Classical Music: With friends like these…
With friends like these, contemporary classical music performance is in big trouble. In an uninformed, whine titled “Come to the Aid of Music Journalism”, Robert P. Commanday manages to be as unhelpful as he is regressive…
Pick any city, look at its newspaper, and you’ll find attention to classical music diminished to the basic minimum. It will focus on the “big ticket” events — which, in the Bay Area, means the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, and Ballet, plus the most celebrated visiting artists. As is well-known to any person interested in classical music, such coverage just skims the surface.
Who’s responsible? Newspaper publishers and their editors who have a hand in setting policy and then executing it. What to do about this downgrading of classical coverage? Go to the editors and lay it on. If you’re representing a performing or presenting institution — say an orchestra or concert series — then get your board members to put on the pressure.
Mr. Commanday rattles on for a dozen more paragraphs without mentioning the Internet, blogging, The Long Tail and the decimation of arts programming in public schools. He ignores that we have raised a generation and a half, the older of which now assume leadership positions in local media, without adequate music education. In his universe, which begins and ends with daily newspaper coverage, not showing up on page D1 means your arts organizations doesn’t exist.
Mr. Commanday, is it not 1957 anymore. The world of media of media is fractured, individualistic, and mircofocused. Daily newspapers face the greatest challenge in several decades of how to be all things to all readers and relevent to them as singular entities. They are doing their best and have a long way to go. I promise you that none of them have the time or the inclination to listen to symphony board members (which are still almost uniformly white, upper class, and middle-aged) “put the pressure on” so the newspaper can devote expensive column inches to their interests. The symphony board member may have once been the prize plum for a newspapers and its advertising team. But that was back when Eisenhower ran things. That prize plum now packs his kids’ diapers in a messenger bag.
So instead of seeing newspapers as the cause of your troubles and the answer to your prayers, why notthink a little? Think about hyperlocal media like Yelp and the Gothamist chain. Think about classical music blogs. Think about innovative programming like partnering with other local arts organizations, having symphony happy hours and reimagining the classical music space as one of interaction instead of passive consumption.
Mr. Commanday, having this discussion through the eye of a needle is living in a dreamworld. Please release yourself from the tired old paradigm of classical music as something we should support and tranform it into something we want to support. No one owes you media coverage. How about instead demonstrating why you deserve it? (via Arts Journal)