Beware of the classical music nimbies
It is incontestable that classical music has reached a moment of transition. Until recently it was struggling to connect with the young rewired audience. But today the problem is far more fundamental. A decade ago the mature cohort despaired at youngsters whose life experience - including music - was confined to the screens of mobile devices. But now the entire Western population - in fact my recent time in India suggests the entire global population - experiences almost every aspect of their life through a mobile phone. In every age group attention spans are diminishing, social media has become the primary tastemaker, entertainment is valued above enlightenment, instant gratification rules, and quality expectations have diminished as the digital medium has become the cultural message. And neuroplasticity means these changes are not a passing fashion - we are all becoming digital natives.
Long-standing readers will know that I am far from being a classic iconoclast. But whether we like it or not, and I don't, there is now a real danger of classical music being left like a redundant horse drawn Hansom cab in the dawning age of the motor car. So I have reached the inevitable conclusion that a degree of change is overdue, and, most worryingly, that there is now unreasonable resistance to that much-needed change.
Without experiment to reach a new classical audience there will be no change. Some experiments will be misguided and some downright inappropriate. And it is inevitable that more experiments will fail than succeed. But without experiment, without many failures and a few successes, classical music cannot start to change in recognition of the current cultural transition. And the prevailing classical nimbyism is getting in the way of those vital experiments.
Just one example of classical nimbyism is the recent brouhaha over audience-building experiments at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Of course my caveat above applies here as it does everywhere: some CBSO experiments have, arguably, been be misguided and some downright inappropriate. The CBSO may not have got it right. But the orchestra has taken two vital steps where others have feared to tread. First it has realised that some change is needed, and secondly the management has had the guts to experiment and sometimes get it wrong.
These howls of derision by the Brummie nimbies have eagerly been given a platform by the always click bait hungry Norman Lebrecht. And the nimbies keep piling in even when the CBSO management accepts they got it wrong. Lebrecht milked the brouhaha with a typical screaming headline 'CBSO's 2024 edit erases western classical music' - see graphic below. This attack refers to a 60 second CBSO promotional video, so I watched it. Which left me wondering what all the fuss is about. But maybe I had missed something. So I visited the CBSO website, see header graphic. Which again left me wondering what is troubling the nimbies so much.
Classical music is like a huge river. It has its source in plainchant and the Middle Ages, and it reaches the ocean of an audience with whatever music resonates with the zeitgeist. The point missed by the nimbies is that a river never stands still. If you return to the same place a day later, the river is the same but the water is different. Similarly the river always meets the ocean, but it is always different water at that point. Similarly art music has never stood still. Wherever and whenever you dip into it, the genre is the same but the music is different. Similarly, its resonance with and relevance to the zeitgeist is constantly changing. Which means attempts by the nimbies to stop this flow of change are misguided and doomed to failure. As Aaron Copland told us "To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable."
Before the Brummies start piling in with their comments, let me make it clear I am not advocating the death of classical music as we know it. In Elizabethan times Shakespeare's plays were hugely popular. As well as playing in established theatres, they were performed everywhere from inn yards for the poor, and in court for the nobility. And much of their popularity was their relevance to the preoccupations of Elizabethan audiences. But cultural transition changed all that.
Today Shakespeare is revered and respected. However his plays reach a much smaller but still discerning audience in performances which remain loyal to the original text. In the 21st century Shakespeare is still performed in theatres; but those venues also host everything else from Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals to stand-up comedians. Similarly, despite cultural transition great music will always live on. But we have to accept that the current obvious oversupply will correct itself by attrition, and the margins of classical music will blur and merge into other genres which may be alien to traditionalists.
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