BY MIRANDA ILCHEF
It takes very little effort to find online opinion pieces bemoaning the apparent “death” of classical music. One need only type a few search words into google to be met with a barrage of such articles in popular news sources such as The Independent (“will nobody mourn the death”); The Telegraph (“left to wither and die”), and Slate (“dead”). This can be disheartening for those with a professional or personal interest in the classical music industry.
Though some may label me stubbornly optimistic, I refuse to believe these articles tell us the whole story.
A better way to describe the changes we are seeing in the industry may be ‘Classical music is evolving, as it has always done’; or ‘Appreciating classical music through the traditional concert format is perhaps losing popularity’ (although admittedly, these are less eye-catching than the simple ‘Classical music in America is dead’.) Rather than see this as a time of crisis for the industry, what if we were to see it instead as an era for potential growth and change?
Yes, orchestra subscriptions are on a downward trend, worldwide. And, yes, classical music concert attendance saw a 34 per cent decline in Australia between 2008-2012; and in 2014 “early warning signs” of the impending doom included a revenue loss of $5 million in the industry. More recently, the ABC reported that “no symphony orchestra in the world makes money”. But there are other factors to consider.
Firstly, the way in which the younger audience are exposed to classical and symphonic music is changing. Your average Australian teenager does not regularly purchase tickets to the symphony. However, as rates of video game usage climb, so too does interest and development in the field of game soundtrack composition. Many video game soundtracks such as God of War, SimCity, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl are highly developed pieces of music in their own right, with very clear roots in classical music. Our editor has also written on the topic, highlighting the references from Bach to Dvorak we can find hiding in the music of the most popular games.
From this has sprung the Video Games Live concert series by Tommy Tallorico, which has had strong attendance since its inception in 2005. Tallorico argues it is these new forms of music that are inspiring the kids to play instruments. As a violin teacher, I can attest to this. I have had students beg me to find arrangements of game or film music for them to learn; and once they’ve learnt the piece, their eyes are glowing with excitement. It’s a special sort of moment that makes teaching instrumental music a rewarding job.
We cannot overlook the impact of music streaming services such as Spotify, or even Apple Music, on spreading classical music to new ears. For the uninitiated, subscription models mean it is no longer such a risk to bid farewell to $20 for a CD of classical music. One playlist for studying contains the likes of Chopin, Liszt, and Glass in amongst Bob Marley arranged for cello; speaking perhaps to the willingness of the next generation to overlook the boundaries of genre.
Lastly, social media is giving some classical musicians rock-star status. Sheku Kanneh-Mason, whose performance at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Royal Wedding went viral (and who played the aforementioned arrangement of Bob Marley) has more than 160,000 followers on Facebook, some of whom may have otherwise had little other exposure to classical music. Rather than threaten classical music to the point of extinction, the modern world and all its innovations may indeed bring classical music to a wider audience than ever before.
Classical music may be facing an existential crisis as the world changes around us. But, with a multitude of creative brains in the industry, I am confident that classical music will rise from the ashes into new forms for a new world.
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