Don Satz:

>It's been my experience that the audience for concerts is not the same
>as for record buying.  In general, I think that record buyers are more
>serious about their music; so many concert goers, even those holding
>a season's ticket, are just as interested in getting out, socializing,
>and making a fine evening of it as in actually listening to music.

I don't have any hard scientific evidence, and it's very difficult to
generalize.  After all, you might just as well argue that record buyers
are less serious about their music than concert goers.  Buying records is
much easier than going to concerts - you don't even have to leave home - as
well as much cheaper in terms of the listening time you can get from each
purchase.  You don't have to venture out on a winter's evening and brave
the traffic, the transport system, the crowds, the weather - you just put
on a record.

If you want to socialize you can go out for a drink or a meal or a dance
or a walk in the park, and you talk.  You can't socialize at a concert,
except in the limited time available before or after.  What you do get
at a concert, and what makes it a fine evening, is the experience of live
music in the presence of a crowd of people who have also gone there just
to listen to the music in a conducive atmosphere away from the home
environment, and are prepared to pay for the privilege.  It would be hard
to deduce from this that concert goers are any less serious about music
than record buyers, even if it was possible to distinguish in any
meaningful way the one group from the other, which I doubt.

>There's no problem with that at all, but it does help explain the
>programmer's mind-set that the concert audience might well be
>skeptical and not receptive to different material.

It isn't only a question of the programmer's mind-set vis-a-vis the
audience.  How about the performers? We cannot assume that every musician,
whether conductor or conducted, is just raring to tackle lots of obscure,
unfamiliar or difficult works.  It is a wonderful thing that composers are
still in the business of expanding the horizons of instrumental technique
and ensemble.  There are of course musicians who revel in this, but they
are in the minority and by the time today's difficult avant-garde works
have become mainstream there will presumably be a new and difficult
avant-garde.

Then there are the various logistical problems with such works of acquiring
scores and parts that are often hard to get hold of and hard to read.  Then
there are problems of orchestral resources in terms of, say, additional
percussion or other unusual instruments or extra forces being called for.
It can also be difficult to find both the time and the money for all the
extra rehearsal that such works inevitably entail.  Dealing with all these
problems in order to put on a single concert performance is quite a
challenge.  But that is not to say that more cannot be done, of course,
especially where large piles of gold eagles and sovereigns and louis and
thalers are readily available from enlightened and high-minded sponsors.

Alan Moss