I was listening (again) to the fascinating radio mock interview Glenn Gould made, titled a A Glenn Gould Fantasy. He talks a lot about the zeitgeist in relation to the themes of his radio documentaries, and that got me thinking:

What is the zeitgeist of classical music? i.e. What would you define as some of the current trends in the climate of classical music today?

Some of the ones I have observed are

• A tendency engage in romanticised notions/ideals, especially where professional criticism is required.
• A general bias that reason and emotion are incompatible forces/states of mind.
• A further bias that more logically based or reason oriented music is/must be mechanistic and cold.
• A hypocritical tendency towards historical accuracy (e.g. People will demand Bach's chamber works be performed on a harpsichord and yet nobody seems to have a problem listening to Beethoven on a modern concert grand).
• A respect for Jazz but a loathing of Rock.
• A emphasis on competition.

This is just a list of some of the things I have observed, of course people can disagree with them, but it would be preferable if you listed your own elements of the zeitgeist.

I think of Zeitgeist as also involving what's happening in the-world-at-large -- whatever is 'in the air' -- on an ever-fluctuating basis, era by era, and even year by year.

Really.

So to me, when we talk about Zeitgeist, it's only part of the story if you put it in strictly artistic terms.

How to put this other aspect into words? It's emotional stuff, mood stuff, maybe spiritual stuff. I won't try to say any specifics about what that means for the current Zeitgeist, because that's much harder. I'm content just to put this kind of stuff into the mix.

Your absolutely correct. But for the sake of argument, lets just filter the "world-at-large" to the relevant aspects of classical music. Feel free to incorporate emotional stuff, mood stuff, and spiritual stuff. i.e. Imagine the domain of classical music as "the-world-at-large."

Something I've noticed is a tendency for people to revere composers, admire transparency in performers, and not really talk much about the audience at all.

I notice because this is in contrast to my experience with the theater, in which the playwright's work is viewed primarily as a vehicle through which actors connect with an audience.

In music, the attitude seems to be that the pianist is primarily concerned with connecting with the composer, while an audience is permitted to observe in silent reverence.

I don't believe this to be a particularly healthy attitude for musicians to have. I think many performers lack a sense of obligation to the audience, and I think audiences notice. I'm not saying that we should pander to the lowest common denominator, but I do think it's wise to have a healthy respect for both sides of the equation - composer and audience.

There seems to be a need to present an original interpretation. If your interpretation isn't "original", then it is deemed worthless.

As far as I've read, this seems to have also been very important at the beginning of the 20th century but fell out of fashion mid-century as people felt bound to play it "exactly as the composer wrote it". But now there seems to be an emphasis on originality again. I wonder if that has partly to do with the vast number of, say, Beethoven recordings now in existence, and people wondering why they can get away with another Beethoven recording if it isn't somehow different from all the others.

That belongs on the White Album!

I actually agree with you that there seems to be this need for contemporary musicians to present original interpretations, but what I would ask is this: Is it really about having an original interpretation or is it about having a gimmick? Maybe they are the same thing? As pianojerome notes, is there a need for one to stand apart, on the CD rack, from the Horowitzs and Richters of the world?

And one further question: the alternative to this situation seems to suggest that there is a single correct way to play something. That doesn't seem quite right, does it? And wouldn't such a scenario kill the classical recording industry?

I'm with Kreisler on this. The audience seems to be the odd man out in many ways, and I, too, question if this is healthy.

Tomasino

I believe that if you look closely at which performing artists, concert houses, symphony orchestras, etc. etc. around the world are successful and which ones are not, then, in those cases where there is unquestioned success, these artists and institutions are and have been placing the (paying) audience very much at the forefront of their performances and programming.

For example, classical music programming has, for the most part, been overwhelmingly conservative and concert practices "stuffier than the stuffy Europeans" for a century and a half in the US, while the popular culture has consistently been moving in exactly the opposite direction. What was out of touch and hopelessly anachronistic with a majority of potential concert goers already in 1901 is like a weird, alien protestant church service in 2011.

The dirty little secret of placing the audience first in programming, performance practices and an interactive communication relationship, is that the artist can no longer be in complete control of which composer to be a slave to nor exclusive style nor performance practice that he or she will choose as an "integral artist" and must instead resign themselves to giving the public what they want.

The bad news is that for those artists and institutions that are not at the absolute top and recording for a global elite audience consuming the paltry 1-2% of total music sales on classical music, this will mean aiming at the local market, with its actual demographic makeup and level of development, blemishes and limitations and all, or face becoming an increasingly marginalized, irrelevant, broke, niche museum piece.

The good news is that one you start the process of building a wider audience based on what people can relate to, what is relevant to their lives, packaged to be consumed in the way they have been conditioned to consume everything else in their lives, then you are suddenly empowered to help them grow and develop and explore and discover with you from their known to the unknown you have to offer.

The single most important challenge facing classical music today is nurturing and developing our audiences.
The rest is noise.

1+

I can only speak for a segment of the US new-music community, but there has been a noticeable trend for the last 20 years among new-music groups to adopt pop influences like strong rhythmic grooves, amplification and rock-band bad-boy attitudes. I don't know how much of this is what the performers actually believe in, or what they think will attract audiences. I am thinking of groups like Bang on a Can and string quartets like Ethel and the Kronos. Many young composers are comfortable incorporating pop elements into their music, and might have a rock band as well as a compositional career. "Crossover" is big.

I would like to know if all this is, in fact, resulting in better audiences But these groups do have full concertizing schedules.