Martijn Sanders and Ian Buruma in conversation

 

Thank you for your letter. Perhaps we should start with generalities, and then gradually become more specific as we go along. A few thoughts occur to me. The huge success in recent years of visual art exhibitions, classical as well as modern, suggests that we should not give up on attracting a wider audience to serious artistic events. We have probably been in thrall for too long to the Boulez-inspired idea that serious music is just for a few initiates. Already, it seems to me, composers are breaking out of the Ivory Tower approach by creating more accessible music, without being shallow. Think of Thomas Ades, or John Adams, to mention just two.

 

In thinking of ways to attract more people to concert houses, it seems of vital importance not to trivialize the music, or the making of music. That is to say, I do not agree with Hans Abbing, the ‘art sociologist’ (whatever that is), that people should be encourage to walk in and out of concerts, or eat snacks, or chat through a performance. This might be appropriate for an all-night wayang puppet performance in Java, where constant attention is neither required nor possible, but it would destroy the concentration of audiences and performers of serious music.

 

Concert halls could be made more inviting by having more shops, restaurants and cafés, a phenomenon we already see in some concert halls, and has become commonplace in large bookstores and museums. Abbing also points out that the ‘rituals’ of classical music performances are too ‘stiff’. It might help to dispense with the custom of wearing uniform black clothes or tails, but I do not think the clothes are the main thing keeping people away from classical music performances.

 

A more serious problem, I think, lies in the programming. The reaction to dwindling auiences is too often a conservative one: more conventional programmes of 19^th century classics, not enough innovation, or experimentation. It will be difficult to get young people to pay considerable amounts of money to see yet another performance of Beethoven’s Ninth^th, but more unusual classical pieces, mixed with modern music could be much more attractive. This might be harder to do in a patronage system, such as exists in the US, than a more European state-centred system.

 

It would be nice to believe that the huge success of modern art, especially conceptual art and digital art, with young people, could be simply replicated in the concert hall. This may not be so easy. One reason for the popularity of conceptual art, I believe, is that not much education is required to appreciate it. You either get a kick out of Damien Hirst, or you don’t. You ‘get it’, or you don’t. But no connoisseurship is necessary, which also explains the appeal (until recent months) of this kind of art among newly rich hedge fund managers, and the like.

 

To make serious music, classical and modern, more appealling, then, will require more education in schools. The enormous popularity of classical concerts for troops in World War II is often cited by those (such as myself) who argue that serious music is not just for a social elite. But one should not forget that those troops – British as well as German – had mostly had some musical education at home, or at school, and usually both.

 

To conclude, I think it would be a disaster to try and make music more appealing by going pop in the wrong way, by vulgarizing the experience of listening to music. I do think that more imaginative programming, and better education, can do a lot to save the situation.

 

One other thing – and this is something for a future letter: we should not forget the growing importance of non-Western, specifically Asian music lovers and performers. Leon Botstein, the American conductor and educator, has often said that Western classical music will be saved by the Chinese.  

 

Best wishes

Ian