On Sunday I spoke at the commencement ceremony at the Longy School of Music. The gist of the talk was to urge graduates to tune out as completely as possible the neverending chatter over the future of classical music, on the grounds that no prediction, either rosy or dire, has ever matched the complex, ambiguous, half-scary, half-hopeful reality of musical life as it has unfolded year by year. Following the thesis to its logical conclusion, I admitted that for a group of creative-minded young musicians my own speech was a total waste of time, but one that might save them from wasting time in the future. To underline the point I read aloud a series of quotations:
"Concerts are poorly attended and budget deficits grow from year to year. The general level of musical performance is visibly declining. Only the flattest, least challenging music enjoys success." — Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, 1926
"OPERA IS ALIVE, SAYS RICHARD STRAUSS: THE FAMOUS COMPOSER RIDICULES THE PESSIMISTS AND HIS VIEWS ARE STRONGLY SECONDED BY ALBAN BERG" — New York Times headline, 1930
"There is no point in talking of a 'killing-off' or a 'dying-off' of present-day concert music.... The great mass of people enter at last the field of serious music. Radio is responsible, the talkies, the summer concerts, a growing appetite, a hundred things; really the fact of an art and a world in progress. You can no more stop it than you can stop an avalanche." — Marc Blitzstein, Modern Music, 1937
"The economic crisis confronting the American symphony orchestra is becoming increasingly acute." — New York Times, 1950
"Are symphony orchestras in trouble because of rising costs or because their programs have become dusty?" — New York Times, 1969
"There exists a primal apathy toward classical music in America.” — Newsweek, 1970
"Fewer classical records are being sold because people are dying. Today's dying classical market is what it is because fifteen years ago no one attempted to instill a love of classical music in the then impressionable children who have today become the market." — Stereo Review, 1970
"From the concert organizations, managers, and publicists, there has come a steady crescendo of distress. Ticket sales are indeed drastically down, even for famed organizations and big-name soloists. The combination of smaller income, rising costs, and prohibitive production and operating overhead spells potential bankruptcy for many in the concert business.... The halls are growing depressingly empty. Even the subscribers to prepaid series stay away in hordes. The hard-core, old-guard music lovers are shrinking numerically." — Abram Chasins, Music at the Crossroads, 1972
“Mr. Chasins ... complains that the musical world is falling apart before his eyes and goes about crying woe. He's come to sing a dirge, but everyone is so busy doing his thing at the wake that it is hard to find the corpse.” — Times review of Music at the Crossroads
"What is it only a few years ago that doom-sayers were predicting the quiet demise of classical records? ... Not so today." — New York Times, 1976
"Classical records are in trouble. In fact, the problems that presently beset the industry may soon begin to affect not only the record buyer but the musical health of the country as a whole." — New York Times (same writer as above), 1980
"Americans are buying classical music recordings in greatly increased numbers." — New York Times, 1983
"Walking through the aisles of the larger compact-disk emporiums... one is tempted to say, Yes, things always look worse than they are, but this time the world really is coming to an end." — New York Times, 1995
The last one was me, before I knew better. As PDQ Bach wrote, in his immortal cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn: "Dying, dying, dying, and yet in death alive."
