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In Reply to: RE: You're looking at the problem, not the solution. posted by tinear on April 17, 2014 at 19:04:26
The solution would be to once again air classical concerts on prime time TV..... Heck, Gustavo Dudamel would be the perfect man for attracting a new TV audience.I think the networks transformed from reflecting popularity to defining it, sometime in the late 1960s...... I believe classical music lost popularity because the media stopped airing it, rather than the other way around.
I also believe this is why Leonard Bernstein was maybe the most famous American conductor, during the post-TV era. He was the music director of the New York Philharmonic when the networks shut it down. He was a household name up to that point.... If the networks shut down these concerts because of lack of popularity or viewership, Bernstein would have been obscure due to that. But he's not obscure. And even today, he still is the best known orchestral conductor to the American mainstream. (Only Herbert von Karajan comes close.)
Edits: 04/17/14Follow Ups:
"The solution would be to once again air classical concerts on prime time TV.."
You're kidding, right? Prime time TV?? Who watches that? I don't even watch cable any more, just videos from Netflix, YouTube, etc. over the Internet. IMO the frequencies allocated for broadcast TV are being wasted and should be reused for useful purposes, e.g. mobile communications.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
..."I believe classical music lost popularity because the media stopped airing it, rather than the other way around."
Classical music started losing popularity when the television replaced the radio. Classical music is brilliantly suited to radio. Like reading novels. It's not a television medium, and all attempts to film it have been fundamentally boring, hence people don't watch it, hence it's not broadcast much.
Other things suit television. The world has changed. Putting on more classical concerts won't change much at all. There just isn't much of a way of turning an hour long symphony into an exciting visual experience.
"Putting on more classical concerts won't change much at all."
This is why I used the airing of it in Japan as a contrasting example. That alone is *overwhelming* evidence refuting this claim.
There is zero generational influence, if the masses at a young age are constantly exposed to it.
is that they have a well-funded public television network. Is that what you're proposing?Of course it does air on PBS with some frequency, but there is a segment of the population that works hard to undermine PBS.
Edits: 04/18/14
Of course you're right about the forces at work trying to undermine PBS in general.
I'm of the view that the lack of demand is primarily due to the lack of education. We could have a 24/7 Symphony channel and I don't think it would change much in terms of the public's awareness. A change in education on the other hand...
Dave
I'm quite prepared to believe that audiences in different cultures and countries might be more receptive to classical music or culture in general - the less they are exposed to mass-stimulation media as in the USA the more they may read and take more time over things that matter on a deeper level.But in the USA I just don't see it, I'm afraid. Audience reaction from Japan doesn't refute the situation in the USA.
"The root problem is in the network media..... We never had a problem with kids becoming familiar with classical music up to the mid 1960s"
It was the kids that changed as a result of the new audio-visual interactive environment. Yes - the media partly triggered the change, but now they're also following the results of it. It's the whole argument about production and consumption - do we create the media or does the media create us. It's usually both. Just airing live concerts won't have the effect these days it had in the pre-1960s, which was also more of a radio era in any case.
And in any case, internet sites are more widely used by kids these days than broadcast media.
Edits: 04/18/14 04/18/14
I always thought that Fiedler was the "best known orchestral conductor to the American mainstream". Montovani must have been right up there on the list too.
"I always thought that Fiedler was the 'best known orchestral conductor to the American mainstream'."
Maybe during the 1960s.... He was showcased on prime time TV too. The "pops" movement kind of faded, when concerts stopped including the classics, a trend started in the 1970. (At one time, you'll hear a Tchaikovsky or Beethoven piece in the programming. But not anymore.) The Boston Pops, in particular, has faded into obscurity. (Can anybody snap-recall who the current music director is?) Bernstein at least has had staying power.
"Montovani must have been right up there on the list too."
I personally don't know who this individual is.........
If the Boston Pops truly does fade into obscurity, classical music will have lost very little, saith Bob the Snob. The bad drives out the good, etc.
I think, as Krieger says, the media are part of the problem, FM radio in particular. You can't run a classical music FM station to make money and if you try you're becoming part of the problem. But even PBS stations have cut down on or dumbed down their classical music offerings -- 'to broaden our base,' I was told.
So where is the rest of the problem? It's in the culture as a whole, which has gotten the young attracted to music, movies, and TV programming that are incompatible with the kind of sensibility that responds to classical music. Works are too long, not exciting enough, and you can't dance to much of it, let alone hum it. I have five bright, well educated children now aged from 18 to 50, all of whom grew up in a household full of all kinds of music, mostly classical; and none care very much about classical music. They've been (brilliantly) drawn elsewhere, fed easier, more basic stuff. We getting back to where we were when a lot of this music was written, cultures in which most people found classical music too intellectual, too refined, or just for the rich. Social history is against classical music's returning to the piece of the mainstream it occupied in the 50's and 60's, I'm afraid.
It's probably time to see it as social history and stop trying "to take arms against the tide." Listen to the music you love and don't tear your hair out that you're in a declining minority. The music's not going away - in fact there a lot of extremely good young musicians and conductors who are coming from somewhere, perhaps raised by Tiger Mamas!
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