A colleague tells me that at the famous conservatoire he's involved with, only seven students are studying his (mainstream) woodwind instrument. That's seven across all years, including postgrad. Less than two per year.
Another colleague at the same conservatoire tells me that recently the Head of Composition was forced to accept four students he wanted to reject "just to make up the numbers".
A major symphony orchestra in one of Britain's biggest cities recently put on a concert whose centrepiece was a concerto by a well-known living composer. The hall was about one fifth full. 200 people paid, and 500 complimentary tickets were given away. Not all the people who got comps bothered to come.
In the last week of November Adele's new album sold 3.4 million copies. The #1 classical album (Yo Yo Ma's 60th birthday album) sold just 493.
I have written again and again on this blog about the reasons for the decline of classical music, and what might be done to combat it. Classical music has diverged every more widely from popular taste; concession to popularity is decried; accessible composers are marginalised; the repertoire has failed to renew itself; pop music has become elevated from a derided to a revered idiom; the acoustic instruments on which classical music relies have become supplanted by electronic ones; acoustic instruments are not novel and will never be novel again; digital signal processing has transformed electronic music; classical music has suffered a consequent loss of cultural prestige; the political case for arts subsidy has become harder to justify; the educational case for classical music has fallen victim to child-centred learning ("it's difficult, and they aren't interested in it"); the economic basis for classical music has been undermined as fewer people go to concerts (and those that do are getting older); fewer young people want to learn classical instruments, curtailing future audiences; fewer young people want to study at conservatoire level, realising that the chances of actually working in the profession are minimal; conservatoires find it harder to fill places so standards fall.
Meanwhile the Titanic continues to steam steadily for the iceberg as those with secure jobs in the industry carry on as if nothing was wrong and contemplate their pensions.
If you think it was ever thus and that I am just the Cheadle Cassandra (now there's a title) here's a comparison. Last Saturday I conducted the Halifax Symphony Orchestra in Elgar's 1st Symphony. In the twelve months after its premiere in 1908 it was performed nearly one hundred times to rapturous acclaim. What are the chances of something similar happening now?
