Through the ages
The hand-wringing over the "graying of classical music audiences" seems to crop up fairly cyclically - as it has this month, in various print and online publications. An interesting back and forth has been going on, spurred by Leon Botstein's Wall Street Journal article from a few weeks back. To summarize the most salient point:
Classical music has always appealed to older adults who, with the passing of years, tend to contemplate the kind of daily life conundrums that are freighted with ambiguity and complexity. The average classical listener has historically hovered around middle age. This is encouraging, as there is no shortage of baby boomers on the horizon.
The rest of the article discusses conservatories packed with students, the existence of more youth and professional orchestras than ever, and the rising interest in Western Classical music Asia and South America.
Then comes Greg Sandow's counter-argument over on ArtsJournal. Sandow, in a nutshell:
Studies from 1937, 1955, and 1966 show an audience with a median age in its thirties, and in the first two studies in its early thirties. Studies done in the 1970s, which I haven't talked about here, show an audience older than that, but nowhere near as old as it is now. Studies by the National Endowment for the Arts show the audience growing older between 1982 and 2002.
His other issues center around Botstein's use of statistics (with which I tend to side with Sandow - pointing to an uptick in ticket sale income between two seasons (04-05 to 05-06) as a harbinger of good times for the industry in no way takes into account larger factors; for instance, if 03-04 was simply a particularly dismal year. Statistics used out of context can paint any picture you want them to) as well as the overall financial status of classical music organizations.
The refutation to Sandow's assertions come from Matthew Guerrieri over at Soho the Dog. His most interesting bit is summarized in this graph:
Which basically tells us:
Notice that the linear trendlines for life expectancy and audience age track almost exactly—and that the average first-marriage age has been rising even faster since 1970 or so. (You can find a similar rise in average first-birth age among women over the same period.) Which circles back around to Botstein's point—classical music has historically played to an adult audience, it's just that the passage into adulthood—as indicated by first-marriage age—has been getting later and later, and the length of adulthood—as indicated by life expectancy—has been getting longer and longer.
Essentially, Guerrieri's point is that Sandow has used statistics out of context as well - and now, all we have to do is wait for someone to point out a glitch in Guerrieri's analysis...although I agree with his particular line of reasoning.
From my understanding of the information available (a combination statistical data, various analyses and a dash of anecdotal evidence), classical music audiences - particularly subscribers - skew older because of the privileges of age; greater financial stability/disposable income (although in these rocky economic times, this is not necessarily a given), empty nests (although adult children are living with their parents in record numbers - more on that in a minute), increased free time, and a deepening in personal aesthetic tastes (this last one is a bit nebulous, but then again, think of how people develop tastes for, say, fine wine). In other words, at a certain point in life, people have the time, means and inclination to become more involved in concert-going.
I'm careful to stipulate "point in life" because this harks back to Guerrieri's assertion that age can only be analyzed in direct correlation to both lifespan and important life milestones. Which reminds me of a fairly recent article in Newsweek about delayed adulthood (the article focuses on men, although I think the same could be said about women).
The notion of not just audiences, but specifically subscribers, is a whole can of worms unto itself - a topic for another time.
Classical music has always appealed to older adults who, with the passing of years, tend to contemplate the kind of daily life conundrums that are freighted with ambiguity and complexity. The average classical listener has historically hovered around middle age. This is encouraging, as there is no shortage of baby boomers on the horizon.
The rest of the article discusses conservatories packed with students, the existence of more youth and professional orchestras than ever, and the rising interest in Western Classical music Asia and South America.
Then comes Greg Sandow's counter-argument over on ArtsJournal. Sandow, in a nutshell:
Studies from 1937, 1955, and 1966 show an audience with a median age in its thirties, and in the first two studies in its early thirties. Studies done in the 1970s, which I haven't talked about here, show an audience older than that, but nowhere near as old as it is now. Studies by the National Endowment for the Arts show the audience growing older between 1982 and 2002.
His other issues center around Botstein's use of statistics (with which I tend to side with Sandow - pointing to an uptick in ticket sale income between two seasons (04-05 to 05-06) as a harbinger of good times for the industry in no way takes into account larger factors; for instance, if 03-04 was simply a particularly dismal year. Statistics used out of context can paint any picture you want them to) as well as the overall financial status of classical music organizations.
The refutation to Sandow's assertions come from Matthew Guerrieri over at Soho the Dog. His most interesting bit is summarized in this graph:
Which basically tells us:
Notice that the linear trendlines for life expectancy and audience age track almost exactly—and that the average first-marriage age has been rising even faster since 1970 or so. (You can find a similar rise in average first-birth age among women over the same period.) Which circles back around to Botstein's point—classical music has historically played to an adult audience, it's just that the passage into adulthood—as indicated by first-marriage age—has been getting later and later, and the length of adulthood—as indicated by life expectancy—has been getting longer and longer.
Essentially, Guerrieri's point is that Sandow has used statistics out of context as well - and now, all we have to do is wait for someone to point out a glitch in Guerrieri's analysis...although I agree with his particular line of reasoning.
From my understanding of the information available (a combination statistical data, various analyses and a dash of anecdotal evidence), classical music audiences - particularly subscribers - skew older because of the privileges of age; greater financial stability/disposable income (although in these rocky economic times, this is not necessarily a given), empty nests (although adult children are living with their parents in record numbers - more on that in a minute), increased free time, and a deepening in personal aesthetic tastes (this last one is a bit nebulous, but then again, think of how people develop tastes for, say, fine wine). In other words, at a certain point in life, people have the time, means and inclination to become more involved in concert-going.
I'm careful to stipulate "point in life" because this harks back to Guerrieri's assertion that age can only be analyzed in direct correlation to both lifespan and important life milestones. Which reminds me of a fairly recent article in Newsweek about delayed adulthood (the article focuses on men, although I think the same could be said about women).
The notion of not just audiences, but specifically subscribers, is a whole can of worms unto itself - a topic for another time.
Labels: state of the art, stirring the pot, the business of music
posted by Sarah at
3:26 PM
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