“Tutto declina,” says Falstaff, in the Verdi opera. “Everything declines.” I know that everyone has thought so, since caveman days. The pull of nostalgia is very strong. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket,” we say—generation after generation. We sigh about the “good old days.”
In point of fact, the present is sometimes the “good old days.”
I must say, however, that the downward tendencies in our culture are pronounced. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the field of music.
A reader in Michigan sent me the below photo:
Our reader commented,
I remember going to Meadow Brook in the 1970s to hear James Levine conducting Berlioz and Robert Shaw leading Beethoven’s Ninth.
Seems they have really stepped up their game.
I have to ask you: Does any fan of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra want to hear the orchestra play Def Leppard? Does any fan of Def Leppard want to hear the DSO play Def Leppard?
Another question: Are opportunities to hear classical music so plentiful that an orchestra can afford to take the night off from classical music and play, say, rock? Do orchestras have confidence in their own art, their own repertoire? Do orchestras realize that, in trying to be cool, they are ridiculous?
(That’s more questions than I promised, I realize.)
Meadow Brook is in Greater Detroit, and it was sort of our Tanglewood, our Ravinia—our summer music festival. I say “our” because I grew up in the region (Ann Arbor).
At Meadow Brook, you heard the DSO and its conductors: Sixten Ehrling, Antal Doráti, Günther Herbig. A little Googling confirms that you also heard other orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra, under Michael Tilson Thomas; the Israel Philharmonic, under Zubin Mehta; the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, under Neville Marriner.
Pianists? I’ll list a few, alphabetically: Vladimir Ashkenazy, Michel Béroff, John Browning, Gary Graffman, Alicia de Larrocha, György Sándor.
Violinists? Viktoria Mullova, Itzhak Perlman, Ruggiero Ricci.
Singers? Elly Ameling, Christa Ludwig, Anna Moffo, Beverly Sills, Tatiana Troyanos.
You could hear Maurice André play the trumpet. Or János Starker play the cello. Or Jean-Pierre Rampal play the flute. You wanted James Galway instead, or in addition to? You could hear him as well.
A friend in Texas told me about a concert of the Houston Symphony last month: the orchestra was backing up an Elvis impersonator.
Why? Why? I like Elvis, a lot (though his impersonators, less). But is that what the Houston Symphony is for?
To say it again: curmudgeons and conservatives from time immemorial have sounded just like me. But that does not mean we are wrong (or always so). I wish that our orchestras, and other classical-music institutions, could have a little more confidence. Offer the good stuff. If you think it is worth offering, and worth knowing, maybe the public will, too. Keep your standards high. You may find that people will want to meet you there.
The human material never changes. Ever. No generation is stupider or coarser than another. Ever. People come out of the womb exactly the same way. But the values exhibited around them—that counts for a lot.