Howard is right about the graying of audiences and it's been talked
about for years here in the US. I think one problem is that early music
is the poor step-sister of "classical music" - a category that was
solidified (along with ethnic, folk etc.) back when record stores
started. It seems to me our music was the pop music of the day, with a
bit of a division between music for use in church, court and things like
popular ballad tunes. Currently I see a couple larger baroque orchestras
and concert series moving past the baroque, but I also see some
interesting series who explore putting on concerts in non-traditional
venues, such as bars and coffee shops. We had an article by Deborah Fox
a year or so in the Quarterly - about some of the things her Pegasus
music is doing to encourage a younger audience. Stephen Stubbs in
Seattle (Pacific Music Works) in Seattle is also doing this.
I suspect that all this targeted music aimed to fill medium sized
concert venues will change because of Covid-19. It will level the
playing field and people will have found out it's very nice to listen to
a well-produced concert on your TV (via YouTube). Recently I have
listened to online lute concerts by Paul O'Dette, Ronn McFarlane and
Brandon J Acker. In each of them there was no ticket price, just a
suggestion to follow a link to donate on PayPal. None of those concerts
took place in my part of the continent and I would not have heard them
without the pandemic. I think this will continue even after we get our
vaccine. The success of these kind of things will depend on things like
Facebook spreading to work far and wide as well as people contiruting -
Brandon Acker has done a great job getting lots of connections on
Facebook, so has access to his potential audience.
Nancy
On Aug 27, 2020, at 8:58 AM, Is Milse Póg <ishdai...@gmail.com> wrote:
I am a young amateur lute player (just 21), so I guess I am a part of
the next generation of players. I think the lute will continue to be
played for the foreseeable future, since there's always someone strange
enough to fall in love with the lute's music and sound, but it's sad to
see little to no young people in ancient music and classical music
concerts in general. Perhaps it has to do with the distance that has
grown between contemporary composers and the general population, the
former usually earning their bread through the academia.
It has to do with classical music being a taste that listeners tend to acquire
as they get older. Old listeners are replaced with lots of middle-aged
listeners, and not so many young ones.
Alarms about the “graying of the classical audience” have been sounded for
decades, and in the USA probably peaked in 1988. The general manager of the
public classical music station in Los Angeles came back from the Audience 88
conference that year convinced that classical music was dying and he had to
wean the station away from it. He was gone within a year or so. The station was
was playing Satie, Rossini and Beethoven this morning.
It reminds me of the line in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that the galactic
emperor is “nearly dead and has been for centuries."
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Nancy Carlin
Administrator THE LUTE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
http://LuteSocietyofAmerica.org
PO Box 6499
Concord, CA 94524
USA
925 / 686-5800
www.groundsanddivisions.info
www.nancycarlinassociates.com
