KillingClassicalMusic

Mozart Mondays: W.A. Mozart died at the young age of 35.  On Mondays at KillingClassicalMusic.com we will explore youth in music.  Whether how to bring in more young audiences or celebrating the world’s prodigies, Mondays are for the music world’s young people.

These days, most of the classical music world is familiar with the name and persona of Gustavo Dudamel.  “The Dude,” as he is sometimes referred to, has been a sensation in the classical music world for several years now.  As a product of Venezuela’s “El Sistema” project for youth in music, he is a perfect - even if predictable - person to discuss on a Mozart Monday here at KillingClassicalMusic.com.

Still yet to turn 30 years old, Dudamel is a leading voice for the expansion of classical music’s audience.  A recent profile on him in the Guardian provides us some insight into just what he’s thinking.  Speaking first about the staff at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, he said:

“I said, ‘We have to do concerts for these people!’ Because they are working there, they are giving their life for that hall and they love classical music. It’s the same for the community,” he says. “We have a huge audience, built up over years. But, from this last season, we have begun to build a new audience, combining of course with the traditional one.

“It’s amazing working with the new children’s orchestra, the Yola [Youth Orchestras of LA] project,” he says. “It’s like the Sistema in Venezuela. And we also have audiences coming from the children’s communities, sometimes poor and excluded ones. When we played a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, I think around 90% of the audience there were listening to classical music for the first time.”

In Gothenburg, too, he’s determined to bring classical music to a new audience. “We went, for example, to this place, Hammarkullen – a very poor suburb – and we played two concerts, one for the children of the community, and one for the parents,” he says.

“It’s not that people don’t like classical music. It’s that they don’t have the chance to understand and to experience it. Going to a concert can sometimes be very difficult. It can be a long journey. There’s the ticket prices. But when the music goes to the community – not the community coming to the concert – they say, ‘Wow! I didn’t know that this music was so amazing!’

“We have to go and show these people what classical music is. We say sometimes that classical music has a small audience, but it’s because people don’t have the chance to be closer to it. Of course, we also have to play in concert halls. This is our dream when you are a musician – to play in a good, comfortable hall with a wonderful acoustic. But it’s also important to bring these new audiences to concerts.”

Rather succinctly (though I get the impression that the Maestro can be a bit verbose), Dudamel has pointed out for us a central issue in classical music’s search for wider audiences.  It is NOT that people who don’t love classical music are ignorant and just don’t get it.  It is NOT that the art form is beyond them.  Rather it seems to be the cultural realities and assumptions that remain out of reach for them: They can’t afford the tickets.  They don’t own a tie.  They don’t have a car to get them to the concert.  They simply don’t feel they “fit in” in the classical music world.  Anyone who truly loves classical music, and doesn’t simply “enjoy” it as some sort of cultural status symbol, should find such a situation abhorrent.

When I was first studying music, I used to have conversations with a close conductor friend of mine about expanding the audience for classical music.  We used to ponder the question of whether it was better to bring the music down to the audience (i.e. dumb it down by adding pop elements for example), or to bring the audience up to the music (i.e. through education, etc. until they learned that they should love classical music).  I now believe that this question was ridiculous.  It misunderstood what the problem was, misapprehended the situation of our potential audience, and as a result, confused classical music’s adiaphora with its essential heart.  That confusion is part of what holds classical music back from wider audiences.

Venues don’t make music.  Attire does not make music.  Ticket prices don’t make music.  But audiences - growing audiences - sustain music.  Doing concerts such as those Dudamel describes above may put the balance sheets of arts organizations deeper into the red than if they charged their regular rates at their regular venues.  But to focus on that is to be dreadfully shortsighted and to forget the concept of Return on Investment.  There are ways to overcome this financial problem however.  More on that later.  Suffice it to say for now that arts organizations and artists could stand to think a bit more like businesspeople.

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