Last week, the CBC announced that the CBC Radio Orchestra, a fixture in Canadian musical life for 70 years, would give its final concert in November. This is a sign that:
1) Classical music has failed to engage the attention of younger listeners and has become irrelevant to the lives of most people. This is mainly the fault of dreary programming and unimaginative presentation by unenlightened gatekeepers;
2) Yet another depressing sign that Canada is becoming more like the United States–a pop culturized, winner-take-all society in which competition for attention is fueled solely by ratings and money.
3) Something else?
I’m starting to get the feeling, that’s not original at all, that all this has really nothing to do with classical music per se, but with the glut of music. We’re all stuck in the middle of a deluge of non-stop musical sound. Like food, there’s just too much of it everywhere here. We’re musically fat, to be a little non-PC. We’re all gluttons, and we can’t stop listening, but why this song and not that song? Why that night out and not this night out. Too much stuff…
Luckily for us hard core types, the coming economic depression/disaster will destroy this glut; prevent this gluttony, and pave the way for a world of purely acoustic music based on U2/REM/Coldplay covers. 😉
yes,there are problems with classical music today in the US and
Canada,but I disagree with your premises.Programming today
is not always predictable and unimaginative;in fact there is
greater diversity of repertoire than ever before in the history of
classical music.True,there is a certain core repertoire of works
that have remained lastingly popular,but there has been a steady stream of new works premiered by many different orchestras,as well as many new operas.And many interesting rarities from the past have been revived.The myth that classical music is stuffy,
boring and elitist is probably the main reason that many people,
young or not so young,avoid it.There is still plenty of vitality
in the field;it is that myth that must be debunked.
Well, the United States is becoming less and less a “winner-take-all society in which competition for attention is fueled solely by ratings and money.” With the rise of the internet, the long-tail economy has been growing at an enormous rate, and the hit-drive, least common denominator, short head of the economy has been shrinking. Part of what’s going on with the CBC and with classical music in general is that it’s moving out of the short head and into the long tail. This isn’t entirely a bad thing–the long tail has the capacity to deliver more specialized content to a more engaged audience. I’d still prefer that the CBC orchestra survive, but I don’t think viewing it through the “downfall of civilization” lense is really accurate.
Yes 1) and 2) are both true, although I’d slightly reword 2) myself 🙂
The circumstances seem related to what I reported here about a month-and-a-half ago, regarding the CBC’s recording arm:
http://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/715