AGEING AUDIENCES FOR
CONCERT MUSIC.
It is now widely believed
that audiences for serious concerts
are in decline. Several concert-giving
bodies are anxious that their patrons
are no longer as numerous as once they
were. Is this really true?
It could be worth pondering
for a moment on the very nature of what
we regard as "serious" music.
Without going back into much earlier
social history it is at least worth
considering how so-called "serious"
music came to have its place in the
world. At one time it would appear that
only the most privileged and wealthy
classes either had the time and leisure
to spend on the pursuit of this kind
of music, and the money to pay for musicians
to entertain them: all those princely
courts, ducal palaces, and similar places.
Musicians, in the main, were merely
servants in the same way that a footman,
coachman, cook, or housemaid would be;
it seems that few musicians were truly
appreciated for their unique gifts as
performers or composers. However, with
the rise of aspects of republicanism
(for the want of a far more precise
expression) – the age of revolution,
Napoleon, Beethoven and others – music-making
other than the most popular tavern music
on the one hand and the church on the
other, began in some way to make itself
felt, so that in addition to the theatre
(opera, which had always had a fairly
popular appeal in some way) public concerts
arose and seem to have appealed to a
wider populace rather than the exclusively
privileged few. When such truly "public"
concerts came into their own might be
difficult to say. However, in the late
18th century and certainly
by the 19th century things
were well established in most civilised
parts of western society, most especially
in Germany where the symphony orchestra
as we now know it really got going .
So now we have enjoyed concert-music
of all kinds for around two hundred
years at least. This does not only mean
the large public orchestral or choral
concert, but that kind of music which
was once – indeed by its very name –
primarily intended only for a small
"chamber" or salon. Chamber
music is now rarely a truly private
affair, it is more frequently a public
concert in the real sense of the word.
This situation – the public concert,
no matter whether it be a large symphony
orchestra, a choral concert, a chamber
music recital, or any other kind of
performing group – flourished enormously.
So why have there now
appeared signs of decay? The all-too-simple
answer is that social conditions have
inevitably changed.
To list such changes
would be tedious, because they are all-too-well-known:
the coming of radio eighty years ago
or even more,
The improvements to
recording technology from the days of
wind-up gramophones which would only
play for about four minutes on one side;
scratchy sounds giving little impression
of the real, live sound; the arrival
of long-playing records in the early
1950’s; the coming of CDs, and not least
that scourge of modern living, the television
set, to say nothing of all of the very,
very latest modern technology that permits
the "downloading" of musical
performance into one’s own lap as it
were.
So where does the live
concert now stand? Are audiences only
made up of a very ageing community?
I do not believe this to be the case.
Audiences for serious musical pursuits
were always – primarily – of the older
generation. This is the generation that
begins to have the leisure and the money
to spend on it. It is also true, of
course, that the younger generation
are just as enthusiastic in their own
way: the youth orchestra movement demonstrates
that, but they do not necessarily want
to be associated with an older generation;
by and large the younger generation
prefers to exhibit its interest in serious
music in its own way.
There are many other
reasons for the apparent change in concert-going
habits, but they are far too complex
to try to explain exhaustively in such
a short commentary as this. The cost
of paying musicians - no longer in the
mere servant class of Mozart or Beethoven’s
day. Today’s professional performers
are indeed of the professional classes.
The overall sophistication of concert
organisation is very expensive indeed.
Added to these factors are others of
a more disturbing kind: the growing
night-time violence of big centres of
population, which inhibits many older
persons from going out – why should
they when they can listen to music far
more safely in their own homes? The
multifarious distractions nowadays which
were not available eighty years ago
or more.
However, there is something
unique about being present at a live
performance, and all concert-goers know
this. It is perhaps reassuring to realise
that it is not just in Britain where
this applies; concert halls in Germany
- where it all really began - and in
the USA and other places all exhibit
the same social change. But all is far
from being lost: For the most part serious
concert audiences were always primarily
made up of grey-heads. The older people
of fifty years ago are long since dead
and gone, but they are replaced by a
present-day older generation who, thirty
years ago were themselves younger or
at least middle-aged people who at that
time were too busy making their way
in the world to have the kind of leisure
they now enjoy; so each succeeding generation
seems, in its turn, to become more refined
and appreciative of serious music as
its experience of everything progresses.
The youth orchestra
players of today, who will probably
abandon music for a several years when
they have to begin to earn a living
will probably turn to music again once
their own families have matured. They
will provide the next generation of
appreciative grey-heads. Audiences in
most centres of orchestral music are
indeed perhaps not quite what they were
when other distractions did not exist,
but they have by no means disappeared
and are not likely to do so.
Arthur Butterworth
March 2006
