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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

"Classical" orchestral music is in a death spiral. And I'm not sure how it can be avoided except through government endowments. Most orchestral nonprofits live and die on donations. The donors are moneyed and old. And they want to hear Beethoven. The next generation of potential patrons are not so young and not moneyed. And have a different taste in music.

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A counterpoint. You're describing the American situation. Most (central?) European orchestras are at least partially publicly funded and therefore relatively stable. As they do not rely solely on donation (by old farts as you imply), they are able to experiment far more and also provide a stage for new composers, new works. Same for opera houses. As they are modernizing the interpretations of symphonies and especially the screenplay in operas, they become politically and socially relevant again. There is little worse than enduring a ballet in the style of the 19th century, but watching a modern piece can be a really great experience.

So government endowments enable orchestras to experiment and hence stay relevant. Without those your analysis is spot on.

Each to their own. I find it depressing to watch yet another clueless director desperately trying to make his reputation as a 'fresh talent in opera' with a stage littered with the paraphernalia of modern life and a cast dressed in track and business suits. We can look forward to space suits I suppose or maybe no clothes at all. Are we too dumb to look beyond our own era?

Here is this seasons concert line up for the 2 operas[1] (Garnier and Bastille) in Paris:

Rachmaninov, Schubert, Schonberg, Brahms, Beethoven (x6!), Mahler, Herrman, Barber, Mozart, Rota, Dvorak, Lekeu, Chausson, DeBussy

I'm not familiar with some of the names. I think Rota is a modern composer. But most of those names are composers who have been buried.

[1] http://www.operadeparis.fr/en

Barber, Copland, Rota and Herrman are more modern than the others, but still buried.

The Beethoven situation is a bit of an exception as they're doing a series with all 9 symphonies in a row. And I see a few more composers in http://www.operadeparis.fr/en/saison-2014-2015/concert--reci...

* Barber (1910-1981)

* Beethoven (1770-1827)

* Brahms (1833-1897)

* Chausson (1855-1899)

* Copland (1900-1990)

* Dvořák (1841-1904)

* Herrman (1911-1975)

* Lekeu (1870-1894)

* Mahler (1860-1911)

* Mozart (1756-1791)

* Praetorius (1571-1621)

* Prokofiev (1891-1953)

* Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

* Ravel (1875-1937)

* Rota (1911-1979)

* Schubert (1797-1828)

* Schönberg (1875-1951)

* Spohr (1784-1859)

* Strauss (1864-1949)

* Suk (1874-1935)

* Susato (1500-1561)

* Tarrega (1852-1909)

* Verdi (1813-1901)

If what you want is state-funded or charitably-funded institutions commissioning and performing new art music without reference to audience tastes, well, that's already been tried: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmst%C3%A4dter_Ferienkurse and so on. The results are generally considered to have been mostly not a success, both in terms of attracting an audience and of the quality of the music itself. The author of the Beethoven article happens to have written a book http://www.amazon.com/The-Rest-Noise-Listening-Twentieth/dp/... which covers this among other things.

Well, death spiral is harsh. Sure orchestras are closing up shop. But as described, they were being propped up unnaturally. They could play something else! If nobody goes to the classical music shows, then they're putting on the wrong kind of shows.

I'm glad to see musicians continue to be employed because it makes the world a better place. But the 'classical music' cult was weird. It's like the State Fair tap-dancing talent competition. Why is it there? Because they've always done it. Not really a spectator sport, but folks spend 10000 hour getting good at it anyway. I'm not going to cry over the 'death spiral' of tap-dancing either.

So, basically, classical music or tap dancing it's all the same to you. I get it.

Oh don't be such a pedant. Its a metaphor or whatever - only the cult of classical music appreciates it, and they're not enough to keep expensive orchestras afloat. Like other obscure and nearly extinct art forms.

I've been attending orchestral concerts in the US for three decades now, and the entire time people have said that Beethoven et al were going to die out with the new generation.

All that will happen is people will no longer be able to make a living being a musician in a big name orchestra. Classical music will go on, musicians who love playing will keep playing, and audiences will keep listening. The only thing missing will be the money.

Orchestras are pretty expensive.

They used to be a lot smaller and cheaper - they have become massive because they need to be able to fill enormous halls. If the money goes then we will lose the huge performances, but live classical music won’t die.

Many movie & TV composers already use virtual instruments for years - it's cost efficient and flexible.

The string quartet is the defining example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease .

Completely wrong. Streaming music services have added a convenience factor to pop music enjoyment, but they've made exploring the complete repertoire orders of magnitude easier and more rewarding. I've listened to music in the last few years that would have cost me tens of thousands of dollars to listen to even a half decade ago (music pirating outlets were miles away from what Spotify/Rdio can do).

I believe that in a world where the 3 minute radio-friendly song is an artifact of a bygone era and the constraints of physical media are gone, there will be a major resurgence of interest in epic, complex works of music. Just as Netflix has made psychologically complex, extremely long TV series much more central to our culture, I think people will start to gravitate to headier music that was constrained by yesterday's media.

People do seem to still enjoy listening to Hans Zimmer style BWAAAAAAAAH stuff so maybe its not totally in decline.

For that reason, I find that the Romantic composers (Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, et. al.) are a great segway, since their compositions are highly dynamic, powerful, and emotional.

Time by Hans Zimmer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxabLA7UQ9k

Powerful stuff. Maybe Beethoven would've been a movie composer if he was alive in the modern era.

Given that symphonies were something of mass entertainment at the time Beethoven was a movie composer, just without the moving pictures.

Given that most classical composers also wrote operas, they pretty much were movie composers.

People have been saying that for hundreds of years. But it hasn't happened yet. Repeating the same trope isn't helpful or informative.

See, for example, http://properdiscord.com/2014/07/22/scott-timberg-ive-got-a-...

There are many other similar posts, all full of facts, on this blog. Alex Ross himself has written on the subject.

Let me repeat that again. Classical orchestral music is in a death spiral. The audience is getting older and their tastes haven't changed. Yes you can listen to the same 9 Beethoven symphonies on Spotify by the Hungarian symphony orchestra in 1989. No one disputes that

Now, name a modern, orchestra composer who's work you've listened to (excluding motion picture soundtracks)?

Now, imagine if rock music stopped at Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Ticket sales don't lie. Symphonies are shutting down all over the country.

I'll bite. Thomas Ades is making astounding music today. So is John Luther Adams, and Nico Muhly. I've enjoyed works by Mason Bates, Andrew Leshnoff, Yehudi Wyner, and others. Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean that they don't exist.

Some symphonies are shutting down, but the Chicago Symphony just announced increases in ticket sales and attendance. Excitement over my local orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, is increased in recent years since they hired a new music director and commissioned a Pulitzer-prize winning piece by John Luther Adams.

I heard Mason Bates for the first time this year with the Pittsburgh Symphony, where he is the Composer of the Year. He performed "Rusty Air in Carolina." When I read about the piece before the concert I was skeptical, as combining electronic instruments with an orchestra is not something I'm generally fond of (disclaimer: I used to make electronic music, albeit poorly). However, I ended up mesmerized and loved it!

For me, I think my concern about modern composers is that I associate them with highly dissonant or atonal music... I realize those are problematic descriptions, but I don't know the right terminology. Now, I do like atonal music to some degree -- I play the shakuhachi; perhaps honkyoku could be lumped into "atonal" somehow -- but encountering it at a concert where it wasn't the main draw for me is not always the most exciting experience, especially if I'm bringing someone who isn't into classical music and now they have to hear something that sounds like violins dying for 20 minutes (disclaimer two: I love Takemitsu's November Steps, which has violins that sound like they're dying).

I'm not saying that older music is objectively better or something like that, but I think it's not hard to argue that for many people it's a bit more approachable. As such, I think that artists who can write works that span between the old and new, such as in the case of Mason Bates' piece, will be critical in bringing in new audience members.

> Now, name a modern, orchestra composer who's work you've listened to (excluding motion picture soundtracks)?

Alan Hovhaness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG_gAMwGG-Q

Sadly, RIP. But one of my favorites!!!

Phillip Glass

Definitely. I was also going to add Steve Reich, although his music is mostly not what you'd call "orchestral". But you could add Jonny Greenwood, Krystof Penderecki, George Benjamin, and more, and more. It's such a tragedy to see classical music as being "Beethoven or film scores". There are great modern recordings of Beethoven by good orchestras, too, and I'm as excited to hear a fresh new recording of Beethoven as I was when I discovered that Augustin Hadelich had recorded the Ades violin concerto (there are now three recordings of this marvelous work).

>excluding motion picture soundtracks

Why are we excluding motion picture soundtracks?

While I can name several modern classical composers whom I interested in* I think your point still stands and most people wouldn't be able to name an active composer after Beethoven, maybe Brahms. I have brief memories of an interview with Milton Babbitt about how classical music was no doubt on the way out due to advent of popular music, and i think he was right, these days classical music is only relevant in most peoples lives when mentioning an anecdote about how making their newborn listen to Mozart might increase their IQ.

Whenever I would go to a chamber music event or an orchestral performance there will generally be two sets of people there - the old school bougie folk and a handful of conservatory students - the casual audience member is far and few between. Orchestras will have a better chance getting an audience by performing pops or some program full of video game music.

Still, going to the symphony hall, being part of that scene, this might retain it's importance for the upper class / professionals, and this alone could be enough to continue to support more than a handful of orchestras around the United States.

* And the only reason I can is because I studied composition and theory at University.

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