0 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE Redefining

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE Redefining Classical Music A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Music in Music Performance By Shannon Canchola May 2017 0 Copyright by Shannon Canchola 2017 ii 1 The Thesis of Shannon Canchola is approved: _________________________ ____________________ Dr. John Roscigno Date __________________________ ____________________ Heather Clark Date _________________________ ____________________ Dr. Lawrence Stoffel, Chair Date California State University, Northridge iii 2 Table of Contents Signature Page iii Acknowledgement iv Abstract v Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Defining Classical Music 5 Chapter 3: Looking to The Future 8 Chapter 4: Music Audiences Can Relate To 11 Chapter 5: Diversifying Audiences and Music 14 Chapter 6: Innovation and Technology in Classical Music 19 Chapter 7: Adventurous Venues 23 Chapter 8: Conclusion 26 Bibliography 27 Appendix A: Title Page of Interview and Participant Disclaimer 30 Appendix B: Composer Interview Questions 31 Appendix C: Interviews 32 Appendix D: Recital Program 37 iv 3 Abstract Redefining Classical Music By Shannon Canchola Master of Music in Music Performance This thesis will explore the need to redefine classical music in order to ensure its survival. Through the analysis of data taken from orchestras across the country, I will examine why many organizations are folding and what some establishments have done to prevent further downfall. With this information, I will explicate the current understanding of classical music and then discover possible methods in securing future generations of audiences that will enjoy and support this genre. I will also explore the problems many composers and musicians face in creating a successful and lasting career and what these musicians can do to gain popularity with audiences who may not be musically trained. The primary form of data received will derive from Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 2015 to 2016 statistics taken surveying 89 orchestras total, comprised of both major American symphonies and smaller organizations. This data will include information behind programming for an orchestra and how this crucial action directly v affects the type of audiences orchestras receive. I will also include interviews with current contemporary composers as primary sources within the text to further delve into what musicians and composers can do to allow classical music to thrive. Interviews with various musical directors and conductors will offer insight into what they feel is causing a lack of interest in the orchestra hall and what they are doing to ensure its survival. This will include discussions on utilizing new technology and innovative venues that will foster a genuine connection between the audience and the music. vi 1 Chapter 1: Introduction “There is no such thing as ‘serious’ or ‘popular music’. There is only ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music.”1 This quote, from Milton Babbitt’s article, Who Cares if You Listen?, describes a significant factor many musicians and composers may be neglecting; the opinion of the audience member. Babbitt goes on to say that, “the concertgoer is secure in the knowledge that the amenities of concert-going protects his firmly stated ‘I didn’t like it’” for no reason other than “I cannot or will not state why.”2 The music that audience members dislike is therefore not music to them at all. Consequently, the composers who create music that audience members do not understand are therefore not composers at all.3 This dilemma plagues the classical music world in the twenty-first century. In 1937, “the median age at orchestra concerts in Los Angeles was 28.”4 This median age has since changed; most classical music concerts now contain an audience consisting of solely white, well-educated, fifty-plus attendees.5 The current aging audience many orchestras and symphonies are encountering is a cause for fear and worry among music directors and musicians alike. There has been a significant lack of new patrons and young ticket buyers to replace this aging audience, which has caused ticket sales to fall. The National Endowment for the Arts created a survey on public participation portraying this crisis. In 1. Milton Babbitt, Who Cares if You Listen? (1958) (originally titled “The Composer As Specialist”) (High Fidelity, 1958), 246 2. Ibid., 247 3. Ibid., 248 4. Mark Vanhoenacker, “Requiem Classical Music in American is Dead,” Slate (2014), accessed March 20, 2017, <http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/01/classical_music_sales_decline_is_classical_on_death_s_door.h tml.>. 5. Stephen Moss, “People Will Find Their Own Way to It,” The Guardian (2007), accessed March 20, 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/oct/05/classicalmusicandopera1>. 1 2012, adults who attended classical music concerts “declined from 9.3 percent of adults in 2008 to 8.8 percent.”6 The ages of audience members from 2008 to 2012 also drastically changed, wherein the attendance by adults between the ages of thirty-five to fifty-four reduced, while the attendance of those older than fifty- four grew significantly. Statistics reflected in classical album sales are also definitive proof of the lack of income and financial support from new patrons. From 2012–2013, there was a 21 percent decline in classical album sales and “just 2.8% of albums sold in 2013 were categorized as classical.”7 It has become a well-known fact that classical music audience members are diminishing yearly in America. According to Robert Flanagan, a Stanford emeritus professor, “attendance per concert has fallen…even if every seat were filled, the vast majority of U.S. symphony orchestras still would face significant performance deficits.”8 Beyond these complications, classical composers and performers face an even larger struggle. Do composers compose to “pursue a private life of professional achievement” or should they now choose a “life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism?”9 All this for the sake of creating works that are simpler and perhaps easier to understand for a wide variety of potential new audiences? In the 20th century, this attitude towards caring about audience’s opinions largely did not exist. Composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Karlheinz Stockhausen began exploring the extremes of 6. Brian Wise, “NEA Report: Arts Audiences Grow More Diverse Amid Declines,” WQXR (2013), accessed March 21, 2017, <http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/nea-report-arts-audiences-grow-more-diverse/.>. 7. Mark Vanhoenacker. “Requiem Classical Music in American is Dead.” 8. Ibid. 9. Milton Babbitt, 249. 2 contemporary music by creating new electronic instruments and exploring jarring new sounds from classical instruments. This exploration was extremely dissonant and confusing to many classical and non-classically trained ears. These composers literally “began to rally against the traditional conventions of music to produce compositions which lack tonal centers, known as atonal music.”10 This music was poorly received by many, as it was difficult to understand. As stated by J. Peter Burkholder in his article Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last Hundred Years, “in no other period has art music been so divorced from other traditions…in no other period has so much music by so many talented composers been so hated and ignored, so little played or understood.”11 This music was challenging, and many musicians and audience members “turned back to Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, creating the concept of the ‘master’ and the ‘masterpiece’ in music and deifying these three as the geniuses of a great musical art.”12 Communication with audiences became less important than creating a “masterful” work. This way of thinking of essentially ignoring audience members has now become a tradition seeping into our culture today; a tradition that has created in listeners a reaction of despising the new out of fear of lack of understanding. Should classical music performers consequently choose to perform music that is largely deemed as “museum music” that audiences know and recognize instead of choosing music written during a contemporary time of exploration? 10. Richard Gray, “Audiences Hate Modern Classical Music Because Their Brains Cannot Cope,” The Telegraph (2010), accessed by March 21, 2017, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7279626/Audiences- hate-modern-classical-music-because-their-brains-cannot-cope.html>. 11. J. Peter Burkholder, The Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last Hundred Years (California: University of California Press, 1983), 115 12. Ibid., 117 3 To many, classical music has been defined as concerts featuring only old masterworks with composers of the past such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms with no room for anything new. The need lies therein to redefine classical music as a genre that goes beyond style or sound, beyond any repertoire, and to encompass a new identity entirely. The future of classical music depends on the contemporaneous working classical musician and composer to devote themselves to connecting with their audience. Together they must birth a new era of accessible music from around the world supported by a more diverse audience by including more relatable music and providing commentary on current events performed in novel venues. Classical music now must employ contemporary and eclectic influences from various genres, adding more aspects that are familiar to non-musically trained audiences, as well as exploiting more creative uses of innovations in technology. It is only a new approach and a new definition that will allow classical music to survive and thrive. 4 Chapter 2: Defining Classical Music Before examining the ways that a musician, composer, or musical director can help to reverse the negative aspects of today’s classical music world, it is important to know how classical music has been defined in the past and what defines this genre today. The term “classical music” currently embodies all art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western music including both religious and secular music from the 11th century onward and can be also referred to as a specific period from 1750 to 1820.

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