Today’s post was going to be about inspirational people encounters. But much of my year was about encountering profound changes in our society and culture.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Reflecting the fate of the majority of my colleagues in North America over the past four years, the end of 2011 found me no longer a staff music critic operating comfortably within the protective confines of a large daily newspaper.
Rather than toss me out into the street in August, the Star made me a business reporter. I quickly realised I wouldn’t be able to sustain a daily connection with the music world around a full-time job in a different field.
Throwing financial caution to the easterly wind, I decided to throw my lot in with the music crowd. Since leaving the Star on Dec. 23, I’ve been waking up tangled in sheets elation, draped in a blanket of dread.
As long as the elation — the same I felt at sunrise for six years as music critic — lasts, so will I.
I tried not to waste my four months in business.
Having no background or interest in stocks, bonds, oil, currency and economic prognoses, I sought out the frontiers where society, invention and the digital world meet, to try and figure out where we are, and where we are going.
It was fascinating to check out the latest social media, meeting the extravagantly playful and hardworking 20- and 30-somethings behind the city’s bustling tech startup community and trying to gauge where and how opinion directs itself across populations.
It’s a lot like what I imagine the Wild West must have felt like. In this strange, brave universe, fortunes are raised and spent overnight, old rules are flaunted, and people spend their days in a swirl of manic activity, often without a clue as to its ultimate purpose.
We all know that the days are numbered for traditional book and record stores. But the underlying change in attitudes and, more importantly, personal habits, is far wider and deeper.
The eccentric and brilliant young American organist Cameron Carpenter and I sit down whenever our paths cross, so I can hear about his latest Technicolor imaginings. This summer, we caught up at Idea City.
During our chat, Carpenter waved over a fellow guest, a well-known American physicist, who said flatly that we are living in the middle of the most profound shift in the way we live and work and think and interact since Gutenberg invented the printing press.
The social internet has a big part to play here.
No matter what your personal relationship with social networks is, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a handful of mega-blogs have, for anyone born after 1970, replaced the newspaper, the magazine and, within a couple more years, will kill network television.
Writers, editors and producers are being eclipsed as arbiters of what is to be considered important, what is trendy, what is good and what is bad.
That role is swiftly being taken over by the crowd, as it shifts its gaze to the next batch of Facebook Likes, retweets and viral videos. Trending is now measured in minutes, not seasons.
The proprietary is being supplanted by the shared.
By extension, the world of art music, so bound by a sense of tradition in repertoire, programming and the best way to make the live experience work, really is getting left behind.
So, is a musician supposed to be working social media contacts across a multitude of platforms every day instead of practising? That would be silly.
Can a music label allow anyone to freely stream its content? That’s financial suicide.
Can a symphony orchestra guarantee musicians’ contracts and concert hall space by corraling an audience at the last minute through Facebook? That’s madness.
Does a music fan get their concert tips from tweets that say, “OMG, playing #Beethoven tonight. I’m so excited. C u at 8!”? That stretches credulity.
Yet, each of these four things is happening in the pop sphere every day, around the world, and will need to happen in the world of art music. The alternative is to be completely pushed off the cultural radar within the next generation.
At the same time, the stalwart fans and supporters — subscribers, donors, volunteers — who still read newspapers and listen to radio and wonder where all the critics have gone also need to be kept happy.
The two groups are like two Venn diagrams that barely touch, right now. By the time I’m ready to step across the retirement home threshold, the two circles will have become one.
No one who loves music, in whatever genre, needs to be told that their favourite artform will survive. Of course it will. But it needs to do more — it needs to thrive in a different world.
Any bright ideas?
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Speaking of personal encounters. Here’s a depiction of my personal encounter with my self in 2011, as told in opera. All you have to do is substitute Music for Woman, and it’s all there.
This scene comes courtesy of Act 2 of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, David Hockney’s fabulous Glyndebourne production (from 2010, I blush to admit) and one of my favourite young tenors, Topi Lehtipuu as Tom Rakewell. He’s joined by Matthew Rose, as Nick Shadow.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
