Jon Johanning wrote:

>I agree with Len's general point that separating out "mid-brow,"
>"hyper-modern," and "beginners'" concert series would be a very bad
>idea; I think the practice of mixed programming is generally the best.

To respond:  There is nothing middlebrow about the core concert series -
there is still a great deal of art to be made in performing the works which
have gained broad acceptance as the core of classical music.  That they
have such acceptance is not relevant to their stature as works - it is
merely a confluence of their style and our times.

The reason for the separation is simply put a calculation.

Consider a 100 minute concert.  Let us say I program 15 minutes of
avant-garde music.  Now some people who want to hear it - out of curiousity
or out of admiration for it will come, but not all, they will often dread
the idea of another Brahms 3rd which it is attached to.  And one will loose
those people who do not want to hear it at all.

Play half a concert - and one is likely to loose even more people, and have
the hall half empty, and one is likely to pick up only a few more people
interested in the avant-garde.

My contention is that the best way to gather an audience is to make sure
that *everyone* who is a fan of a particular type of music will clear their
schedule to be there.  That the concert is a compelling event, rather than
a few crackers thrown to them.

Conversely, it is not the luxury of an arts organisation to hit people over
the head with what the "ought" to like.  More over it is bad art.  While
people should expand their artistic taste, it is up to each person to
decide *what* new vistas they should be exploring, and *when* they should
do so.  This is the reality of the digital age.  Imagine someone took over
buying your CDs for you, and bought about 15% in areas which they thought
you should like - spending your money on them.  Suppose further you
disagreed violently with this person's ideas about what is important, as
opinionated, artistically sensitive people can, and perhaps even *should*
do.  Would you continue to have them buy your CDs?

Now let us imagine a situation where you have a CD buyer - he groups
together CDs of similar types, clearly describes to you what they are about
and how they are related, and gives you the option of buying one or more
packages of CDs.  He meticulously sifts through the recordings to make sure
that each package is the best of its type, he works hard to listen to you
and other listeners to make it so that almost every work in every package
will be of interest to people whose taste it matches.  Every cent you sepnd
on CDs will benefit from a knowledgeable guide, and you will, instead of
loosing 15% of your CD budget on someone elses tastes, be sure that your
dollars are more effectively spent.

Now extend this to concerts - would you rather go to a concert where the
work you came to hear is a short sop thrown at the front of a work that you
are not enthusiastic about, often under rehearsed, and often played
unidiomatically by musicians thinking about other things? Would you rather
have to go to five concerts separated randomly through the year for a few
works? Or would you rather show up to one concert where the works are the
focus, where the audience is there for the same reason you are, and the
orchestra has done nothing but eat and breath the idiom.

Concert going is a social activity as well.  I think it is more conducive
to artistic discourse to bring together people who are enthusiastic about
a set of works, and who know the rest of the audience is as well, than to
merely throw people together.  How many times each of us have gone to a
concert, and wanted to discuss, and by discussing live through the work
again, savor it in its details.  The more knowledgeable and enthusaistic
the audience - the more likely this is to happen.

Stirling S Newberry
[log in to unmask]