The day after I wrote my previous post, I came across this article in the New York Times. It is a guest opinion piece by pianist and harpsichordist, Evan Shinners. Mr. Shnners also hosts the podcast, W.T.F. Bach on Substack.
The central tenet of Evan’s criticism in the way Classical Music is nowadays presented; erroneous in his view, is that presenters believe the “…music is too long, too boring, too unfamiliar to the modern ear. We need to chop it down and jazz it up. We need to make classical music more, you know, relevant.” He further posits that this belief is predicated on the the view that audience “…attention is scarce, difficulty repels and relevance must be demonstrated through familiar cultural forms.”
As expressed in at least one previous post on this website I, too, share some of Mr. Shinner’s criticisms, but I remain unconvinced that the root of the problem of assumed audience rejection for classical music is so easily described. There is undoubtedly a challenge to be overcome here, but causality often remains elusive.
A case in point: I was attending a Cleveland Orchestra concert several nights ago at Carnegie Hall. What a marvellous orchestra they are. The program note from their music director, Franz Welser-Möst, ran in part like this:
“After experiencing the vast emotional landscape of Shostakovich’s symphony…the memory of Mozart’s “Jupiter” inevitably shifts. The contrast reframes both works, allowing each to illuminate the other in unexpected ways.”
The problem with this thought process in the programming of two contrasting pieces is it is a highly nuanced, informed and expert interpretation of the inner-life and complexities in both Mozart’s and Shostakovich’s music. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the conductor, but this statement is contextually foreign to all but the most avid and ardent classical music followers in the audience.
The problem is what I refer to as ‘assumed context’.
Without framing what is being played within a context that circumscribes the listening experience for both the first-time and returning audience listener alike, the ability to understand the depth of meaning from the auditory experience is inevitably going to be fatally compromised.
So, in the next series of posts we are going to discuss the idea of context in programming looking at various orchestra concert programming across the USA. Spoiler alert: much of the programming and contextualisation is marvellous and I’ll explain why.
