tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post7090227790715738184..comments2024-03-26T15:57:13.443+00:00Comments on On An Overgrown Path: Classical music is lone art and not crowd artUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-8105250936619788812015-04-13T13:48:00.908+01:002015-04-13T13:48:00.908+01:00I found this so thought-provoking that I've ha...I found this so thought-provoking that I've had to wait and think about what I may write.<br /><br />I stopped attending Vancouver SO conerts for reasons of principle, e.g., what they did to Rudolf Barshai. Now, reading this, it dawned on me that I was never really happy listening to music in a 3200-seat venue, always with the same seats empty -- the premium ones bought in blocks by corporations in case visitors ask to go to a concert ho ho -- and the same 2000 or so people. Crowd music.<br /><br />That raises another point. All orchestras aim to fill the hall with subscribers, and they are often perennial. Thus a vast amount of public money goes to organizations such as the VSO for the benefit of rarely more than the same 2000 people. <br /><br />Obviously, I see a lot of dubious goings-on here. But we come closer to lone art, for around the City there are a number of small ensembles, unfunded concert seasons, all specialized in some form or period of music, all struggling financially. Here, I've believed for long that the trucks of bucks that go to the VSO would be vastly better spent on small and often fine musical groups of whatever sort scattered around the City, for that would most certainly bring music to more people, and I strongly suspect new audiences, smaller and constantly varying, more surely seeking a profound musical experience, more likely of music never played by the Symphony.<br /><br />I'm a Londoner born and bred and still so at heart, so it does pain me to say this, but the above makes me ponder Rattle and the new hall debate. What has been so wrong with the VSO can be generalized, and specific issues mutatis mutandis. How often will Rattle be with the Orchestra? As often as Belohlovek was with the BBC? How many unprepared jet-setters like Gergiev will give lousy performances. How many people in total will benefit from how much public money?<br /><br />And how many smaller organizations will struggle or die as they try to bring this lone art to smaller audiences, ones always, in my experience, seeking that surer and deeper experience.<br /><br />At bottom this is really corporatism again, just as has afflicted so many aspects of the music business. Many fine, perhaps great musicians get lost because of it in all its manifestations. Where do they go? Many become teachers.<br /><br />But many are like the writers and visual artists, the loneliest of all, who struggle to 'make it'. They get sucked into the corporate media and commercial art. Crowd art. And that suits the corporate world just fine.<br /><br />All serious creative artists create alone. They do not need crowds to read, look, or listen. They need connoisseurs, the dedicated, searching people. Those do this alone, even with other people. What the Arts need is its own redistribution of wealth, to help the lone artists, to bring all arts to more people via smaller but numerous venues and organizations, those which now struggle and die while the powers-that-be debate whether to build a new hall -- for what, exactly? By doing the above the lone artist is helped, the dying organizations are revived, and more people can experience the lone art 'alone', not literally, but in small audiences of the like-minded a much more personal experience is the more certain to be offered.<br /><br />I'll not expand on this, but the knowing may reflect that helping the lost artist, bringing fore lost composers, and defying the corporate interests are three of the things Klaus Heymann has done via Naxos.Philip Amoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11739418522974972567noreply@blogger.com