A number of months ago, in September of 2012, a friend of mine (referred to here as Phantom) sent me a message on Facebook. His out-of-the-blue question developed in to a lively conversation about the state of things in classical music. As one would expect, there were no solutions arrived at, nor any earth shattering claims made, simply two music lovers chatting. I was thinking of this conversation today and after re-reading, I felt it was interesting enough to share. 

It is my opinion that classical music can learn quite a bit from popular music and these conversations are necessary to learn where we are and where we should be going. Living within the bubble of the academy allows for much snobbery, but in the real world, things are different. The opinions here are my own, and may have changed since that day in September, but be kind to me, nonetheless. After reading this conversation (and I apologize, but this runs 10 pages in my Word document), I hope you’ll head on over to my FACEBOOK PAGE and tell me what you think!

I should mention that Phantom is not a musician, rather, he is the kind of 20-something fan of classical music that we (as musicians) should be seeking out and catering to. It should also be mentioned that this conversation WAS via Facebook chat, so I apologize for any and all grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors as well as any internet colloquialisms. Though I attempted to edit the conversation, these things certainly slipped through.

Enjoy.

Phantom
There must be a middle ground between inaccessible modern music and Call Me Maybe covers. For example, look at the resurgence of bluegrass/old time music in the last ten years. That was an old, dead, unloved genre, and some intrepid people revived it and made it popular and profitable again.

Justin Dougherty
what do you consider inaccessible? And whose fault is it that it's inaccessible? Personally, I blame myself.

Phantom
I don't, I blame the people writing the music.

Justin Dougherty
But the music isn't actually inaccessible, it's just too hard for our hyper ADD, instant gratification minds. The “Google-generation” of listeners. Anything which is considered entertainment that requires thought is immediately considered inaccessible (and then dies a horrible death).

Phantom
That's not at all true. The tastes of the public have changed, surely, but, again, look at Bluegrass: they created demand when there wasn't any. Hardly Strictly! That was not some accident.

Justin Dougherty
I don't think it's taste, I think it's willingness. Bluegrass, like typical popular music, isn't difficult.

Phantom
OOOOH them's fightin’ words.

Justin Dougherty
It’s not! New, Contemporary Classical music is difficult because it is highly organized. Set class theory, serialism, is hard and mathematical. Bluegrass utilizes typical progressions that are predictable to the listener. For most, it is "easy listening."

Phantom
Okay, then maybe we're saying different things with the word "difficult" or "easy," but I think somewhere in there is my point.

Justin Dougherty
That highly organized music is inaccessible?

Phantom
I think it's somewhat strange to complain about how its hard to make a living in music performance without Call Me Maybe covers when the music you want to perform is, by your own admission, some of the more difficult music to listen to.

Justin Dougherty
I don't think it's difficult to listen to at all!

Phantom
Well of course YOU don't! You've spent a decade listening to it and studying it.

Justin Dougherty
Ah, but that's just it! We Americans need things that are simple, that's why Call Me Maybe is so enticing. It uses three distinct chords and only two chord progressions!

It's INCREDIBLY simple! I've written more complex works in freshman music theory homework assignments (that I probably received a C on)

But then there’s Ned Rorem, a composer of high art music, who uses set class theory in which every pitch and interval is related in some way. This is difficult to comprehend from an analytical standpoint. His music doesn't take predictable paths. A dominant chordin the tonic key doesn't always resolve to the tonic like it does in any popular music (or bluegrass) song. Instead, it might resolve to something completely distant, unexpected. Even on that basic level, it's harder than the simplest pop music. And therefore, because it requires more than the bare minimum of mental activity to listen to, it is considered too hard for the average listener.

Phantom

Okay, let me ask a question: in what should someone find satisfaction in a performance of a Rorem piece? There's no sarcasm in that, I honestly want to know your answer. And can you name a piece for me? I want to find this person and listen to him.

Justin Dougherty

If we're talking about Rorem specifically, one can expect to find incredibly lyrical writing. Just because it is composed in set class style doesn't mean it's crunchy and dissonant. In fact, Rorem is quite "tonal.” Much more so than many modern composers. Here’s a work to listen to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtAh3hEBPnk

Phantom
Okay, so [the Rorem YouTube video above] is a great example. 

Justin Dougherty

For other composers, perhaps those who are more dissonant and avant garde like Xenakis, the music is “affectual.” That said, Rorem’s music is highly complex, just as complex as Boulez, Xenakis, Stravinsky, or serial Copland, but it doesn't follow traditional patterns. I really believe that the reason music like this suffers is because listeners are lazy.

Phantom
No, I won't have that. Blaming your audience is not fair, and not correct!

Justin Dougherty
It's absolutely fair, but it isn’t the entire problem. As I said above, I also blame performers.

Phantom
Why the performers?

Justin Dougherty
Audiences come to hear music for different reasons, and everyone’s reason is different. When one plays/sings music like this (or pieces that sound "harder" than this), the performers must place the music in to context. It's my opinion that when performers talk about the music they are about to play, the audience "understands" this seemingly difficult music better. In the case of that Rorem video, the highly complex music sounds incredibly easy. In the case of this work, by Iannis Xenakis, the music sounds just as complex as it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZazYFchLRI

Knowing nothing about the piece, listen to 4 minutes of that and tell me what you think.

Phantom
Alright, I'm 2:30 in, and I'm bewildered.

Justin Dougherty
Excellent! As you should be, and as most audiences (highly educated musicians included) would be. If I told, very simply, that Xenakis composed this piece to replicate his memory of the sounds of warfare, would that make the piece any more interesting to you?

Phantom
more interesting yes, but I still wouldn't enjoy it. I don't have anything to take away from this experience.

Justin Dougherty
And I think that's partially because this music must be experienced live. But the work isn't supposed to make you enjoy it, and you’re certainly free to hate the piece, even if you understand it. But it's written for an affect...you should feel something. Often times, I believe Xenakis wants you to feel uncomfortable.

Phantom
It’s a gimmick, in other words,

Justin Dougherty
Well, in this case, yes I suppose you could say that. Xenakis was an architect and mathematician who structured music in an obscene way. But I find his music interesting for different reasons than you might, or how another composer might. I don't "enjoy" it in the traditional sense, but I am fascinated by the sounds that he can create.

Phantom
But why should anyone expect audiences of any size to actually come to listen to things like this? You can make someone listen to it once...

Justin Dougherty
For the life of me, I can't answer that. I don't know why people go to concerts and listen to music. (I for one don't go to hear live classical music all that often!) Can you name one pop song that seeks to elicit some level of discomfort from it's listener? (and I don't mean the text. I mean discomfort via musical notes.)

Phantom
That's not the point of Pop music, I grant you. Pop music is meant to be enjoyed while drunk at clubs, pure sugary pleasure.

Justin Dougherty
Right, and over the years the pop music has gotten sweeter and sweeter, and more and more pleasing. Compare Call Me Maybe to Strawberry Fields. The musical differences are striking.

Phantom
Yes of course, and your point is that this has skewed the public's taste in music generally
and I'd agree with that.

Justin Dougherty
I argue that the continued dumbing down of popular music has hurt classical music, because classical music has always been complex.

Phantom
But that's the general public. There are plenty of very healthy niches out there that are different.

Justin Dougherty
For anything to succeed (and thrive) it needs the support of the general public

Phantom
Aw hell no! If you can be the master of a nichey community, you can absolutely thrive -
not even the master! If you have a devoted small group behind you, that's enough (again, Bluegrass. or Newgrass, as it's becoming called).

Justin Dougherty
In the case of the classical music area (niche), the small group is getting older and dying, and it isn't replenishing,

Phantom
That's true. (And simultaneously the number of performers is increasing, and that's a whole other problem!)

Justin Dougherty
I don't even want to discuss that!

Phantom
But why isn't it replenishing? You can't blame it just on pop music. 

Justin Dougherty
I blame musical taste on pop music, I blame willingness to hear something different on pop music (because all pop music is inherently the same), 

Phantom
Maybe it's just that your team isn't doing a good job at PR. Maybe it's that simple, actually.

Justin Dougherty
Ahh, and here we meet! I blame the PR on the musicians.

Phantom
To be honest, the modern/classic music community has really bad PR, and even worse branding!

Justin Dougherty
Sure does.

Phantom
Maybe the perception is that it's inaccessible, not that it is, in reality!

Justin Dougherty
That's definitely the perception. People often make up their minds when they walk in to the hall...

Phantom
Or long before! There is certainly a feeling in the public that classically trained musicians and composers don't give a damn about what their audience thinks, or that they are making music for a high-brow, snooty audience, and those are some really bad optics.

Justin Dougherty
There are folks like that, for sure.

Phantom
And maybe the concert halls and high ticket prices and dressing up does nothing but cut out 95% of your potential audience right off the bat!

Justin Dougherty
I know a number of composers who call audience members who don't like/understand their music "the uninitiated."

Phantom

That's really bad. Don't let them out in public, ever.

Justin Dougherty
Back to the formality: the San Francisco Symphony did something awesome last year with programming. They allowed drinking in the hall, live blogging with cell phones, and they played new music.

Phantom
Ha! That's cool!

Justin Dougherty
So audience members got drunk, tweeted how they were feeling, and listened to BRAND NEW music. It was a wild success. As far as I know, they didn't offer it up as part of subscription series (meaning: old people who come to everything anyway), and they still sold out. So individual people bought individual tickets.

Phantom
Fantastic!

Justin Dougherty
There are those awful classical musicians who could give two shits about what you, the audience member, thinks. But they are absolutely the minority, unfortunately a very vocal one! And as an aside, why does formality have to be such a problem?! I think there's something about a formal event that is so wonderful. For that matter, check out www.opusaffair.org.

Phantom
Sure, but formal events are "sometimes" events. So it's a tradeoff. And here's another question. Do you folks have any idea how to use the Internet?

Justin Dougherty
No. Very simply. No, we don’t. 

Phantom
Because every other kind of musician is kicking your asses at Internet.

Justin Dougherty
We haven't a clue. Even those who know have no idea!

Phantom
That's probably a BIG part of the problem of the last 10 years, don't you think?

Justin Dougherty
Yup, but Britney isn't popular because she has a bangin' website.

Phantom
The Newgrass movement couldn't have happened without the Internet, bringing the handful of bluegrass geeks together to make magic. Really, you need to stop fixating on Pop music. There is more music out there than what they play in the Castro (thank god)

Justin Dougherty
Haha, I'm just saying!

Phantom
The number of independent musicians out there, literally random guys or girls with guitars, who have achieved great success simply by getting on a podcast or releasing some free tracks or having a few videos is huge.

Justin Dougherty
we don't know how to use youtube. we don't know how to use social networking, and our websites are pompous as shit

Phantom
there's a new class for the conservatory: Marketing for Musicians

Justin Dougherty
There is a big difference between classical musicians and independent artists and bluegrass musicians though. That is, we study our craft for decades before we start to make any kind of money. It’s easy to talk about releasing free tracks, or getting on a podcast when you’re a poor up-and-comer, but most classical musicians (the majority of whom have Master’s degrees or higher) are deeply in debt and need to make money - any money - NOW. We - unfortunately - can’t afford to experiment in the way these independent musicians sometimes can.

Phantom
Do you think the disconnect between the music creators and the music performers is a structural problem? No other genre I can think of really does that.

Justin Dougherty
Composers to performers? I think that - other than the dead guys - the process of creation is remarkably collaborative, but that isn't seen by the greater public.

Phantom
Interesting, definitely not. I know nothing about that process. But the songwriting process for other musicians is just as opaque.

Justin Dougherty
I find the creation process for many other musical genres to be kind of fake.

Phantom
Fake?

Justin Dougherty
A songwriter is composing for a performer who may not understand at all what that composer is writing, or that composer may be composing a piece of music based on how many (or how few) chords the performer can play on the guitar. Fake is the wrong word - limited is probably better. There is no boundary pushing. In fact, there are many boundaries set. I don't mean to insinuate that classical musicians understand what composers write for them - many composers I’ve worked with and who’ve written pieces for me would certainly tell you that it went right over my head.

Phantom
The goals are different for different genres.

Justin Dougherty
But usually, those in classical music have nothing to do with lack of understanding/ability/etc.

Phantom
Pop music producers want to make a piece of sugary candy that will stick in people's heads.

Justin Dougherty
I-IV-V-I

Phantom
Folk songwriters want to tell a story, and music is just a medium for that.

Justin Dougherty
(And the music is limited by the ability of the performer)

Phantom
Sure, but it's less about the music and more about the story and the feeling.

Justin Dougherty
Then it's storytelling and not music. Rap music is really just poetry with a beat.

Phantom
Is a painting of a scene from a bible not art?

Justin Dougherty
Granted. All I can say is that I don't have all of the answers to "save" classical music. I'm just trying to keep my head above water.

Phantom
I understand. It's a problem that frustrates me too. I want classical music to survive and thrive. There's plenty of blame to go around though, both within the community and without.

Justin Dougherty
Absolutely. My teacher, Rhonda, is a huge proponent of talking to audiences, both before and after performances. It's shocking the audience base she has managed through these efforts.

Phantom
Yeah, this is something that everyone else has already figured out. Tell the audience a little something about the song you're about sing, and they eat it up. And can't we have classical music concerts in places other than giant music halls? Like, the best concert I ever went to was for a string quartet in an old church. It was magical, and personal in a way that concert halls never ever are.

Justin Dougherty
http://www.gregsandow.com/old/haimovitz.htm

Phantom
YES, exactly! There needs to be more of this!

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And this is where we end. I hope you enjoyed, I hope you have opinions, and I hope that you'll share them by Tweeting me (@justindcellist) or heading over to Facebook and commenting!