The Crisis of Classical Music 7

Part seven in a series of articles by Tobias Fischer

The Concert Hall is the place where music takes place, where the magic happens, where careers are made and broken. Or so it may seem. For the last few hundred years, performing live was the test each composer and musician had to endure, it was the artistic battleground and a field of honour. Even the arrival of Rock n Roll and Pop couldn’t shake this wisdom, neither could Shellac,Vinyl and CD and neither will the Internet. And yet, things have changed in a fundamental way – and the fact that Classical musicians are finding it hard to adapt to that is part of the problem.

So where does it all start? First of all, with a shift in public perception. Because, even though the record business hasn’t erradicated live music’s dominance, it has managed to captivate the audience’s and the media’s attention like hardly any other business. All that is good about the music industry is summed up by the label’s artists, all that is bad, by the huge conglomerates behind them.Essentially, what albums did was to disconnect the music from time and space – you could listen to it as often as you liked and wherever you liked (at least with the arrival of the Walkman). This already generated a much more “fixed” image of an artist and an “absoluteness” with regards to a performance. Records also created an entirely new form of devotion – away from a pure love for the artist towards an adoration of what he or she had created on one particular. The former notion of what an artist did – namely to function as a medium on stage, allowing the music to develop itself through her or him in a different way each night – got lost in a set of expectations: The album now manifested the artist’s vision and a concert served as an effort to reproduce this vision as closely as possible. The audience could and would compare the live performance with the studio version and judge it accordingly.

Of course, albums and concerts worked hand in hand and there is hardly an artist whose fame has survived until our present time, without any of his or her recordings being available. The stage was still were most musicians earned their money, but the contract with a big record company was the sign that things were moving up. Even today, with CD sales far below their peak in the 70s and 80s, this idea still holds true. It makes sense, too: Recording and playing live are simply two different things, which allow you to express yourself in diverse ways. It may have taken some time, but about every serious artist now accepts this wisdom.

The advent of the Internet has again brought new rules. And this has less to do with the possibility of detaching the music from a fixed medium (this has been the case for the larger part of music history). It has to do with the public’s view on an artist. Records were pretty one-dimensional affairs and that’s probably why they ignited listeners’ fantasies like hardly anything else. Some discs contained just a picture of the artists and a few liner notes and yet people would utterly fall in love with the person on the cover. They would spin a Vinyl record until it crackled like a fireplace, they would dream up a complete picture of the musician in their minds. The Internet is a far less fantastic place – it’s like someone surprise-visiting you at home. Stuff may be spread all around the floor, the dirty dishes may still be in the sink and possibly you’re still in your PJ’s at one o’clock. With the help of the Internet, people will be far more knowledgeable about their idols and, subsequently, they will demand a lot more information. They will want to get to know their heroes as human beings, not as stars or one-dimensional pinups or posterboys.

This is where most Classical musicians still fail. They seem to feel that it should be enough to record a CD once in a while, have a homepage with some biographical background infos and then simply tour the world and let the music speak for itself. It is not enough – unless you’re prepared for failure. Where there is talent, there has always been adoration, in fact you can not separate adoration from culture. Letting those interested get to you know you as a person, feeding them with news and your views on what you play and why you decided to play or, if you like to keep things open, with a request to go out and explore on your own is part of your job as a musician. It can be fun, too, by the way.
More importantly, the Internet has enabled listeners and artists to communicate much more directly than ever before on a far wider scale. Naturally, you can not get closer to a fan than meeting her or him personally after a performance, but you can also talk to those who couldn’t be there by mail, Skype or chat. Most Classical Musicians either don’t know about these options or regard them as annoying or useless. Quite clearly, you can not talk and listen to what everybody has to say. But not listening to what people feel about your playing at all is almost like pretending there’s nothing more to learn.

So, the problem lies in static webpages, which leave listeners wanting more and not getting it and a lack of communication between musicians and their fans. Underlying this all is the old ideal of stardom and the “mysterious” artist. Instead, what is needed is a close connection between all three elements: Record an album, if you have something to say. Present your music, your thoughts and your personality on a dynamic webpage which allows for listeners feedback. And go out there and keep playing concerts like there was no tomorrow.

by Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Skype (Free Internet Telephony and chat)