Jason Caslor has a post on his blog today ref­er­enc­ing a New York Times arti­cle that muses about whether “glitz” or other mar­ket­ing gim­micks are use­ful or hurt­ful for clas­si­cal music. The mus­ing is in ref­er­ence to the effect that con­duc­tor Gus­tavo Dudamel’s flam­boy­ant hair has had on clas­si­cal music (in con­junc­tion with his musi­cal tal­ents). Is it good for the vital­ity of orches­tras and opera com­pa­nies on the long run? Some com­men­ta­tors think that any­thing that brings greater atten­tion to clas­si­cal music is good, while oth­ers think the “hoopla” will inevitably dis­ap­pear any­way, leav­ing no last­ing results and divert­ing resources from the actual music at the same time.

I think this is the wrong issue to be look­ing at. It’s too black and white. As Daniel Wakin points out in the Times, there have been super­star clas­si­cal music fig­ures since the begin­ning. But what he doesn’t point out is that there have been a lot of non-superstars that have gone on to mem­o­rable posi­tions in music his­tory too. So I don’t really think it mat­ters one way or another if Dudamel is part of a media blitz. It’s not going to save or sink the LA Phil.

What’s per­haps more impor­tant to real­ize is what glitz is: it’s a focus­ing of atten­tion. So the atten­tion is now on Dudamel. What is he going to do with that? If he does some­thing mem­o­rable and appeal­ing, it will draw in new peo­ple and keep them. If it’s just the same stuff orches­tras have been doing for the past 100 years, you might get a few new peo­ple inter­ested ini­tially, but most will not stay—there are plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to encounter the music of Beethoven or Brahms on an peren­nial basis. Clas­si­cal music is not a genre that is shrink­ing because of lack of exposure.

By the way, clas­si­cal music atten­dance at con­certs has been shrink­ing, at least over the last 10 years, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics I’ve seen. So has new clas­si­cal music atten­dance. But what is inter­est­ing to me is that new clas­si­cal music is shrink­ing more slowly. If you look at the music indus­try in gen­eral, con­trac­tion is the norm—that’s what all the anti-piracy rhetoric com­ing from record com­pa­nies is about, after all, so shrink­ing audi­ences are not nec­es­sar­ily a sign of dis­in­ter­est. More likely it’s a sign of the greater num­ber of choices peo­ple have. So maybe the con­clu­sion to draw is that glitz is fine, but if it’s just win­dow dress­ing, it’s not going to have a long-term impact. You have to main­tain real rel­e­vance and do things that have mean­ing to people’s lives. And the fact that new clas­si­cal music is hold­ing its own among the expo­nen­tial growth in choice should be heart­en­ing for those involved in it.