Martijn Sanders and Ian Buruma in conversation

 

 

 

Dear Ian,

 

First of all, thank you so much for agreeing to exchange a few letters on the topic of  let us say, the state of the art of classical music and what we think might be its future.

 

We met at the ceremony where you received the Erasmus Prize of 2008 which in that year had cosmopolitism as its theme. And when I proposed to do this you made very clear that you are not a professional, but reading your essays which range between what you call Orientalism or the murder of Theo van Gogh on the one hand but also visual art on the other I am sure that we can learn a lot from you, even if you consider yourself an outsider in this field, or maybe even because of this.

 

Of course classical music is, besides all the esthetical and moral issues it involves also a business, where many players are involved in what we ourselves maybe falsely call an industry. Maybe in these times of financial upheavals and downturns the comparison between the economic and the cultural sector will become less fashionable but, still, a lot of people are making a living of classical music, or at least try their utmost to do so. This industry has organised itself in various professional and national or international organisations and the one you are digitally facing now is called IAMA, which is the International Artist Managers  Association . As this association is very broadminded they have not only invited their own members, who basically make a living out of selling dates of the artists they represent to concert halls, concert presenters, orchestras, radio or television stations but also the other parties who are united in the vertical trading column we, again, might call the industry of classical music.

 

The way we have organised ourselves has evolved from quite a long time ago. Let us take as an example an impresario. That is a person who defines him or herself as somebody who both represents an artist and also presents concerts with their work. This function can be very important for the history of music, and as an example of that might count Mr Salomon who , at the end of the 18th century,  brought Haydn to London, where he composed  the so called London symphonies especially for that occasion. There, I think, we touch a sensitive issue. Apparently it was profitable for such professionals to present new work of living composers to major audiences who were willing to pay enough money to pay composers and performers a decent amount of money and still make a profit on it as well.

 

This has changed completely over the last centuries. It is unthinkable now that let us say, even Pierre Boulez could recoup his enormous investment of talent and time with the results of the box office of the first performance of his new piece. I once met György  Ligeti, who has passed away not very long ago, and he complained that the conductor of a new piece of his was making more out of performing the work than he did creating it. I plan to come back later to this strange evolution of appreciation of recreation vs. creation at a later state of this correspondence. The point I want to make now is that our traditional practice of creating and presenting classical music has lost not only its economical self sufficiency but in that process might have alienated itself from major segments of the general public as well.

 

Dear Ian, we live in a time of self doubt about our industry, and I really wonder what your  thoughts in this regard are? You have told me that you have only a superficial and second hand knowledge of our trade. You are a consumer, and there is nothing wrong with that. To the contrary, we could use a lot more of your kind. What goes on behind the scenes of let us say a concert hall or an orchestra may be mysterious to the regular visitor, to which category if I am not mistaken you occasionally count yourself. What I am interested in is how you perceive the way the world of classical music has evolved. Are we an isolated happy or unhappy few who, contrary to the masses which flock to stadiums and arenas to hear and especially see popular musicians perform, insist on absolute silence and concentration and turn around angrily to any neighbour who dares to cough or applaud at the wrong moment? Is this isolation, in other words, self inflicted?