Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Classical Media Roundup

For day-to-day updates on what the media thinks is going on in the world of Classical music (and other fields, too) ArtsJournal.com can't be beat. But if you don't make it over there consistently, or need some analysis, or just enjoy the occasional cheap shot at the legit media, we've got what you need right here.

1. The Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago's "Blockbuster Weekend" of free outdoor concerts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera of Chicago brought out crowds of 10,000 for the CSO on Saturday and 12,000 for the Lyric Opera on Sunday. Barack Obama narrated Copland's "Lincoln Portrait." I remember when the BSO staged a huge outdoor concert to celebrat Seiji Ozowa's 25th year at the helm, to similarly great effect. Funny how classical music looks like it's dying when the masses are accused of being uncultured for lack of interest in the music, but are then asked to pay exorbitant ticket prices for the privilege of sitting next to the very snobs who said they were uncultured in the first place; but a free concert where most of the rest of the audience are fellow non-snobs draws huge crowds. (And what sponsor wouldn't rather reach an audience of that size than the shrinking group of regular concert-goers.)

2. The Christian Science Monitor seems to find it newsworthy that Daniel Anker's new documentary "Music from the Inside Out" about musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra presents those musicians "as regular people." The documentary may well be excellent -- I haven't seen it, and might well think the CSM has it all wrong if I had -- but that regularness seems, according to the CSM, to be illustrated through the portrayal of the musicians as human in the face if the Ineffable Greatness of Classical Music. I suspect the VH1 "Behind the Music" model would better serve the Classical community than the "In Awe Of The Music" model the CSM describes and endorses.

3. The Metropolitan Opera has found a "majority share" of the $6 Million per seasion it needs to continue Saturday radio broadcasts for a few more years. Long-time sponsor ChevronTexaco ended its support in 2003, and now luxury home builders Toll Brothers have agreed to pick up the slack for at least another 4 years. This is great news for the Met, great news for Opera lovers, wonderfully generous of Toll Brothers, and, if it's the beginning of a trend in construction companies' support for the arts, great news for arts fundraising in general. At the same time, however, the extent to which Toll Brothers is trading on Classical Music as a currency of cultural elitism is quite troubling. Toll Brothers Chairman and CEO, while himself an opera fan, explained the reasoning behind his company's support: "There's an image to be overcome that's negative" Toll told the New York Times, describing the home construction business. "One thinks of a guy in a flannel shirt in a pickup with a gun rack. . . What more perfect marriage for a branding effort than to associate yourself with the Met Opera?. . . It's got to be one of the classiest products you could think of." One is reminded of. . .

4. . . . an August 11 article in Slate explaining that scandal-beset Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff are secret opera buffs. According to Slate's Timothy Noah "Abramoff is a huge opera buff, and�until now this has been a closely guarded secret�so is DeLay. The only previous public hint of this mutual enthusiasm was the revelation in June by Associated Press reporter Adam Nossiter that Abramoff persuaded the Coushatta tribe to put up $185,000 in 2000 so DeLay could treat some of his biggest donors to a concert by the fabled Three Tenors . . . I guess he must work overtime to keep that knowledge a tightly held secret lest his good-ole-boy constituents in Sugar Land, Texas, conclude the Hammer is putting on airs." Maybe Delay has, fearing political liability, kept his love of opera secret as Noah suggests, or maybe, as others have suggested, Timothy Noah underestimates DeLay's constituents and is speculating wrongly -- either way the story is illustrative of the "Classical Music is the music of the cultural elite" script.

5. Newsweek's recent Fall Arts Preview (no link) drew fire from some people in the Classical music world for not previewing any classical music. Count me as neither surprised nor upset. If Time's coverage of Marin Alsop or the handful of other Newsweek articles dealing with classical music are any indication, any coverage would serve primarily to reinforce the notion of Classical Music as Elitist. Time and Newsweek cater to the cultural mainstream, which is the cultural middle class -- and Classical Music is not currently viewed as the music of the middle class. (Plus, weelky news magazines have far less space available than most other popular mainstream media, so they have to focus extra intently on mainstream news.) Organizations like NPR, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, cater to the cultural upper class � the "elite" as some would say -- and so they do cover classical music. That Newsweek didn't include Classical Music in its Arts Preview is a symptom, not the disease.

6. On a final, more humorous note, don't miss FEMA's rap song on the Kidz section of its website. This has been making the rounds on liberal blogs, and while it�s not really fair to claim a relationship between this song and the Katrina response, it�s certainly hilariously awful. Marketers of the world take note: packaging your message to appeal to your target audience is fine, but if you do it badly you will only get laughed at.

posted by Galen H. Brown 9/14/2005