This was written to a reviewer of classical music performance in a Denver paper.  I like it yet.

 

 

Sir:

I need to take issue with your column of June 6.  I am afraid you are too close to the problem to see it. 

 

First, the reason people are “afraid” of classical music is, in truth, rather obvious: they don’t actually like it.  Why would they?   Too much of it is boring nonsense composed for the toilets of monarchs long dead and gone: muzak for vain and tender intellects.  Interleaved with the actual great compositions, it is currently presented ‘live’ in preposterous, uncomfortable surroundings solely for the social elevation of the audience members, who are certain of their aristocratic tastes and wish to applaud themselves for it, and the Symphonies and Philharmonics give them that opportunity.  It is not even an art form that attracts creative artists, because nobody writes orchestral music anymore except the programmed computers for movie sound tracks or ‘shows.’  And that is just as well.

 

Most modern local orchestras are simply god awful, and since this is what people are dragged to at gunpoint by mothers desperate for something to do other than watch football on a Sunday, it should come as no surprise that young adult audience numbers are dropping like paralyzed falcons.   This is also why there are few classical stations, and they reduced to playing short snippets and movements of the greater whole.  They have a tiny but wealthy audience, and that supported in its addiction to musical social climbing by regressive taxation by means of 401k’s. 

   

The vast majority of most audiences for this rigid and increasingly irrelevant music presentation are pretentious social climbers who have no clue of the form, the history, or the intended meaning of the music, no actual appreciation of it, no real artistic value system, and are there to be seen, furrowing their brows in what they hope is an approximation of an intelligent pose should the Society Editor be present.  They are afraid of being revealed as frauds, which they are.  If there had been no Milos Foreman and Amadeus twenty years ago, they would be at home listening to Zamphir’s latest offering that came in the mail today. 

 

That is the same reason there is no ‘adventuresome’ programming, why there are forty-three inflictions of the Nutcracker (even its composer hated it…) every year in every city that can afford a polished gym floor, why gorgons with hyphenated names, gossamer clothing of a color not found in nature, and facial expressions capable of turning funerals up side streets still lacerate retinas at all these barely disguised social – not artistic - events.  They want to know that this is something good they are listening to, and two centuries of repetition suffices as evidence.  Otherwise, they would have no basis for an opinion, left to their own sensibilities.

 

You complain about the cutting off of music instruction in school, and sympathetic media coverage manages to find those few, very few schools where competent music teachers face enthused and talented students who are, unfortunately, now screwed.  Most music classes in the average school kill off any love of tone for life’s duration.

 

Do you really think that the people who have their clutches around the throat of this wonderful music would want to see it thrive if it meant that they would not be necessary for its survival, that they would not be applauded for it, that they are not that special?   In your heart of hearts, can’t you see that ‘The Symphony’ is just the high-end charity function and the goal is to be seen with these irrelevant frauds??  No?

 

Well then, what converts are ever made by taking children to lousy performances of symphonic music and saying, in effect, ‘pretend this was good?’  This, by the by, is partly your fault, critic.  There should be fewer and better orchestras.  In the age of readily available recorded music, there is nothing to be gained – artistically – from forming bad orchestras to play the same music as every other.  An enthused, bored matron with a thirty year old degree in Fine Arts who wants something to do while hubby is chatting up a future trophy wife, who hits up her friends and acquaintances to start a local orchestra should not be honored as a savor of the arts in Ringworm, Montana.  She should be taken outside and chained for the damage to future generations of musical appreciation for which she is now responsible.  If you want a kid to tune into this incredibly deep and detailed music, do not subject him to most local orchestras.  Either take him to New York or buy him a CD of the Vienna Phil. 

 

Imagine convincing a child how great Shakespeare is after he has just watched a willing Oklahoman bellow Shakespeare in the trendy tones of Ft. Sill.  If that child had never seen actors and actresses capable of performing the works of such an incredible playwright, he would think you an idiot for considering this singsong poetry ‘good.’  My contention is, he would be correct.   The situation requires a doctor, and therefore first: do no harm.

 

If the same kid is dragged to hear a classical performance of Mozart or Vaughn Williams and it is done badly, with no tonal variation, botched notes, clunky entrances, and melodramatic if not clinically disturbed leads by the conductor, you have ridiculed that which you profess to know and love, and you should expect, in due time, that child to reflect that. 

 

  Music lovers can still pay good money to hear bad notes, botched pauses, clueless interpretation by local orchestras while some transient guest conductor coos and dances to a musical moment not audibly emerging from the musicians before him/her.  (Dear God, Boulder audiences have been trained to give standing ovations to the most pedestrian performances imaginable.)  Why is this?  Are the orchestras so inundated with the mass of new material they can’t keep up?  Hardly. Copeland, Vaughn Williams, and Barber are still considered modern, as I recall, and the average age of most pieces inflicted upon the median audience is – what? – one hundred fifty years?  Two hundred?  Three?  This is a vibrant art form screaming for public support?

 

The musicians just don’t read well enough or play well enough because there are – inexplicably – more major orchestras than the talent and audience pool justifies.   The gullible American Public bought into it: once.  They’re not coming back.  

 

Your fault, critic.  Yours alone.  You lied to us.  You told us pretentious crap was good.  You ignored all the garbage and found something not legal justification for a lynching to write about, complete with the airbrushed, dramatically lit photo of the European male conductor glaring into the camera or the one of some nineteen year old female cellist with deep cleavage.  You know, for art’s sake.  We live for art.

 

Face it, without these terrible gatherings of anti-talents playing compositions beyond their ability and enthusiasm, what is there for you to write about?  Just the weekly release from St. Martin’s in the Field, which – I believe - is now recording Neville Marriner’s favorite shower songs of Fiji.  Apparently, they will record anything and everything.

 

If you want the young to return – and you’d better – do this: clean house, burn orchestras that do not break in deserving new works, castigate disconnected conductors, and let the public (by which I mean a data base that would include kids currently into hip hop, industrial dance, and punk) like it: don’t dare them to like it.