One thing is certain: Music has a future
A departing critic argues for its staying power
One of the questions a retiring music critic is most often asked is about what kind of future music is going to have , or even whether classical music will have a future.
There is only one answer: No one can say what the future of music will be, but that music will have a future is certain.
We've heard from the doomsayers for decades, and they aren't entirely wrong. There's no doubt that this is a difficult moment for classical music. We know that the financial situation of many orchestras, opera companies, and smaller ensembles is perilous, support is drying up, the public is graying, and nobody is buying subscriptions anymore.
Part of the public is understandably bored by the endless repetition of core masterpieces that weren't meant to be heard as often as they are, weren't intended to lapse into routine. Another part of the public is resolutely opposed to anything new in music, no matter how much they welcome or even seek out innovation and change in the other arts. And the whole mess, we hear, is the fault of the schools, which are not educating new audiences, and of the media, which are more interested in sensation than in substance.
This is not the whole story of course, but one wonders if the situation has ever been much different. All you have to do is read the letters of Mozart or the memoirs of Berlioz to realize that circumstances have never been easy for musicians, or for anyone who wants to accomplish anything worthwhile.
The history of music is among other things a history of difficult moments that visionary figures have found new and unexpected ways to get through. And while musical institutions and the funding structures that supported them -- the church, the aristocracy, governments, foundations, individuals -- have flourished and withered, come and gone, music itself survives.
The reason for this is that music has qualities in it that can't be found anywhere else. And people are always going to listen to it because it addresses fundamental human needs.
This is not to repeat the old cliché that music is a universal language; it isn't. The cliché arises because a lot of music communicates in nonverbal ways, but there is also a huge body of music that works with and through words that set up boundaries
Also, comparatively few people have no response to music, but almost no one responds to every kind of music. There are highly evolved forms of music in India, China, Africa, the Arab world, and elsewhere that most Western ears find difficult to understand; the opposite is probably true. But most people do respond to music of one kind or another, and often to several kinds.
Art music in every culture will always have a smaller audience than popular music, which represents a different kind of art. But popular music and art music have always been interdependent; many composers of both kinds of music have borrowed from one another -- and some have written both kinds.
Music has a future because every minute someone is born who wants to create it, perform it, or listen to it. How the connections will be made among creators, performers, and listeners will change as often and as quickly in the next generations as it has in the past. This is not a musical issue but a business question: how the music business will operate.
Most major works of music have come into the world despite major obstacles; the case is no different in the visual arts, theater, film, or, for that matter, the popular arts. Often it takes at least 50 years for challenging work to establish itself. Half a century ago, who could have predicted the present-day prominence of the symphonies of Mahler, the operas of Janacek, and the works of Ives? Or the virtual disappearance of figures once as popular as Victor Herbert or Sigmund Romberg, or of the whole genre in which they worked, operetta? Although Mahler, Janacek, and Ives had an unshakable conviction in the value of their own work, even they could not have foreseen how successful it would become.
This past summer at the Tanglewood Music Center it was easy to encounter young musicians burning with their own passion and conviction. It would be easy to worry on their behalf; on the other hand, the evidence shows that talent on this level finds a way to prevail.
The whole phenomenon of Tanglewood is also encouraging. It astonishes many visiting artists from Europe that more than 300,000 people gather to hear serious concerts in a rural area over a period of eight weeks in the summer. Attendance figures may fluctuate according to a large number of factors in addition to the programming, including the economy, the weather, the price of gasoline, and the strength of competing attractions in the Berkshires.
But it remains a miracle that a disappointingly ``small" audience at Tanglewood can equal the public for a week's BSO concerts in Symphony Hall. And the informal and welcoming atmosphere at Tanglewood every year draws people to symphony concerts who have seldom if ever attended them before.
And if the kind of adventurous programming Boston Symphony Orchestra music director James Levine has instituted has alienated some older and more conservative patrons, it has also drawn in a younger and more adventurous audience. It can be argued that the BSO is currently reaching a broader public than it has in decades. This means that not every patron is going to want to hear every program, but in the aggregate there will probably be more patrons. Those who don't wish to hear Levine conduct Elliott Carter can nevertheless enjoy him conducting Gershwin, and vice versa.
The century has seen changes in the distribution of music that no one could have imagined. Before the end of the 19th century, the only way to hear music was to go hear someone else play or sing it, or play or sing it yourself. The cylinder recording, the flat 78 rpm disc, the LP, the CD, the iPod, not to mention the use of music in other electronic media such as radio, television, and the movies, have changed not only the way we listen to music, but what we listen to.
Old-timers can lament that many of the old access roads to music are now closed. Music is no longer a significant part of the curriculum in many public schools. Network radio is gone. So is the listening booth in the local record store; in fact the local record store itself is rapidly disappearing. Classical music FM stations are fading away, even in cities like Boston where there is a large audience for them.
On the other hand there is a wider variety of music available through more sources than at any previous point in history. Nearly all of the significant repertoire of Western music, indeed of world music, is available through a few clicks on a computer. Naxos Records now has its entire catalog available for listening and downloading, and it's only a matter of time before most of the other major labels do too, and they will probably make their huge back catalog s of historic performances available as well.
If network radio is gone and live national broadcasts of musical events are disappearing in this country, listeners can hear streaming audio or podcasts from thousands of radio stations around the world broadcasting from all the leading venues. Internet sharing groups are making it possible to track down and hear just about any significant performance that has taken place anywhere and at any time within the last 60 years. About 800 complete operas can fit onto an external hard disc device that looks like one of Cary Grant's cigarette cases.
In the context of such bounty, it's startling to recall that there was no complete recording of such a central operatic work as Wagner's ``Ring" cycle available until 40 years ago; now there are dozens of versions, including multiple stage productions on DVD.
Of course there are unresolved and complicated legal and financial issues surrounding the unprecedented accessibility of so much music. Not to mention how any single person could possibly get a handle on all of it, let alone assimilate it. There is always something new to discover, a piece you've never heard, a composer you've never heard of, a neglected detail in a work you've ``known" your whole life.
The whole history of Western music is all there as a resource and an inspiration for the person who wants to discover it and for the composer who wants to use it . But the paramount issue remains: how to make a person want to discover it.
In the final analysis that's not a question for the music business or the educator or the media, although they can help or hinder. This remains, as it has always been, the primary challenge for the creator or the interpreter, the composer who creates the message and the performer who delivers it. If the message and the performance are human, compelling, craftsmanlike, and honest, they will reach the public. ``From the heart," Beethoven wrote on the score of the ``Missa Solemnis," ``may it go to the heart."
Richard Dyer retired this month as classical music critic for The Boston Globe. Over 33 years, he wrote more than 12,000 articles about the arts for the Globe. 