The Death of Classical Music: Can it Be Saved?

Everyone has heard the rumors floating around in the past few decades reporting the death of classical music or at least of its failing health. If one looks at the facts, it is easy to see why all of these speculations have been made. Music education has almost completely disappeared from public schools, record sales have significantly declined, and ticket cost of live performances has increased while attendance has decreased. On top of all of that, between the years of 1980 and 2000, classical music was almost completely absent from the main stream media, and in those twenty years, seventeen orchestras, such as the New Orleans Symphony, were forced to shut their doors. The world of pop was emerging and growing quickly. There was just no room for elitist classical music.

This decline in popularity has become the subject of countless blogs, news reports, books, and symposiums and has classical music supporters at a loss as to what went wrong and whether or not it is too late to save the industry. In fact, all of this talk about the death of classical music has become an industry in itself. People are beginning to ask themselves, has America given up on classical music? The answer to this question, based on the previous facts, seems obvious. However, this rumor of classical music’s imminent death is based on data that has been incorrectly interpreted. The actual numbers show a completely different story. While it is true that the popularity was waning in the past few decades, as of now, there is much more classical music being offered than ever before, both in concerts and recordings. And it is no coincidence that the rejuvenation came with one of the most important technological advances of the past decade: the Internet.

If one looks at the current record sales for classical music, the numbers are depressing. Compared to what the industry produced from 1950 to 1975, the numbers today are practically negligible. However, going beyond the major record labels, it is clear that classical music sales are actually booming. Since the creation of Apple’s iTunes in 2003, the sales of classical music have risen significantly. In fact, they reportedly accounted for twelve percent of the one billion tracks sold by iTunes in the first three years. In a recent interview with Alex Ross, a music critic from The New Yorker, Chris Bell, the director of worldwide product and music marketing at iTunes said, “iTunes is a safe place to try classical music. It is easy to sample and the buying is low-risk.” Perhaps this is why the sales have been so high. First time listeners and buyers are able to peruse iTunes’ vast selection from the comfort of their own home and buy songs one track at a time rather than investing their money into an entire CD, which they may end up not even enjoying.

While iTunes is a huge source for classical music and a main reason for the surge in sales, other sources are available for downloading as well. One of the largest online resources can be found at Naxos.com. Naxos Records, one of the biggest classical music recording labels was created in the eighties by Klaus Heymann. Heymann (seen to the right), who started his company at about the same time as the creation of the CD, saw an opportunity to profit off of recordings of mainstream classical repertory. In the early years, he relied on low priced ensembles that offered poor recordings. The business was not very lucrative, and he was not bringing in much money from it. He told Ross, “until about two years ago, for me this whole music business was a hobby, an expensive hobby.” He even put his entire catalogue online in 1996, allowing listeners to hear any track for free. It took many years for the Internet to advance to a point where he could make a profit off of his online database. Recently, however, Heymann created a subscription based library that offers higher quality sound recordings than do the free tracks. The library, which charges $19.95 per year, allows subscribers to have access to every recording that Naxos Records has online. The service, which now has over eleven thousand users, has added to Naxos’ eighty-two million dollar revenue.

Not only has the Internet helped to boost sales of the actual music, but it has also increased ticket sales for concerts. In the past few years, many major newspapers such as the New York Times and magazines such as Guardian Unlimited have argued against this claim, saying that “the concert hall is in crisis” and pointing out that season subscriptions for concert halls have plummeted. However, last-minute tickets sales have risen ten percent in the past decade. In fact, according to Matthew Westphal from Playbill Arts, “The [Metropolitan Opera] sold 83.9% of available tickets in 2006-07, up from 76.8% in 2005-06.” Before that, “figures had slipped every year since the 90.8% reached in 2000-01.” The most probable reason for this change in trend is that families have grown busier, and their habits have shifted. Many do not want to invest in season tickets where they have to commit to performances months in advance. Also, the Internet has led to a rise of first time concertgoers. People now have unlimited access to performance reviews, online radios, and streaming audio of classical music performances. They can hear samplings of the music before committing the money to buy the tickets. On top of that, there are scores of classical music blogs, such as chicagoclassicalmusic.org and the blog written by Jessica Duchen, a music journalist for The Independent. Each of these blogs, along with the countless others like these, get hundreds and sometimes thousands of hits a day, and they allow performers, composers, critics, conductors, or simply just classical music fans to get their voices heard, have immediate impact, and in some cases, to have some free advertising for themselves. Never could this have been done before the dawn of the Internet.

Although classical music has a history of riding the wave of popularity through new media in the past, starting with records, then cassette tapes, then CDs, there is no denying that the Internet has created for it a new awareness. No type of medium for obtaining classical music has ever been in existence that is as far reaching as the Internet. However, we cannot attribute all of the success to the Internet. In the words of Alex Ross, “classical music is, in fact, saving itself; Internet activity is merely the most immediately visible evidence of its refusal to fade away.” Nevertheless, fans of classical music will take this as a victory. This old, beautiful art form not only is not dying, but it looks like it will be here to stay.

Busking Around the World: One Man's Quest to Give the Gift of Music to All

On June 9, the South African born David Juritz, concert violinist and concertmaster of London’s famed Mozart Players, left his home in London with a backpack, his violin, and an empty wallet and started off on his 60,000-mile journey around the world. He had plans of busking in every city he stopped in order to raise enough money to support his travels. (Pictures of Juritz busking are seen to the left). Four and a half months later, Juritz has concluded his voyage in New York City, with $50,000 extra in his pocket and experiences that will last a lifetime.

When Juritz decided earlier this year that he wanted to travel around the world with only his violin in hand, he was not thinking of personal gain. Rather, he decided to mark his upcoming 50th birthday by touring the world and performing Bach’s solo violin works in hopes of raising funds for charities that would help bring music education to underdeveloped nations. His trip, now known as Round the World and Bach, took him through every continent except Antarctica. While traveling through each continent for the past four and a half months, Juritz worked everyday from 6 a.m. to nearly after midnight playing his violin in the streets and hoping for donations. He faced apathetic people who ignored him, blistering cold temperatures and pelting rain, and even policemen who tried to arrest him. However, Juritz believes that it was all a small price to pay to help bring music education to children who really need it.

“If you actually take a group of kids and put them up on the stage and get them performing, they suddenly realize that there’s another route in life than having to clamor for attention and hav[ing] to fight,” Juritz said in an interview with reporter Patricia Zengerle from Reuters.

A good example of this is seen in Juritz’s experiences in Montevideo, Uruguay. While playing violin on a street corner, a guy who Juritz says was high on drugs, and a group of about twelve kids surrounded him. Juritz feared that he was going to get mugged. Instead, the group, who seemed transfixed by his music, stayed and watched him for quite some time. Before leaving, one of the kids, who obviously had very little money, offered Juritz a coin as a donation.

"They were exactly the sort of kids we want to help,” Juritz said to Claire Soares from The Independent . “Music does have the power to transform lives. You get self-discipline from playing an instrument. You cannot beg, borrow or steal the ability to play, you have to practice and earn it.”

Although his trip around the world was meant to raise money to bring music education to children in need, Juritz has even bigger plans to accomplish his mission. Upon realizing that that there are no charities in existence solely for the purpose of bringing music education to underdeveloped countries, he created his own charity to do just that. His organization, called Musequality, is meant to support the development of music projects in these countries. Juritz hopes that bringing music to children in these countries will help foster “self-confidence and growth in their social, intellectual and spiritual capacities.” Juritz plans to use Musequality to provide the financial assistance necessary to fund such projects and to help form partnerships between the projects created by his organization and other well-established music institutions around the world. The money raised during Around the World and Bach is just the starting point for Juritz. By the time he is done, he hopes to have raised at least $500,000 for his charity that will all go to building music education projects around the world.

Despite only having raised $50,000 on his last trip, Juritz has already made some progress toward his end goal. Musequality is currently helping to bring funding to The Tender Talents Magnet School in Kampala, Uganda. Although this is just one small project, this is only the beginning for Juritz and Musequality. Juritz is confident that his charity will succeed and that it will bring the gift of music to underprivileged children all over the world. He is excited to see children, who would otherwise have nothing, growing through music. The Tender Talents Magnet School, seen in the image to the right, is proof enough for him that his initiative is working, and he has spoken out about the excitement that he has about these kids’ progress. “What I find most exciting is that, when you speak to them, they are all aiming high for the future. These are kids who want to become lawyers, economists, psychiatrists, and nurses, and I’ve no doubt that the discipline and self-respect they are developing now will help them to achieve their goals. It's wonderful to see.”

Advertising in Opera: Does Sex Sell?

After years of declining attendance, the Utah Symphony and Opera, logo seen to the left, has decided it needs a new public image. In order to move away from the stereotypical view of stuffy operas, the company administrators of the Utah Symphony and Opera have hired a new advertising firm to appeal to a younger, hipper audience. The firm they decided to employ is the one and only R&R Partners, most famous for the catchphrase, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Although R&R Partners have very little experience in cultural promotions, marketing director of the Utah Symphony and Opera, Sean Toomey, hopes that “the more playful approach [will help] break down the stereotypical image of stodginess.”

Examples of R&R Partners’ new marketing campaign can be seen all over Salt Lake City, Utah, from department stores to local bookstores to Chinese takeout restaurants. A person may be surprised to find a fortune that reads “Man who takes woman to opera finds pleasure after,” and a woman buying lingerie may find a tag with the slogan “Removes easily- after an evening in the balcony.” While these slogans may seem risqué enough, this is not as far as R&R Partners took their ideas. One particularly racy radio ad features a man and a woman talking monotonously about Verdi’s orchestration when they suddenly break into passionate moans directed at each other.

Supposedly, this type of ad campaign that Sean Toomey describes as being “playful” is meant to attract younger, more sexually driven people to the opera. However, in Salt Lake City, with almost 50% of its population being Mormon, the ads are causing some controversy. In fact, there has already been an instance in which a Mormon owned radio station refused to run an ad for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The ad was a parody of a typical morning-after conversation that might occur between the stars of the show Sex and the City after one of them woke up to discover that her one night stand was literally an ass. This ad was meant to be a take off from the scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Nick Bottom has his head transformed into that of an ass by the character Puck, as seen in the image to the right.

In order to stop some of the hullabaloo, Toomey recently asked R&R to change their marketing campaign to contain less sexual content. The slogan of the new campaign will change from “Experience the romance” to “Embrace the romance.” However, it will still be long way away from the average advertisements for classical music performances. For example, one of the newest ads for a Mozart performance reads “18th-century composer meets 21st-century pianist. Same music, better hair."

Now that the Utah Symphony and Opera has changed their tactics, they have to evaluate whether or not it is working. In the early start of the ad campaign, the company saw a rise in ticket sales. For example, the sales for the opera Jenufa went up 14 percent. However, the company now needs to figure out whether the ad campaign will have long-term benefits. Will the hot-and-heavy marketing campaign be able to make regulars out of the younger generation that they are targeting it to, or will the campaign simply create curiosity that is fleeting? So far, it is not looking promising. The attendance has already started thinning out despite the initial climb in ticket sales. Toomey, who is still hopeful, attributes much of the loss in attendance to competition from other local productions, bad weather, and construction. Others believe that the advertisements simply contain too much sexual subject matter to sell in a community with such a high population of Mormons. The Utah Symphony and Opera will now have to wait and see whether their strategy is working and whether the widely known marketing idiom is true; does sex really sell?

Musicologist: A Threat to National Security?

As of today, October 1, 2007, the United States government’s national threat level is “elevated,” while the threat level for all international and domestic flights is “high.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s website directly states that “While there continues to be no credible information at this time warning of an imminent threat to the homeland, the department's strategic threat perspective is that we are in a period of increased risk.” Perhaps this “imminent threat” during this “period of increased risk” is what caused up-and-coming musicologist, Nalini Ghuman, to be detained for eight hours in the San Francisco airport on August 8, 2006 and subsequently to be refused reentry into the United States. On September 17, 2007, Nina Berstein from The New York Times caught up with the case. Over thirteen months later, Ghuman has still not been allowed reentry and has yet to receive any information on the reasons for the revocation of her visa.

The situation with musicologist Nalini Ghuman, whose image is seen below, is one of sheer puzzlement. Ghuman, a British citizen of Welsh-Indian heritage, received her Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, and is a Professor of Music at Mills College in Oakland. She is esteemed as one of the world's preeminent scholars on the musical works of Sir Edward Elgar. As a perfectly innocent and prominent musician with respectable education credentials, the United States has, in flagrant violation of law, revoked her residency visa and refused to allow her back with no explanation given and no rights afforded; not even a phone call. The difficulty with this situation is that Ghuman’s case has not been able to be closely studied as a result of the government’s refusal to release any specifics on her case. Despite having a clean background and no direct links to any sort of national security threat, she has been treated as though a huge danger to the United States. As a result, her situation has caused uproar amongst the musicological community, her colleagues, and others who believe that she is being unfairly kept out of the country. The American Musicological Society has even been sending out regular newsletters regarding Ghuman’s current status.

While Ghuman has heard no specific information as to why her visa was revoked, the officers who originally detained her reported to Ghuman and her representative that, although no information has been released dealing with her case, there is a strong likelihood that there are deeper security reasons for holding her from entering. On July 27, 2007, the American Musicological Society, concerned with the lack of movement on the case, wrote directly to Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice to query about the status of Ghuman’s return. The response they received was short and unsatisfactory. It stated that “Dr. Ghuman's case is undergoing administrative processing. It is not possible to predict when Dr. Ghuman's case will be completed.” As of yet, that is the most information anyone has heard about the matter. Perhaps there is some other problem that the public is unaware of that is causing the government to not release any other material on the case, or perhaps they are worried about security. Whatever the reason, nothing appears to explain this inexcusable situation.

While Ghuman’s story is the story of just one woman, there have been many other instances where the United States has denied entrance or revoked the visas of foreign scholars. Not surprisingly, most of these foreign intellectuals were critical of the Bush administration and spoke out publicly about it before being denied entrance. One such example is of Riyadh Lafta, an Iraqi professor of medicine who had been invited to visit the University of Washington to share his research on cancer among children in southern Iraq. Upon being deprived entrance into the U.S., Mr. Lafta decided to deliver his lecture at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, and the video was broadcasted at the University of Washington. These actions that have been taken by the United States’ govenment against these foreign scholars are not only unjust and unfair, but if this continues, America’s pre-eminence as a place of scholarship is at stake.