THE CONCERT AUDIENCE IS ALIVE AND WELL and living in Central Park

By JOSEPH EGER

THE YEAR 1968 found composers, conductors, and other relatives gathered round the bier of the concert audience, busily discussing disposition of the symphonic body—or, in fact, whether it was really dead after all. While Leonard Bernstein called the symphony orchestra “a museum,” Paul Hume, Lukas Foss, Leon Kirchner, and Elliott Carter mourned cheerfully. Harold Schonberg called for attempts at resuscitation—or even a heart transplant. At the International Music Congress there was much talk about electronic and avant-garde methods of revival. Others were concerned about attendance. The League for New York Music called for “a two-year project to solve the puzzle of why it is not possible to fill the existing concert seats from the eight million plus population.”

Puzzle it is indeed. I propose that the key to the puzzle is the audience, that the audience is the medium, and the medium is the message—not the performance the medium and the composition the message. There is a substratum of gregariousness that provides a rich vein of ore to be mined by anyone in the culture business. The audience wants to come together—not only 135,000 strong for Barbra Streisand but for our magnificent heritage of classical music as well.

Yes, classical music. Everybody “knows” that the number of concertgoers in New York City is only about 25,000 and, nationwide, at most one per cent of the population. But then, how do we account for the 75,000 New Yorkers attending one concert by their Philharmonic in Central Park? Is the answer simply that the park concerts were free? No. A Mozart Festival at Philharmonic Hall, at $3.95 a ticket, plays to half-filled halls (despite magnificent promotion and floods of advertising), while pop and rock groups at the Singer Bowl (six times larger), the Shea and Forest Hills Stadiums (still greater capacities), Wollman Rink and Fillmore East play to standing room only, with thousands outside the gates trying to get $5.00 and $7.50 tickets. Is the answer then merely the old truism that pop is always more popular than are the classics?

Again, no—or at least, not quite. The National Music Council claims that in New York City “an audience of approximately 250 sometimes attend modern music concerts. . . . In all truth and reality there is no audience in New York City for contemporary music.” Meanwhile, in Greenwich Village, youths from all over the metropolitan area pay their money to jam The Electric Circus so they might hear John Cage and other avant-garde and electronic composers; and, uptown, a line stretches around the block of the Whitney Museum of American Art, trying vainly to get into a packed hall for a concert of Harry Partch’s music. Also, while subscription campaigns may falter in some places, Milwaukee drew 35,000 for one concert this year by—the Royal Philharmonic; the Hollywood Bowl drew capacity for Symphony Night; and to confuse us further, the Mozart weekend at Tanglewood last summer drew a record-breaking mob of 21,000 music lovers.

And so it appears that the audience is not quite dead. But it is a new audience—a hundred million young people. They do not yet patronize concert halls. Instead, they listen to Beethoven’s Ninth in the parks, John Cage in a discotheque, Harry Partch in a museum; they listen to The Beatles, the Tijuana Brass, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Jimi Hendrix; they get “turned on” by baroque; they buy millions of records, guitars, recorders, and some more sophisticated instruments; they make a Mozart. concerto a pop hit because they heard it in a movie; they whip up enthusiasm for Bach cantatas, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Vivaldi, and Bartoók; they attack customs, hypocrisy, stuffiness, pretentiousness—adults; they attend colleges, high schools—and the streets; they sometimes wear conventional dress, but also bellbottom pants, mini-skirts, long hair. And they are the backbone of our economy.

We can reach this audience with musical events that are bold and adventurous innovations geared to the contemporary scene. For example, rock and roll artists might jump at the chance to collaborate with a symphony orchestra for prestige, for “kicks,” for sincere respect—and for less than their customary astronomical fee. For example, the timeworn formalities of dress, time, place, price scales, and presentation could be changed. Tickets could be made available in places like supermarkets, churches, banks—everywhere that people gather and at prices they can afford. This might mean a wider-ranging scale of prices, less formality in dress, a new freedom in programming and presentation. Even the word “concert” could be banned in favor of the less stilted “show” or entertainment.” In a relaxed atmosphere, 1968/69 music can become youth’s “thing.” Once we get on their wave length and communicate with them, the barriers can come down and the vast potential audience they offer can tune in to the great masters of fine music from any period.

The newly formed New York Orchestral Society has developed a Youth Advisory Board to help assure basic contact with its audience. They advise on the latest trends, performers, and techniques, as well as on approaches and programs. Other orchestral and concert managements could follow suit.

A new approach must be especially stressed in the ghettos and “inner cities” of our country. Blacks do not think they “belong”—and therefore hesitate to enter our concert halls. In fact, few of them are seen even at the free concerts! We must stop patronizing them and seek them as an audience, especially the young. We must involve them in every level of our operation from the artistic to the administrative. We must ask ourselves this question: do we or don’t we believe that the arts are a central element of the good life for all and not just a luxury for the cognoscenti?

WHEN JACK BENNY spoke to the 1967 American Symphony Orchestra League convention, he suggested that, as he himself had to collaborate with young pop idols if he wanted to fill a large house, so symphony orchestras should do the same. Reach the new, young audiences via pop or rock if necessary, Mr. Benny proposed, and you can capture them for the classics.

I took the experiment to the laboratory—Carnegie Hall—last April when I conducted the American Symphony Orchestra in twelve “teenage” concerts. The programs included Bach, Ives, Hovhaness, Copland, Khachaturian, Brahms, Mussorgsky—and rock. We had added a local rock group called The Elephants Memory, as well as modern dance and “psychedelic” lighting. The rock group worked out a rock song from the main theme of the first movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.

I asked the kids to write me about how they liked the concert, but told them mock-surreptitiously not to show any parents or teachers the letters.” The flood of enthusiastic letters found a pattern: the kids had come for a variety of reasons—but many went away with good music in their heads. “I like rock‘n roll music,” wrote one, “but surprisingly enough I preferred the classical music.”

“It was the first time I ever attended a concert by a symphony orchestra, and it was nothing at all like I had expected,” said another. “The only reason I went was to get out of school for a day, but I never realized that it was possible to have such a thoroughly enjoyable time at a concert of this type.”

“The selection that was played after The Elephants Memory was without a doubt one of the most beautiful I have ever heard,” commented a third. “The light show which accompanied it was great and made for a more deep emotional experience. The whole afternoon provided for my most thrilling experience since the last Beatles concert.”

And so it went.

Prior to the concert, there had been opposition to the audacious plan. I had run around (with almost no budget) looking for a rock group, dancers, and a lighting-effects company all of whom would do the program for “exposure,” fun, and experience. I had to exert all the diplomacy and charm I could muster to win over the Carnegie Hall stage hands and IATSE union officials. Top City Board of Education officials were skeptical.

But afterward . . . 30,000 youngsters were now ready for the next steps in musical sophistication, and I received the warm congratulations and plaudits of Maestro Stokowski, the American Symphony Orchestra management and board of directors, teachers, and, it seemed, all who saw it. ABC-TV did a five-and-a-half minute film of the concert for nationwide showing, the Alan Burke Show and several radio programs invited us to appear, and we received widespread coverage by AP, UPI, and other news media.

I followed this up by commissioning a new work for symphony orchestra and a rock group, The Rascals, who performed the work with us at the New Jersey Garden State Arts Center. They were happy to play for a fraction of their usual fee for the experience of playing with a symphony.

The teenyboppers in the audience screamed not only for their Rascals but also for parts of Beethoven’s and Tchaikovsky’s music. Most of them had come only to hear their idols, but they listened to the long-hair too. (As a by-product, some adults came backstage afterward and said to me, “I never really attended a performance of a rock group before and, you know, I rather enjoyed it)

AT ABOUT THE same time that I was conducting in New Jersey, Garry Sherman, a highly successful pop composer with a strong classical background, was directing a chamber orchestra in Beethoven’s First Symphony at Long Island University. As an experimental demonstration of what Beethoven might have wrought with today’s instruments, Sherman added drums, electric guitar, and Fender bass. Although I, personally, would hesitate to tamper with Beethoven, the kids loved it.

Last October Leonard Bernstein invited the Swingle Singers to participate in a work by Luciano Berio at a concert of the New York Philharmonic.

Again, just this past November, the Louisville Symphony scheduled a mixed-media concert of symphony, theater, and popular music, featuring a group called The Open Window.

Today’s youth does not categorize its musical preferences by labels, as yesterday’s young were prone to do. The Swingle Singers’ all-Bach album—with a rhythm group behind the Master’s counterpoint became a smash hit. (Can anybody imagine this happening twenty years ago, Alec Templeton and his even then middle-aged fans notwithstanding?) The minds and ears of our young are open to all kinds of music, from the organized sound of the past to the random sounds of today, and from every corner of the earth to the imagined sounds of the cosmos. Mixed media is the mode; all media are acceptable. Our “straight” world of music, though suspect as Establishment, has far from lost its intrinsic validity.

Personal experience again bears this out. When I was director of the Harlem Music Project, a self-taught local jazz pianist, practicing on my piano, suddenly produced a passage from a Beethoven sonata he had secretly been practicing. He fairly exuded joy when I recognized it. It made him feel nearer to the great world of music he views with awe and longing.

Again, I asked a young Harlem rock musician, “If you had all the money you needed, what would you do first?” After a thoughtful silence, he replied, “Man, I’d like to learn how to read <i>notes! </i>”

The mixed marriages between seemingly uncongenial media have opened new vistas to millions. Many youngsters have adopted so-called “serious” composers. Bartók and early Stravinsky are “in.” The winning rock group in New York’s Operation Sound Search last summer was Mozart’s People from the Bronx! Since The Beatles borrowed from the baroque, Bach-rock has been the lingo of the late Sixties.

Youth is where the action is. They see the conventional concert hall as a museum, and a stuffy one at that. So we must search for new ways to communicate with this “lost” audience. Maybe there is a reason why the young say, “don’t trust anyone over thirty.’’ But take a step in their direction, and they will take two in ours. We can communicate with them in their own language. This doesn’t mean pandering to either the small ingrown coterie representing themselves as the avant-garde or the ear-splitting banalities of much of the pop/rock world. The answer lies somewhere between these two worlds and will be born out of the struggle between the old traditions and the new. It’s dogma versus freedom.

Many orchestras and concert promoters have been imaginative, but it isn’t enough. The proof is that we are still reaching only a tiny percentage of the population. Where many musicians miss the boat is in the rather strange notion that audiences were created for the benefit of musicians instead of the reverse. We are in the midst of a vast hunger and we have never been in a better position to feed the undernourished.

Mr Eger, for the past two years associate conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, this season inaugurates a new ensemble, the New York Orchestral Society, a musicians’ co-operative which he founded and serves as music director. He is also well-known as a French horn virtuoso.