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Jewish World Review March 4, 2005 / 23 Adar I Shevat, 5765 Yesterday, classical musical lit the way By Diana West
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
When Paul McCartney, songster of the '60s Revolution, wins one for the
zipper at the Super Bowl, it's evidence, or, rather, confirmation of a
sea change. What was once a countercultural wave has subsided into a
gentle current of the mainstream. This week, with the abrupt end of
classical music on WETA-FM (90.9), Washington, D.C.'s public radio
station, I guess you could say a gentle current of the mainstream has
just plain subsided.
"It is painful, but my job is to steward this public radio station in
the best possible way," Daniel C. DeVany, WETA's vice president and
general manager, told The Washington Times. This was a new one: The
general manager was making it sound as if it were in the public interest
for public radio to "steward" classical music right down the drain.
Glug, glug. Airtime once filled with timeless music will now carry the
day's events, which, of course, we in The Public don't ever get enough of.
This format switcheroo is not an isolated event. The Times reports that
the number of all-classical public radio stations in the nation has held
steady at 42. Over the past five years, however, between 40 and 50
stations that once featured a mix of news and classical music have
either totally cut the Bach, or drastically reduced it — no doubt, as
in D.C., to "steward" public radio in the best possible way. It is true,
as public broadcasters point out, that the all-news audience is bigger
than the part-classical audience. But should that factor be public
radio's decisive criterion?
I don't think so. That is, I always thought "public" radio — which, of
course, receives "public" support — was supposed to do something more
edifying than just chase the almighty market share. Otherwise, why the
"public" support? WETA's decision may reflect a dwindling classical
music audience, but what's more troubling is that it suggests our
stewards of the airwaves no longer consider classical music worthy of
their public mission — or at least not as worthy as an all-talk format.
This is a cultural about-face worth marking. Once upon a time and long
ago, bringing classical music to the airwaves was an image-enhancing
operation, a programming decision, in the words of music historian
Russell Sanjek, to "win over the custodians of public taste and appease
the Federal Communications Commission." These days, it's bad taste even
to mention public taste, and the FCC is appeased just by keeping a
wardrobe functioning. But in the pre-television era, radio networks
didn't just spin classical disks; they routinely featured live symphony
orchestras — "partly for the sake of prestige, partly to convince the
people who wanted radio to be more educational that the radio companies
themselves were hot for culture," as social historian Frederick Lewis
Allen put it.
The effect, Allen wrote, was unprecedented gains in the public's
appreciation of classical music, the high-water of which probably came
in 1937 when NBC sent a representative to Milan, Italy, to invite Arturo
Toscanini to lead a new radio orchestra. And not just any radio
orchestra. As music historian Sanjek wrote, NBC "(raided) European and
American orchestras to obtain the best first-chair players." Another
airwave institution was The NBC Music Appreciation Hour, a show produced
between 1928 and 1942 that was heard by as many as 7 million children in
some 70,000 schools every week — "children" who likely make up a
sizable chunk of today's aging symphony-going audience.
With the advent of television, composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein took
up the educational baton, producing 53 installments of "Young People's
Concerts." As one chronicler noted, however, "his 'young people' have
not musically inculcated their young." Nor have they considered it
important to do so. MTV culture aside, the fringe status of Bach,
Beethoven and Brahms shouldn't surprise a society that always chooses to
teach, say, recycling education over music appreciation. Sure, our kids
will know how to dispose of old records and CDs, but they'll never know
what's on them. After all, the less you hear, the less you hear. Call it
decline, call it a trend — but don't call it stewardship. Because what
the classical fade-out tells us more than anything is that the
"custodians of public taste" have left the building.
News, traffic and weather, anyone?
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© 2005 Diana West | ||||||||||
