Revolutions Per Minute.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul
• Position: Artifact - Future of classical music - Brief Article

Is orchestral classical music reaching its coda? If one believes the press, the form is dead. CDs with big symphonic performances (like these) are selling poorly; such music is fading from radio; concert audiences are made up of geezers; and several major-city orchestras face collapse. One critic laments that such music "plays a smaller role in middle-class life than at any time since Beethoven's death."

The usual suspects have been cited in the post-mortems: rock music, television, the Three Tenors, stupefying avant-garde atonality, format-switching radio philistines, star-struck recording executives, corporate inventory trimmers (especially at Tower Records), lousy music education, etc. Even orchestral subsidies are cited, on the valid theory that they reward "culture" in a vacuum and promote music...