An earlier version of a riff on Greg Sandow's book

By Greg Sandow
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Hi, everyone,

Here’s a riff from my book. It’s a quick and dirty version of the beginning, not the actual text, but a riff on what the beginning is likely to say.

Why did I write this? Because of thoughtful comments from a number of people, including some highly placed in the classical music business. Maybe, said these comments, the book as I outlined it earlier to all of you spends too much time proving that classical music (as we know it) is in trouble. Because everyone knows this! Instead, I should jump in with visions of classical music’s rebirth — since “Rebirth,” after all, is the book’s title.

I do get a lot of arguments, though, about classical music’s health, and so do others. So I’m trying to split the difference — reserve space for demonstrating how bad the problems are, but also jumping right in with something positive. Hence the riff. See what you think. Comments, as always, more than welcome (but completely optional).

And note that the copyright notice at the end allows all of you to spread this riff — and the outline — as widely as you’d like, subject to some fairly obvious provisions the notice sets forth.

Riff:

[from Chapter I --Rebirth and Resistance]

Let's look at the rebirth part.

So many changes in classical music, going off like fireworks. And nobody has ever catalogued them (which of course becomes one more reason why I'm writing this book).

All of these changes bring classical music right into the culture shared by the rest of the world. Just imagine what would happen if these changes gathered strength. Classical music could be reborn. It could rejoin the culture around it. Which would mean incisive classical concerts, with lots of new music, and a much younger audience. The musicians might look both sharp and informal. They'd talk to their audience. They'd be empowered -- controlling their concerts, playing for people much like themselves, playing the music they care about, in ways we can hardly dream of now.

Though if we want any hints, we can look at how freely classical music was performed in past generations. Or at what students at the National Orchestral Institute did when they took control of one of their concerts this summer. Or at alt-classical concerts in New York -- the Wordless Music orchestra concert, with two sold-out houses of 1000 people each, or the Bang on a Can marathon, playing one year to 1000 people, and the next to 2000.

Some other straws blowing in this strong new wind:

Maestro, classical music reality show on the BBC. Celebrities try to conduct an orchestra. OK, minor-league celebrities, like David Soul, sometime blonde hunk on Starsky and Hutch, a ghost from the '70s, now a folksinger. But the job they had to do was very real, and the judges -- who included two top conductors, Sir Roger Norrington and Simone Young -- were very serious, though of course fun. You haven't lived till you see a dance DJ told that he hadn't indicated upbeats clearly enough, when he conducted an aria from Cosi fan tutte. The payoff from this? The winner got to conduct a piece at a Proms concert, and viewers got to see -- and hear -- exactly what conductors do.

A concert I hosted and helped plan, on a Pittsburgh Symphony series called "Symphony With a Splash." We programed the "Bacchanal" from Samson et Delila, and -- shades of the Biblical Samson -- shaved the head of a volunteer from the audience while the music played. (I can't take credit for this. The idea came from the Symphony's VP of Artistic Planning, Bob Moir.)

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, played at Le Poisson Rouge, the club in New York that's becoming a classical music destination. On a bill with two ambient electronic pop musicians. The audience of 275 or so equally split, or so I was told, among fans of all three acts. Which meant most of the crowd had -- it seems safe to guess -- never heard the Messiaen before, or even heard of it, or heard of Messiaen. The result? A restless crowd for the first five minutes, then silence. And then an ovation.

Commercials that use classical music. A huge new crop of them. Classical music no longer is used to signify something, elite, like Poupon Grey mustard. It's just used for fun, or because it sounds lively. Like the start of the first Bach cello suite, used in a terrific AMEX ad, where smiley faces show up unexpectedly on buildings and in the street, formed by windows and headlights. The message conveyed here, about classical music? That it's part of our lives, both classy and fun.

I could go on. Supply your own examples. We've all seen them, or heard of them. How many classical musicians these days play in clubs? Classical music, meet the real world.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Which means that you may share this, redistribute it, and put it on your own blog or website, as long as you don't change it in any way. You can't charge money for it, or use it for any other commercial purpose. You also must include my comments on what's left out of the outline, and you must give me credit, which means naming me as the author, and providing a link to my blog, where this riff will also appear. (The link will be
http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2009/10/a_riff_from_the_book.html)