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Comment by djtango | Hacker News Reader

This is a huge loss - outside of a handful of echo chambers classical music is kind of dying. Fewer and fewer young people care about it, I am grateful to TwoSet for providing a relatable way for the next generation of listeners to ramp into classical music.

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Classical music needs to drop all pretensions. Silly rules about conductors walking on and off stage, no clapping between movements (or sections or whatever), dress codes, etc... I'm a music lover and I go see a classical concert once every few years and it's easily the least fun concert experience (apart from the music). Also, god forbid they have someone come out and talk for 2 minutes and tell the context of the piece, why it might have been different or interesting at the time it was written, what to look for, etc... Some of these composers were literally rock stars of their time, let the audience know about that. It's fun! But no, you should just know all that. The old rich white people that run it would rather cling to the past and watch it continue to slowly die than modernize.

I actually like those a lot. It's one of the few places where people are not shouting, there's no bright lights or loud background music. People don't use cellphones much. I assume a certain (minority) of the population likes those things. There sure are enough loud and flashy things for people to choose from.

In the Mozart biography that I'm reading, it talks about how the opera during his time was much more social: people openly chatted, played cards, and were busy catching eyes during the show. It was a seen or be seen type of social affair, or something to do to pass the time. It was the job of the composer to draw attention from that other stuff to the show and singers.

All this puffed up pomposity around opera or classical we currently deal with is much different than in the "hey-days".

Well really it's about respecting the performers and your fellow attendees. I once saw Mitsuko Uchida storm off the stage in Southbank because there was an alarm outside going off non stop lol.

If you went to a nice restaurant and I came over and started talking loudly with spit flying into your dish or took some food from your plate it would ruin your enjoyment. When we're trying to hear the subtleties of interpretation from the performers, the faintest sound detracts from that.

I think most people can accept that talking in a cinema or using your phone is pretty anti social so I don't know why classical music gets such a bad rap for being pretentious when it has a conduct. The only thing that drives me crazy is people always seem to cough when the music slows down and gets quiet. Please do the exact opposite. Don't spoil those tranquil serene moments with your coughing. Cough when the percussion and the tubas are storming and no one will hear.

That said, I'm all for bawdy music experiences - I once saw a tiny production of Le Docteur Miracle in a bar in London which was extremely fun (by Popup Opera UK) and if you go to Sarastro's by Covent Garden you'll get some fun rowdy opera hits sung at you while you dine. Plenty of outdoor picnic concerts are similarly laid back

The latter part of what you suggested - the pre-concert talk - is a very common thing to have now, and often it's a 30-minute thing. Program notes are also getting better and better about this. People will also often talk about the context when they give recitals.

As to clapping: As late as the late 1800s, it was okay to clap during the loud parts of the song. Baroque music also often has long cadenzas that end in a big trill, which was a signal for the crowd to go wild. I agree about getting less strict about this, and historically things were less strict. At the same time, I recently saw a performance of Tchaikovsky 6 where the audience started clapping between the last two movements (a triumphal march followed by a tragic final movement), and a large part of the energy of the piece was lost from the audience doing this. I think this rule mostly comes from the audience not understanding when not to clap.

Also, lots of classical music is done in environments that aren't concert halls and these are much looser about the etiquette. A concert hall is a nice place to go, and many people go on dates at concert halls, and a lot of the vibe for the audience comes from the fact that people dress up for the occasion.

One thing that sort of shocks me about music in general is that fewer and fewer people are actively engaging with music. While more and more people start to pick up instruments, a smaller and smaller fraction of the population sticks with them (classical or otherwise), and even things like actively listening to a recording or going to a concert (again, classical or otherwise) are declining as hobbies. Music for many people is something that happens increasingly in the background of other activities as a "mood enhancer" rather than as a focus itself.

I’m in a jazz band of committed amateurs and most of the musicians are under 30. And this music is not easy to get good at.

The modern era seems to have taken the previous distribution of engagement and hollowed out the middle. People now either don’t care much, or they care a LOT. Applies to music, art, cooking, and so many hobbies.

The middle in music (and most arts) is increasingly worthless, especially as displayed in public. Has been for decades, but we're finally past "generations are shifting" and into "generations have shifted".

Nobody needs a slightly-talented pianist for family sing-alongs (or: anyone who can sing halfway on-key, for that matter, because who's singing around other people in a typical house unless it's to Disney songs on the TV?) around Christmastime or that old guy who knows some folk & sing-along pop songs tolerably well to bring his guitar to the pub or whatever. We have Spotify. Fuck, the church bells anywhere that doesn't already have a set from 50+ years ago are just speakers playing recordings now.

The only remaining value unless you are very good and also put in a lot of time to sell, is personal, and that's not enough for a lot of folks who, in decades and centuries past, would have been hobbyist musicians. The social value started declining in the early 20th century and took a nose-dive in the last half of it. The generations who even remember their grandparents clinging to those habits, and their parents half-assedly attempting to keep it up out of nostalgia but then not really doing it because nobody wanted that anymore and forgetting how to play, are now old.

That's where the middle went.

I feel like hollowing out the middle is another way of saying something had fallen out of the mainstream/popularity. So, I certainly agree.

Yeah, I sing in a chorus, and the rough composition is:

* 10% professional or aspiring professional singers (who are young)

* 20% music educators in their 20's and 30's

* 30% people in their 20's and 30's who are very musically-inclined and studied music a lot as children

* 40% older people who sing as more of a hobby

When I mostly played chamber music, the crowd was also very young and enthusiastic. 21st century composers actually seem to have a better audience than 20th century composers did.

Music in general seems to be fragmenting into many subcultures of very interested people, with the exception of pop music and ironically parts of the classical/opera crowd that see it as a status symbol.

I don't know if the middle is really hollowed out... I for one am in the middle, but I say I don't care much because people who care a lot get overwhelming quickly.

Indeed. Especially when their self-image is being someone who cares a lot about that specific thing. If one-upping behavior starts it rarely stops.

What people want out of a concert is also changing.

There's a YouTube channel, "Wings of Pegasus" that does a lot of breakdowns of recordings, isolating voices and instruments and analyzing what kind of processing has been done on them.

They had a video a few months ago [1] looking at two performances from the 2024 Glastonbury Festival. One from an '80s artist (Cyndi Lauper) and one from a current artist (Dua Lipa).

Lauper's live performance was the kind you'd expect from an '80s act. What the audience heard was what she was singing live and what the musicians on stage were playing.

During Lipa's performance most of the time what they audience was hearing was Lipa's vocals from the studio recording. She was singing live but most of the time they had her microphone turned way down in the mix. They'd only turn it up and the recording down for a few passages. Same with the musicians. There was a drummer on stage but mostly to accompany the studio recording.

The thing is Lipa's fans are OK with that. They aren't there to hear what she sounds like live. The extras they get at a live show over just listening to the recording are the experience of the crowd and watching the dancing and light show.

Contrast to the '80s and '90s where one of the points of going to a concert was that the bands tried different things with their songs. They didn't just play note for note and beat for beat the studio version. Live versions might have more solos, or a different solo, or different instrumentation, or variations on the lyrics (or even new verses). The live performances were different enough that people would buy live albums even though they had every song from the live album on studio albums they already owned.

It's an interesting change, and I'm not sure why it happened. I speculate that it may be due to the increased sophistication of the processing that can be done in a studio. If every tiny imperfection gets processed away in the studio so that all people are hearing is 100% on pitch with 100% perfect timing maybe the imperfections of a true live performance would sound bad to them?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHJ4pL7U0Po

I will offer you another thought along that last paragraph: Pitch correction and post-processing is a productivity aid for musicians, so Dua Lipa doesn't actually need to ever be able to give a good performance of one of her songs for the recording to come out perfect. Most artists are great singers/players, but it's a waste for them to spend time practicing songs when they just need to be good enough to correct. Cyndi Lauper had to be able to sing her songs at record quality, but Dua Lipa never did, so the quality gap between a live performance and the (perfect) recording will be a lot bigger naturally for the more modern artist.

Also, the dancing that happens at modern pop concerts is so difficult and lively that nobody would be able to sing well, much less at full power, while doing it.

As a fan I’m driven to say Dua’s been credited with “Most Improved Artist” having taken to heart the infamous criticism of her BRIT Awards performance of “New Rules”: “I love her lack of energy, go girl give us nothing!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHtnxluMXMw

(Not a post I’d ever expected to make on HNs)

Don't get me wrong - every pop artist is an incredibly good musician and most of them are capable of putting on a Cyndi Lauper level of vocal performance. My comment was mostly about how many reps they need to put in before going into the studio to record.

Here's one you could add to your list: https://www.youtube.com/@AnnaLapwoodOrgan

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