[log in to unmask] wrote:

>There are so many reasons why classical music is "in trouble" - if one
>accepts that it is - but has anyone considered that the pathetic state
>of popular music is also playing its role? That's what I'm beginning to
>consider.

Is classical music in trouble?

Okay, this is a rant, but I hope it will be a brief one.

Around the seventies, the recording industry began to really well.
Remember that?  Of course this meant they needed really good, smart
people at the top.  Big salaries, aggressive marketing, furious expansion.
How long can this kind of expansion be kept up?

Classical music is not dead; it has simply been put in a coma by corporate
greed and consumer stubbornness.

The same thing has happened, or will happen, to

SUVs
Baseball
Football
Hand-held computers

Having said that, there are of course other problems: modern composers
do not have a (sufficiently big) market for their work.  Music is still
needed for occasions, for the theatre and cinema, and for various
commercial purposes.  In other words, things are as they were in Purcell's
day--maybe a little worse, since back then there was a market for sheet
music to be performed by private individuals in their homes, which need
is now essentially filled with 350 years of accumulated music.

But this is a problem for composers only.  While I am sad for them, I
must say there's not much demand for puppeteers, either.  We've just got
to live with it.

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