Tribalism is ruining classical music
The self-styled 'world's most-read cultural website' is Slipped Disc. This high-profile face of the classical music brand enjoys the full support of the classical music industry. Yet for years Slipped Disc has leveraged tribalism through its on-line lynch mobs - last week Arts Council England, this week Emma Stenning, and next week Klaus Mäkelä...... Only a few minutes perusing comments on the classical industry's voice piece of choice uncovers a transparent political and ideological agenda that at times descends into what can only be described as hatred. Any potential sponsor, arts funder or parent wanting a child to learn an instrument would surely run a mile from brand classical music if they landed on Slipped 'the naked maestro limerick competition' Disc.
Leaving aside its click bait addiction and underlying ideological agenda, the Slipped Disc website is shoddy. It has poor graphics, errors of fact, spelling mistakes and dodgy pop-ups - see example below. Just look at that screenshot. Is this really the best that the classical music brand can do? If this is the go-to news platform for the classical industry, is it really surprising that Arts Council England has lost its enthusiasm for funding classical music?
There are many other well-meaning but nevertheless damaging examples of tribalism in classical music. Some time back Proms audiences were cited as the best in the world. Today attending a BBC Prom is like attending a football match. The tribe of fans cheer on the home team - the performers - at every opportunity. It doesn't matter if the home team musicians are playing well, averagely, or just plain badly; the fans cheers them anyway, usually between movements. While over at BBC Radio 3 the once-respected network has committed harakiri in a futile battle for the Classic FM tribe.
These are just a few examples of tribalism based on the prevailing erroneous assumption by classical brand marketeers that their target audience is a homogeneous tribe of affluent young people who have the attention span of gnats and turn into pumpkins if they are parted from their mobile phone for more than two minutes. This is just nonsense: there is no single mass market tribe for classical music. The classical audience always has been and will always continue to be a granular group of individuals with differing but overlapping tastes.
Yes, I am quite prepared to accept that I am a grumpy old man whose views are not representative of the whole classical audience. This is quite true because, due to this granularity, my views and tastes and those of of any other audience member, young or old, female or male, affluent or not, are not representative. That is the beauty of classical music: it means different things to different people. One size fits all tribalism will never work. Which is why, despite many different 'initiatives' by misguided marketeers, classical music has recently struggled to retain its core audience, yet alone build a new one.
The classical industry's obsession with tribalism has allowed it to ignore the two crucial and related challenges that it faces today. The first is that irreversible demographic, cultural, and technological shits are reducing the demand for classical music. Following on from this is the challenge that the whole classical industry remains in denial of. Namely that there is a serious oversupply of classical music. Until these two challenges are faced up to, classical music will continue to believe that tribal rituals such as naked maestro limerick competitions, worshipping at the altar of social media, virtue signalling, and marketing stunts can save the classical brand.
Comments
In my view, the best chance of keeping the corpse of classical music alive (it is barely so) lies in catching children when they are young.
I believe that state schools, now, are guided in the teaching of music by the “Model Music Curriculum: Key Stages 1 to 3, Non-statutory guidance for the national curriculum in England” (MMC), which can be found here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6061f833d3bf7f5ce1060a90/Model_Music_Curriculum_Full.pdf
The MMC advocates from the outset exposure to and appreciation of all forms of music, western and non-western, traditional and popular. Thus, this is much, much broader than the musical eduction that I had.
I tried to post two key extracts here but one cannot post pictures in this site it seems. See the sections headed “The power of music” and “A model curriculum for the musical community to build upon”. They refer to the “power of music” and the ability of music to connect people; and say that the MMC “takes account of the many different school contexts that exist.”
In particular but not only in multi-ethnic schools, the emphasis is understandably not on Western classical music. The chances of children being exposed in their music lessons to Western classical music are remote and infrequent. Outside of school the chances of exposure are even lower. Children now are bombarded from an early age, thanks largely to mobile phones and other devices with Internet access, with all manner of distractions.
BUT, schools always were and remain our best chance of children gaining an early opportunity of exposure to classical music. Parents trying to force extra-curricular musical appreciation on their children will often be a waste of money and no fun for the unwilling children. Apart from anything else there is often no shared experience in that, which I believe is very important. .
I suppose it could be possible that those who can afford to send their children to private schools MIGHT have a better chance of developing in their children an early appreciation of classical music. But I don’t know. And I emphasise MIGHT because I think a love of classical music can also, like musical talent, be hereditary. But there are plenty of people who love classical music and cannot play it. Same as ALL music. And so I believe that early exposure is important, ideally in a school context.
I don’t know whether the so called (by some) “dumbing down” of Radio 3 and the Proms will create a wider appreciation of classical music. It might. Just as I believe Classic FM did. But I think it can only “work” witht those over the age of 40 or 50.
I totally agree with the comments about typical classical music venues and the need to make live classical music much more accessible. Which realistically means making it free, or very cheap, and probably performed by students.
Classical music risks going, if it has not already gone, the way of Latin: a “dead” language reserved only for a tiny minority and for scholarly learning. Latin died because it developed to the needs of its ever diversifying users until in the end we had a very different language: Italian. And for those of us who were never taught Latin from birth (now 99.99% of us) the attraction in learning it falls to only a tiny minority of people. Formal or “classical” music seems to have reached a point where those who develop the music are no longer understood by those to whom they are “speaking”. Or only by very few. At the same time other forms of music have become established and widely known and widely available (“popular music”) that very much speak a language that most people undertand.
The question then, for me, is this: to what extent and purpose can we and should we afford to teach a dead language to our children? Personally I think some effort should be made. But that’s just my view. Many and likely most people will disagree with me. I don’t advocate lessons totally dedicated to classical music. That cannot be justified any more than making Latin compulsory in state schools. But some exposure would be good. And I think that right now not many children are getting that because schools are rightly being guided by the MMC and are understandably adapting it as they see best to meet the needs of the communities they serve.
I would be interested in the views of others.