mahlerian has provided me with so much insight of Mahler's works that I thought I had a handle on but now I realize how little I know.


GreenMamba said what I was thinking. A good performance requires rehearsal, so crowd-sourcing would not likely be an option to diversifying concert programming.

I happen to like listening at home alone. It is a deep experience, if I want it to be. I have also listened together with others. It was a great party, but, as far as listening to the music goes, it was not successful. I guess I'm just too talkative 

Insight of others is great and that's why I'm here on TC. I try to engage people into discussing things, or to follow their discussions when others have done so. It is a limitation that few of us are listening to the same thing at the same time, but that's where the Saturday Symphonies come in. They are a once a week opportunity for us to listen to the same thing at about the same time and discuss it while it is fresh, if we care to do so. Honestly, about one work a week is about my limit for this type of intensity and commitment.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Albert7 said:


> And you didn't have to read this post . Look I am interested in no confrontation here okay and taking the peaceful road out. My focus here is to discuss the variety of programming and not have to rail against the tools being used to listen to and share classical music.
> 
> TinyChat is a tool for sharing classical music with large groups of people and not an advertisement adjunct. And my references to it is no different than using the term Facebook or Twitter. I am trying to have a serious discussion on this topic so I'm returning back to feedback regarding the issue I posted about originally.
> 
> Thank you very much and taking the diplomatic gentleman's bow out.


Being a diplomatic gentleman would involve listening to the ever increasing number of voices on TC telling you very directly that they too are utterly, utterly sick of all the spamming you've been doing all over TC in connection to this non-TC chat site.

Also: hasn't everyone who is on TinyChat already heard about everything that's played there? Why do they need to come back here and read about it all over again? And why do the people who have absolutely no interest in it have to read all about it?

I've also noticed that none of it has led to any other kind of overlap or promoted any other kind of widespread discussion on TC. It is merely a distraction and an annoyance.

Please be a "gentleman" and stop this. You know full well I'm not the only one begging here.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> Green Mamba said what I was thinking. A good performance requires rehearsal, so crowd-sourcing would not likely be an option to diversifying concert programming.
> 
> I happen to like listening at home alone. It is a deep experience, if I want it to be. I have also listened together with others. It was a great party, but, as far as listening to the music goes, it was not successful. I guess I'm just too talkative
> 
> Insight of others is great and that's why I'm here on TC. I try to engage people into discussing things, or to follow their discussions when others have done so. It is a limitation that few of us are listening to the same thing at the same time, but that's where the Saturday Symphonies come in. They are a once a week opportunity for us to listen to the same thing at about the same time and discuss it while it is fresh, if we care to do so. Honestly, about one work a week is about my limit for this type of intensity and commitment.


I really like your approach and I used to be like that... lots of focused listening in fact, similar to what my friend Lord Lance is doing for his Furtwangler month. I also have a deep experiences doing my morning run/walk/commute downtown and hearing composers on my iPod but then when I come home to work I am committed to the communal experience.

For me, it's like having a written play-by-play whenever one of the musicians explains his or her piece in great detail. For example, mahlerian was able to elucidate at certain points of vocal restraint or ardor for each section of Das Lied von der Erde in ways that I wouldn't have gotten by reading a conventional program at the Utah Symphony.

No kidding, it has been so refreshing that I felt very much like I have gone to a music theory school without the fees. Lots of insights. And it's very colorful to see people in person in real life via cam and even argue with personalities. Here on TC, people have more like written identities whereas via the room I am able to engage with real people and humanity vis-a-vis. Granted sometimes it is distracted however, so there I can see the advantages of private listening which you are engaged in rather well.

Let's put it in summary: my needling of Lord Lance about his aversion to opera and ballet and most 20th century music has been quite a great intellectual touchstone of verbal jousting. But we remain good online friends in ways in an additional dimension that the forum or concert does not have inherently due to format.

And live concerts are rather forbidding in fact... I never ever had a deep conversation with anyone else after the concert about the pieces I heard unless it was Ben or my dad. And it wouldn't be proper to ask for a blow by blow account of each piece in real time during the performance either.

Thus new technologies are in place to deliver classical music to our eyes and ears in ways that we couldn't have dreamed of in the early 2000s.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Albert7 said:


> ...when I come home to work I am committed to the communal experience.


Whatever works for you. Go for it.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

So: this is just another advertisment by you for TinyChat - which means its just another request to have people divert their attention from TC to be somewhere else. I find this offensive and I don't know why its been tolerated for so long.

TinyChat is not "the TC chat room" as you call it in the OP, and if it were then TC would probably owe some royalties for all these public broadcasts.

To be fair, any number of Talk Classical members have posted about what they are listening to on Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora, YouTube, etc... and made links to these, posted videos from YouTube and other sources, or even linked to Amazon.com and other music retail outlets. Are these to be deemed Spam and advertisements as well?


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Because they're not enticements away from TC to another forum. Not a suggestion to be discussing CM somewhere other than TC.

Also because no-one else is posting about their love of Spotify three hundred times a day.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

hpowders said:


> They need money. Most concert goers are conservative. Concertgoers pay for the tickets. Hence they are forced to give the people what they want to hear; not what they prefer to play. Hence, a lot of Beethoven and Brahms, like it or not!


Yes but aren't the listeners not necessarily conservative?... if they programmed composers like Murail or Ferneyhough I would bet that the tastes would shift accordingly.

As they say, you can lead a horse to water, and just let the critter drink away... it's which water source you lead the horse to that makes the key difference.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I am supposing that concert programmers do market research, and have experience of what happens if they put on experimental music? But I agree with you that programmes should include more new music in the interests of creating a taste for it.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I imagine crowdsourcing might be workable if everyone paid up-front. I suppose in theory as long as an orchestra's assured of making a profit (short-term and long-term) they wouldn't mind whether the audience and/or music was conservative or not (within, presumably, a reasonable range of what the musicians are willing to play!). So if a corporate sponsor or a group of audience members can fund an entire concert of obscure and/or unpopular music the orchestra might be happy to go for it.
But there's a lot of organisation involved; the costs will vary wildly (Haydn's 8th symphony won't cost the same to put on as Mahler's 8th!); a lot of rehearsal time might needed for lesser-known works; who ultimately gets to decide which suggestions are best? etc etc.


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## Ajayay (Mar 11, 2015)

I guess it's driven by money and needing to get people in the seats. I read somewhere that Horowitz was pushed by his first manager to programme as many showy pieces as possible and I think it was the music critic/composer Virgil Thomson who used to speak of the "thirty pieces" (or a similar phrase) meaning that pianists only ever played about 30 pieces in the repertoire and the rest were left pretty much untouched.

I think that if the conservative tastes of audiences are going to be expanded or challenged then it would be good to do more than just play new music at them. It would be good if new music and unfamiliar music could be explained, if a neat way into the music could be given, if the meaning or feeling could be unlocked somehow.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Ajayay said:


> I guess it's driven by money and needing to get people in the seats. I read somewhere that Horowitz was pushed by his first manager to programme as many showy pieces as possible and I think it was the music critic/composer Virgil Thomson who used to speak of the "thirty pieces" (or a similar phrase) meaning that pianists only ever played about 30 pieces in the repertoire and the rest were left pretty much untouched.
> 
> I think that if the conservative tastes of audiences are going to be expanded or challenged then it would be good to do more than just play new music at them. It would be good if new music and unfamiliar music could be explained, if a neat way into the music could be given, if the meaning or feeling could be unlocked somehow.


So my fundamental question is: if money were no object then new music would be programmed regularly?

Here is an anecdote... 2 years my dad Powell complained about the lack of French operas in the line-up for the Utah Opera and that was during a Q and A after one of the operas with Christopher MacBeth the director. Apparently he took that suggestion to heart and this past season we got Bizet's Pearlfishers. So apparently the upper management listened to my dad.

I really think that it's a matter of open communication between upper management and the crowd that we will get newer music if we say so... Man, I want to request my Birtwistle next year.

So an open-minded curator for the Utah Symphony is key here. It's not always about the money I would hope.


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