The New York Times - USA (2020-08-09)

The coronavirus pandemic poses a grave
challenge to all of the performing arts.
There are few ways to mitigate the risk
from packing performers and audiences
tightly together without fundamentally al-
tering the experience of these art forms,
which thrive on crowds.
Yet classical music has been singled out
as being especially vulnerable at this chal-
lenging moment. Why? Because of the per-
ception that its audiences lean toward the
senior set. “In many places in America,” Da-
vid Rohde wrote recently in The Wall Street
Journal, “the classical audience is a snap-
shot of the most vulnerable population for
bad Covid-19 outcomes.”
It’s true that classical music tends to at-
tract older patrons, and that seniors are in-
deed the most vulnerable to the virus. The
average age of the audience at the Metro-
politan Opera last season was 57, the same
as at the New York Philharmonic. About 62
percent of the Philharmonic’s audience was
55 and older. (By contrast, the average age
of the Broadway audience has hovered be-
tween 40 and 45 for the past two decades.)
The relative scarcity of younger people is
discouraging. Especially the fact that just
24 percent of the Philharmonic’s audience
was younger than 40, people who may well
have developed habits around the culture
they do (and don’t) consume that could last
the rest of their lives.
But the current fretting over classical
music feels all too familiar: Yet again, aging
audiences are pointed to as an ominous in-
dicator that this art form continues on a
slow, inexorable death spiral. The support
structure for any of the performing arts
cannot be sustainably based on older pa-
trons and subscribers; at least that’s the as-
sumption, for which the only answer entails
elaborate efforts to court new and younger
audiences. In recent years, the Paris Opera
inaugurated an ambitious program to catch
the attention of people in their 20s with
edgy promotional videos and to bring thou-
sands of them to preview performances at
discount ticket prices. “You have to find
your public by taking risks,” the company’s
general director, Stéphane Lissner, said in
2018.
Of course he’s right. And the company
has had success with the campaign. Still, el-
ements of dismaying ageism run through
the chronic bemoaning over the graying of
classical and opera audiences, something
that bothered me even before I entered this
older demographic myself.
For one thing, audiences for classical mu-

sic have always tended to be older. Demo-

graphic surveys from earlier eras are

spotty. But images and television broad-

casts make plain that even back in the

1960s, when Leonard Bernstein was galva-

nizing the Philharmonic and attracting

young people like me to his concerts, audi-

ences were dominated by those in their 50s

and older. Yet, year after year, devoted older

fans continued to appear. This suggests that

the over-50 demographic keeps reproduc-

ing itself inside concert halls, a sign that at a

certain point in their lives, many people

start attending classical concerts, even if

they did not when they were 20 or 30.

A study commissioned by 15 orchestras

and published in 2002 found that about half

of those ensembles’ subscribers were 65 or

older, and that 17 percent were 75 or older.

Things haven’t changed much in the past 20

years: Last season at the Met, the average

age of subscribers was 65. (These days, few

people of any age want to commit to buying

tickets many months in advance, so the

overall numbers of subscribers are widely

decreasing — which isworrisome for orga-

nizations that have based their business

models on this system.)

Classical music should do its best to culti-

vate new listeners — to be accessible to any-

one who might want to participate. But hav-

ing an aging audience is not necessarily

dire.

At classical events, you tend to encounter

more people with walkers, and to see older

couples steadying each other as they make

their ways to seats. Yet isn’t that a testi-

mony to the devotion of loyal patrons? It

may take some doing to get to a perform-

ance, but they make the effort; they’re not

at home watching television. During a re-

cent online panel sponsored by the League

of American Orchestras, several artists and

administrators commented that classical

music attracts passionate fans, including

older ones, and that institutions should

cherish and serve that passion.

Many institutions seem to tie cultivating

younger audiences to presenting newer

repertory. But it’s hard to generalize by age

group about what kinds of music will bring

in which audience members. I’ve argued for

years that orchestras and opera companies

inordinately beholden to standard reper-

tory are not speaking to younger people

who are instinctively curious about new,

more adventurous work in all of the arts.

And it’s always heartening to see many

younger people turn up when an ensemble

presents something new and bold, like the

Philharmonic’s 2019 premiere of Julia

Wolfe’s searing, multimedia oratorio “Fire

in my mouth.” Those coveted millennials

have been ever-present, in my experience,

at the Philharmonic’s Sound On concerts of

contemporary music.

But the whole story, I’ve found, is more

nuanced. It’s easy to overstate the instinc-

tive curiosity of young people for new mu-

sic, and unfair to assume that older people

are conservative in their tastes and resist-

ant to contemporary work. True, over the

years the majority of notes I’ve received

from readers complaining of some awful

new piece they had to endure — “another 20

minutes of my life that I can’t get back,” one

person wrote recently — have come from

those who cite many decades of concertgo-

ing to back up their assessments. But you

can’t attribute such close-minded attitudes

to age. Lots of young people are similarly

resistant.

Programs of ambitious contemporary

fare still draw plenty of older people —

many of whom, from my observations,

seem eager to be there. This was certainly

the case last summer for the premieres of

two wrenching and timely operas on racial

themes: “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” at

Opera Theater of St. Louis, and “Blue,” at

the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown,

N.Y.

For some time now, I’ve seen the main

challenge of engaging new classical music

audiences — of all ages — as related to di-

minishing attention spans in an era of non-

stop connectivity. Whether a piece you’re

hearing is a compact Haydn string quartet

or a teeming orchestral work, a concert au-

dience has to settle in and really pay atten-

tion to a performance that, for all the dy-

namic involvement of the musicians, offers

only so much visual stimulation. Classical

music should embrace this reality and pro-

mote performances as rare opportunities to

disconnect, at least for a while, from the dig-

ital life outside. Seated in an inviting hall

with good acoustics, you enter a musical

realm that a composer has created, passed

on through the artistry of superb musicians.

This isn’t necessarily a generational is-

sue. Philip Glass’s opera “Akhnaten” asks

listeners to give themselves over to music

that on the surface may seem strangely re-

petitive and hypnotic, starting from the first

ripples in the orchestra. It’s long and un-

changing — and it had a sold-out run at the

Met last fall, with lots of young people in the

audiences.

Whether old or young, if you have the pa-

tience to embrace such experiences, you

are primed to love classical music. If you’re

too fidgety, then this art form is probably

not for you. It may be that simple, whether

you’re 25 or 75.

At this challenging moment, when new

social protocols are being worked out and a

deadly pandemic lingers, there has been a

disturbing undercurrent in America, an ex-

acerbation of existing societal trends, that

marginalizes older people. This reached its

zenith when the lieutenant governor of

Texas said in March that “lots of grandpar-

ents” would be willing to sacrifice them-

selves to facilitate the opening of the econ-

omy. The implication of this disturbing ar-

gument is that old people are expendable.

In working so hard to engage younger

people, classical music institutions must be

careful, now more than ever, not to take old-

er members its audiences for granted.

These veteran music lovers keep showing

up — something for the field to celebrate,

not fret over.

Graying Audiences Are a Lifeline, Not a Risk

Efforts in classical music to

attract younger subscribers

shouldn’t ignore older patrons.

HOLLY STAPLETON

Below, the closing night

gala audience at the old

Metropolitan Opera

House in 1966. Even back

then, audiences were

dominated by those in

their 50s and older.

DON HOGAN CHARLES/THE NEW YORK TIMES

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020 AR 9

Classical