Norman Lebrecht writes (again) about the slow death of the symphony orchestra, now gathering pace: the Philadelphia itself is threatened. On the positive side, he says that the orchestras are woven into the social fabric of our cities through out-reach programs etc, and seems to think that this will help to save them. It hasn’t helped the Church of England. He praises the concert hall as a refuge from our distracted lives. Fairly expensive way of escaping your iPhone – most people would choose a sauna, or a round of golf.
He contemptuously dismisses the belief that listening to ‘good’ music makes you a good person, as if that were still the stock argument for the defence. Does anybody still use it, I wonder? Certainly not in the world of grant applications and fund-raising campaigns. For some time now the stock arguments there have concerned ‘access’ and ‘identity’.
Orchestras formed in a stratified society and appealed to connoisseurs. The kind of democracy we enjoy levels itself against hierarchies of taste and substitutes what passes for relativism: YMMV, IMO – all that. It also produces a large number of people who actively hate the high arts – relativism has limits. Since the 1960s, the education system has been conquered by various anti-elitist beliefs. One teacher I met who worked in our western suburbs scorned the very idea of providing kids with stringed instruments: ‘irrelevant’. At present, the private schools and some few government schools hold out, but even there I notice that the musical interludes at ceremonies tend to be from the big-band repertoire: mainstream jazz is our new posh.
So I don’t see a big future for the symphony orchestra. Does anyone?
