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rights other a All infringement. makes resale. for user a copyright not If for are liable material. be Copies may 94305-6010 user copyrighted prohibited. CA of is that use, New FIRlnGLlne This Transcripts 29205 HOST GUESTS FIRING Stanford, SUBJECT fair distribution of is reproductions York 8031799-3449 : a and further transcript LINE excess University, : other videocassettes : City in or and is , March "IS WILLIAM Stanford produced material. ROSALYN of reprints purposes a re GOOD this FIRING available for photocopies of 31, of Archives, and 1999, additional MUSIC through copies) re-use and Copyright F. LINE TURECK making directed BUCKLEY, any and Producers the Library program purposes; GOING telecast 1999 before handwritten by Inc and governs o FIRING WARREN rporated Institution owner SCHUYLER #2833/1200, UNDER?" JR. later educational Code) (including fo LINE and Hoover r on Television, U.S. copyright public University. 17, STEIBEL. the Jr. Director, taped CHAPIN reproduction 2700 (Title from television or Cypress Stanford contact at non-commercial, States HBO Street, permission photocopy Leland stations United private, a Columbia, Studios the for the obtain information, of is uses of to . SC later laws further in or material Trustees advised For of for, this are of copyright ©Board reserved. Users Use The request © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: Every few years Firing Line touches down on the question, Is classical music dying? We are lucky enough this time around to have got in to discuss the question two persons who have spoken to us before on the subject. One is perhaps the most distinguished pianist alive, the second, the senior man of music in New York City. Rosalyn Tureck recently stopped them dead with her recording for Deutsche Grammophon of the Goldberg Variations, of which she is a celebrated interpreter. Dr. Tureck was born in Chicago, was a child prodigy, graduated from the Juilliard School and went into the world as a great virtuoso. After the war she concentrated on playing the work of J.S. Bach and did so for many years, only recently going back to romantic work from time to time. Mostly she gives her time to scholarly work in Oxford: definitive editions of the Goldberg, the chromatic fantasy and other works. We will close the program at the end of the hour with two minutes ofTureck playing two variations from the Goldberg done for us years ago and played also at the White House on the 30Qth anniversary of Bach's birth. Schuyler Chapin is a New Yorker, an honorary graduate of Millbrook School, whose extensive career in the world of music led to his appointment as general manager of Metropolitan Opera Company. After that he became the dean of the School of Arts at Columbia University. Now, indefatigably, he serves as commissioner of cultural affairs for.the Giuliani Administration here in New York City. Let me begin by asking Dr. Tureck: Glenn Gould prophesied 20 years ago that in the future live music from the stage would end. Are there reasons for thinking this is true? MS. TURECK: There could be one reason in that we are living more and more in an electronic age. But I do think that the human communication that occurs when you play live concerts is something that can never be fully replaced. And although with CD-ROM, which interests me very much--! think it is definitely a future way of listening to music and learning about music--! don't think that the human being, the direct experience of the human being communicating music is going to be lost. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, of course, to argue that listening to it personally is preferable to listening to it on CD doesn't tell you that people are going to do the logical thing. By which I mean that I don't think Mr. Chapin is going to argue that you're better off listening to the music electronically than in person, but that doesn't belie the question that that is what more and more people are doing. MS. TURECK: It's a different experience, and the whole experience of reception is different, and I think the whole function is different, because, for instance, with CD ROM, you have the music score, you have some text about the music, you can follow each measure, you can jump from one place to another. You can study very carefully both with your ears and your brain, and with your eyes, the music text, the score, certain musicological ideas about it, as well as the actual sound of a particular performer. This is quite an experience, a total experience. In the concert hall I think also one has a tremendous total experience, but it's a different kind of experience and has a different function. © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. MR. CHAPIN: If I may- MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. CHAPIN: -add to that. I think Dr. Tureck essentially is correct, but I would put it a slightly different way. The fact is that when you are listening to a record, a CD or whatever, you are sort of sitting back and the music sort of comes to you. When you're at a live performance, you are moving forward to join with the performer. There is a human contact between the stage and the audience. And that quality will never disappear. There is nothing to substitute for live performance. All of the mechanical wonders and the extraordinary things that are done technically do serve, as Dr. Tureck has indicated, as all kinds of things-as a pleasure, as a learning process, as all of that. But nothing replaces the human contact, because you in the audience move to join with the performer on the stage, and that quality is what makes live performance unique- MR. BUCKLEY: But, you know, that's- MR. CHAPIN: --and it isn't going to go away. MR. BUCKLEY: But that's a little like saying nothing replaces Plato more than reading Plato. Now I would agree. On the other hand, we are talking about the phenomenon of fewer and fewer people reading Plato. We're not talking about the phenomenon of a decreased share of music that is being sold going to classical music. It was 3.7 percent, as low as that in 1996; the next year down to 3.4 percent. So the graphs are all pretty discouraging, and that's what I wanted to draw your attention to. MR. CHAPIN: Yes, the graphs could be discouraging if you just took them literally. But you have to remember that in the course of the last 20 years, because of technical explosions and technical perfections, the audience has expanded. If you are talking about 3.2 percent of an audience back in 1920, let's say, then you would really have a cause to worry. But you are talking about 3.2 percent of an audience in 1999, which has available to it the marvels of mechanics which have helped people to come to music in the first place. So I don't think the statistic can be looked at quite as formidably as you are suggesting. MS. TURECK: May I interject something here? MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, sure. MS. TURECK: I think the statistic in itself is interesting, but it's a bald statistic and I would agree with Schuyler and what he is saying, because one must study all the relative inferences at the same time. When I was a child and radio was taking over the music world, I remember my teacher, Olga Samaroff, who was still then quite an active pianist, and all the active famous people in the performing world were frightened to death. They thought that their careers would be finished because radio was becoming popular and catching on, thousands and thousands all over the world were picking up radios and listening to performances on the radio. They thought never again would they have the great personal careers and the travel all through the world. Quite the contrary occurred, and I remember her telling me that. A complete reversal of what 2 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. their fears had been and their careers flowered and many more people came to concerts as a result of having listened to them on the radio. MR. CHAPIN: Yes, I think that's exactly- MS. TURECK: And I think that's what's happening with recordings. MR. CHAPIN: It's what's happening with recordings, and I think you have to look at it in that way, because what Dr. Tureck has spoken about is totally true. We had the radio, which became a great promoter of music. In fact, the radio originally was supposed to be a music box in the home. MS. TURECK: Yes. MR. CHAPIN: We keep forgetting about that historically. Then you had the motion pictures and you had sound movies, and of course sound movies were going to take people out of the theater. MS. TURECK: Yes. MR. CHAPIN: They weren't going to be coming back to the theater. In point of fact, the theater is more vigorous in America now than it's ever been. Ever. And music, I believe, is in exactly that same position. The diminution has to do with size of audience; the size of audience has grown in such a way that we're talking about something that from the standpoint of people is tremendously important. I don't buy the statistic. MR. BUCKLEY: Well now, I have heard you complain that New York City schools simply stopped exposing students to music for 25 years.