At £6 a seat, why don’t UK students go to orchestral concerts?
NewsMarino Tomita in Edinburgh has some thoughts:
Classical music as a genre has long been associated with the notion of elitism and ‘posh’ culture in the UK. In a 2019 social survey (‘Taking part: The National Survey of Culture, Leisure and Sport 2019-2020’), it was found that respondents who were in the highest category of social class (based on the NS-SEC classification. Based largely on one’s occupation, the highest classification is ‘higher managerial and professional occupations’.) were almost 10 percent more likely to attend live classical events, including symphonies, operas, and ballet performances.
If not ticket prices, what is stopping the crowds of live classical music events from diversifying?
Read on here.
They do in Birmingham, and in much greater numbers in the post-Covid era.
Tickets for CBSO concerts are all £5 for students and under-18s.
When I was younger and studying in Birmingham I used to take advantage of the £5 CBSO student tickets regularly. As did most of my friends. It was a wonderful initiative which we were all so grateful for!
Yeah but it’s Birmingham…who on earth wants to live there.
Lack of desire. If you don’t want to go no price will be low enough to tempt you.
That’s not to say that that desire can’t be stimulated, but just cutting ticket prices isn’t enough.
Many people know nothing about classical music.
I worked with a a manager who thought that you
Have to dress up to go to a concert.
Yup, people whose only exposure is an accidental glimpse of Last Night of the Proms in TV think it’s for naff, posh people in evening dress. Others I’ve spoken to don’t know the meaning of words like Symphony or Overture and it puts them off. They think they’ll embarass themselves by showing ignorance. Without early, non-threatening exposure, audience numbers will drop to nothing.
No one’s born knowing anything except breathing, nourishing, and eliminating.
Being afraid of learning things is terminally self-defeating. “Try it, you might like it!”
Actually, I like the way your former manager thinks. I’ve attended Lincoln Center (NY) events where a couple arrived in matching his-n-hers sweatsuits (with non-matching stains). Dressing up isn’t such a bad idea.
That’s America! Different country, different continent, different culture, different English, and you can achieve anything you want as it’s built into the education system!
haha. you wish…fantasy Republic on a cliff edge .
I’ve sat next to patrons who thought the same.
In my experience, the vast majority of subscribers and patrons of classical music institutions had some hands-on experience with music as a child. They played in an orchestra or band, took piano lessons, or sang in a chorus. It is analogous to my interest in sports. I follow the sports I played as a kid, however badly. Since soccer, as we call it here, was not part of our childhood, I have no interest in it. Fewer and fewer schools, here in the US and I assume in the UK, have instrumental music programs. This is a crisis for symphony orchestras and opera companies.
Spot on, Max. And it’s not rocket science. Taste is very malleable – exposure and experience is the key.
Historically, classical music has always been elitist. Only the privileged used to be able to experience it and understand it. It was never, and never will be as popular as popular music, by definition. At the same time, thanks to the advent of the recording industry, and later streaming services, there has never been as many people listening to classical music as right now. Not only have recordings and streaming opened up the discovery of the genre to many regions of the world previously untouched by classical music, it has also allowed access regardless of class or income. One can also cite the prevalence of classical music in media, social media, advertisement.
Yes I do get tired! I agree with your comments but I don’t think the prevelence across various media automatically results in real bums on real seats. Your average ticket-buyer who’d be happy to spend £80 to see ‘Wicked’ may not be so confident about going to a classical concert, even at half the price.
“Hearing” is vastly different from “listening to,” obviously.
Look at Birmingham. £5 for students and they are very popular. Perhaps they realise that the CBSO & Symphony Hall are better than those in Glasgow!!
It’s not “cool,” never was, never will be.
Plus it helps a lot if you know SOMETHING about anything (no, not sports trivia or pop) and have an attention span. That rules out 99% of “kids” now.
Agreed. Furthermore, pop music (I use the term in its broadest sense), and pop artists, have been actively marketed as “cool” for decades, which compounds the issue.
I’m Chair of the Belfast Music Society, which has just celebrated 100 years of promoting world class chamber music. Our International Festival is recorded and packaged for lunchtime concerts by the BBC. The concerts take place in the Great Hall and music block of Queen’s University, but we can’t even attract MUSIC students to come even though we offer free tickets! The notable exception, unsurprisingly, was a recital given by violinist Nicola Benedetti a few years ago -I wonder why!? Any advice or comment gratefully received:)
It’s fairly obvious. Young people in most British state schools today are receiving very limited access to Classical Music as a genre.
In addition, even when music is well taught by inspiring teachers, the emphasis on works that are prescribed examination ‘set works’ has shifted from the study of music of the past – even music acknowledged as great – that might be regarded as challenging.
I write as a Music Educator.
The main reasons that many UK students (at least those in Higher Education, where I teach) don’t go to orchestral concerts include:
– they are already paying a fortune for their tuition and accommodation and many have to do part time work to support themselves, so may not have time for much else
– the ones who are performers are often far more interested in the music-making that they and their peers are doing than in ‘watching’ a concert (I rarely hear them say ‘listening’)
– the ubiquity of free music has led to a culture in which they see no reason why they should pay to hear it.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to them all, and none of the above necessarily means that they don’t care.
So many young people today know nothing about classical music. It is the pop culture of today that has overwhelmed us. Look at BBC TV schedules for the weekends. Friday nights on BBC 4 wall to all pop music. Saturday nights on BBC 2 after around 8pm pop music. Sky Arts channel on Friday evenings also pop concerts.
I agree. Sky Arts is no longer Arts but Sky Pop- they do pop/rock/metal music about 75% of the time, the rest is reruns of old Tales of the Unexpected or Alfred Hitchcock TV episodes. Opera once a fortnight or less. Ballet once a fortnight. Orchestra or classical music once a week, and most of the time that is Andre Rieu rather than LSO or similar top level orchestras. BBC Four screen too many Top of the Pops reruns that are so randomly picked that even former TOTP fans aren’t interested.
I don’t know where this fellow got the idea that the cheapest tickets for the NY Philharmonic are $120. My tickets cost half as much. And they are not even the cheapest ones.
I remember that in the late 80s and early 90s the NY Philharmonic had $5 rush hour tickets. Don’t know if they still offer them.
Why is this the case in places like the UK and the US and Canada? I have been to many countries around the world, and to cultural events in most of them. Ballet and opera and concerts are PACKED in Cuba, in Argentina, in Hong Kong, in Poland, in Mexico. And the audiences I participated with were true cross-sections — all ages, all sectors of society.
Are all of those places making music lessons easily accessible to people? I don’t know. I do know that ticket prices were low compared to the west. But I had a sense that people in these places has a true sense that the performance on the stage belonged to them, in an organic way I rarely feel in the west, where the “sense of occasion” tends to permeate halls. Somehow artists in some places are managing to communicate to people that this is the best of them, FOR them. And they are rewarded by enthusiastic audiences.
Not in a position to comment on Cuba, Argentina, Poland or Mexico, but music education is ubiquitous in Hong Kong schools, which tend to require a certain amount of concert attendance from their students. Also, private music teaching is a fairly lucrative business, so that’s another inducement to study music, for which concert attendance is a benefit. And student tickets (also senior-citizen tickets) are half price.
Visits by top musicians and orchestras to those countries are often feted by the promoters, press and venue as a special and rare event, whereas in the UK, promoters and press are a bit blasé about having a top orchestra and famous musician performing in London every day so they don’t get any publicity at all. Only those in the know book tickets and the most popular- from Vikingur Olafsson to Martha Argerich – do sell out. I’m afraid Glasgow and other cities and towns also take it for granted that top performers will be there, if not every day, at least every month, and don’t bother.
On the other hand, TwoSet Violin, performing one night in a Docklands warehouse in a difficult to reach area, sold out very quickly- and they would be the first to say they are not as accomplished musicians as some of the soloists that RSNO engages. But TwoSet make lots of people laugh and have a huge fan base.
It doesn’t help that successive UK governments – including Mr Bliar’s – have continually run down the teaching of proper instruments by proper teachers in the UK’s state schools. We know that the many UK students who learned orchestral instruments in the ’70s and ’80s – often free of charge or heavily subsidised – do encourage their own children to play. These systems not only produced many of the UK’s pro players, but also helped to encourage attendance at orchestral, choral, chamber and operatic productions. Look at the state sponsored set-ups throughout Europe…!
I remember an occasion, probably in the early 1980s, going to a free concert, I think recorded by the BBC, given by the Melos Quartet of Stuttgart. A wonderful concert, but only 6 – 10 ( yes, 6 – 10) people in the audience! I’m not “elite”. I came from a poor family who scrimped and saved to give me and my sister piano, violin and cello lessons – nothing at school at all. My introduction to classical music was listening to the Third Programme on BBC radio. I think it is all about being calm and able to concentrate. The world has become too frenetic. One actually has to listen to classical music, and make an effort.
Perfect.
Thank you.
The BBC did those free concerts in London in the 1980s but not everyone could get tickets- you had to know how and where. A teacher (of music, although I didn’t take A level music) at my sixth-form got them and any student who was interested was allowed to have two and I took a friend who was at university. It was Melvyn Tan playing a solo concert and outstanding- we would both have been happy to pay. Of course, the concerts no longer exist as BBC is now in Salford.
People don’t go to classical concerts not because of the ticket price. But because they don’t care. Making concerts cheaper won’t increase interest. Netflix is getting more expensive and still has its subscriber base. Classical music competes for the attention of the people with other forms of entertainment and quite frankly it’s losing. The only difference is: other forms of entertainment that are far more in demand by the people, are not supported by public funding. It’s as simple and sad as that.
Real music is not “entertainment.”
Another element, admittedly minor. Classical music and classical musicians seem to be the last thing you are allowed to stereotype and belittle in popular culture. If a character in a film classical music, that is a clue that they are depraved, and likely psychopathic (Blofeld, Hannibal Lector). The whole film “Five Easy Pieces” could be interpreted as a rumination on how uncool and cruel classical musicians are; no wonder Jack Nicholson was such a rebel! (parenthetically, “Five Easy Pieces may be the film I most detest in the whole canon). “Tar” depicts our world as arcane and bizarre. I’d love to see them get away with that depicting Afro Cuban or indigenous Roma music.
Paul McCartney is currently touring Australia. Sports stadiums are almost filled to capacity to hear an 81y/o shakily singing words like “baby, baby, oh baby” etc. (Cole Porter he ain’t!!) OK, they’re largely older people, but diminished expectations must be part of that paradigm, as well as heavy lashings of nostalgia.
These tickets would have been expensive, so cost has nothing to do with reluctance over classical music. It’s about requiring an attention span longer than a gnat’s, commitment and a willingness to experience something new. And absolutely having nothing to do with nostalgia. Neuralgia perhaps, but not nostalgia!!
That man is going around the world performing for over three hours in many cases, delivering songs that have given millions of people pleasure for 50 years. He is far from shaky, and I am exercised to think of a Beatles song that goes “baby, baby, baby” though, given the massive repertoire, I am prepared to stand corrected on that.
Whatever your point may have been, it is diminished by your colossal ignorance, as well as your offensive casting of aspersions, of someone working in another genre of music. It seems to me unlikely you were ever at one of his concerts, so we can do without the judgment of books by covers syndrome.
Paul McCartney is an extraordinary musician. Among other things, he creates some of the most glorious bass lines in all of popular music. “Penny Lane” and “Dear Prudence” are good example of this. Incidentally, those songs, you may note, feature nowhere in their lyrics the formula “Baby oh baby”. It is a shame that your utter lack of curiosity deprives you from enjoying them.
I’m not sure it’s just that young people aren’t exposed to music. I suspect even a lot of music students go to hear orchestras regularly. How many Juilliard students regularly attend the Philharmonic – across the Lincoln Center Plaza? The Montreal Symphony is close to both McGill and the Conservatoire (its new partner), and I would be surprised if a lot of their students are there regularly (though to be fair, the OSM sells pretty well these days). How many at Northwestern head down to Orchestra Hall to hear the CSO?
Even a lot of musicians are wrapped up in their thing, and aren’t necessarily interested in hearing others – even the pros they hope to join.
You know I thought I was strange for not liking attending concerts, but when you work in this field day in and day out attending a concert just feels like more work. As a Londoner my primary live music source is local venues where independent artists perform. For me what gets me interested in this rather than the symphony is the fact that you’re going to see someone’s original creation/concept, rather than old music from hundreds of years ago (however superior the musicianship). The few classical concerts that I’ve seen where ones where the music featured was either new composers, lesser known composers, or something you’d never hear (such as the Scriabin with lighting cues that the LPO or Philharmonia did a while back).
If it’s the canonical classics, I’ve not only got my favourite recordings, but specifically in London the way our orchestras are worked to the bare bone almost guarantees a “sleeper” performance, and I can hear more enthusiastic musicianship on youtube.
It doesn’t help when music has become an even smaller part of secondary education at school!!
Entry points are needed. Most people encounter classical music through the cinema yet surprisingly well-known modern composers used in films rarely get performed, and certainly not by the RSNO, whose cinematic knowledge seems to stop with John Williams.
Max Richter has demonstrated that there is a young audience for contemporary orchestral music in Edinburgh, shame no one took note
Just like the rock music is not accessible to me, for youngsters it is classical music. We need more programs like Leonard Bernstein’s introductions to classical music from the sixties in US.
When I was starting work in London, the Royal Opera had a Young Friends scheme costing £2. If under 26 part of the package of benefits were 12 vouchers valued at £0.50 each against the price of amphitheatre tickets. Since the cheapest amphitheatre tickets were £1, I saw many operas and ballets even on my very modest salary.
I though already had a. Interest in opera and ballet. I doubt if those without such an interest would have parted even with £2. We all know that the continuing lack of music education in schools is at least a part of the problem today. Orchestras in particular, though, need to do more to interest young people. With so many leisure activities now available, how many youngsters are going to bother sitting through a long Concerto followed by a long Symphony?
Surely it would be far from difficult to start up series of sampler concerts? Concerts where shorter works or even excerpts from works are performed, perhaps with a personality as an MC – isn’t that the basic format of Bernstein’s celebrated televised concerts?
Movie music has been mentioned? This provides youngsters with an immediate connection – and a lot of excellent classical music has been included in many films.
Their interest in “pure” music (for lack of a better term) is limited. By this I mean the way that notes are used and the instruments work together. And length is a problem, as has already been pointed out. I’ve met many younger people (and a few older ones) who cannot see the point of orchestral music – to them it’s just noise.
Most pop and rock groups are fronted by a singer or singers who achieve varying degrees of fame and celebrity and supply a clear identity. It makes the music easier to identify with and provides stars that people can try to emulate. Conductors don’t qualify.
The trend is stronger than ever. Where are the pop instrumentals in 2023?
School teachers who organise outings either think parents will not want their children to go to orchestras (or can’t be bothered to sign their children up) or aren’t interested in going themselves to want to supervise 30 children to attend along with another staff member.
I have seen numerous school outings to musicals offered every year (sometimes twice a year!) at a costly price (because parents have to pay for the coach bus and theatre ticket for their child and teachers although some theatres/companies offer a slightly reduced price for groups or offer the teacher’s ticket for free) yet no trip to orchestras are ever organised, despite costly less than half the price.
I’ve seen just one school organise one trip to an orchestra (LSO) in all of 5 years – that wasn’t a class or year group trip but just for any students interested in going, of any age. Is it boring? Personally I have been more bored at some pop/rock concerts and some lacklustre musicals.
Sadly, the same is also true for ballets despite some outstanding companies like English National Ballet or Birmingham Royal Ballet offering very generously discounted budget-friendly prices for ballets like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella etc that have great appeal for children or teens. Royal Ballet offers substantially reduced prices (£7.50 currently) to full length works like Nutcracker where tickets are originally £15 to £150, thanks to longstanding sponsorship from a few wealthy companies and who gets to sit in the best seats is allocated according to a ballot- the seats are also balloted (not all schools will be successful and you can’t buy and pick seats from the website). The seats are always filled but schools are not allowed to bring pupils year after year (the allocation favours schools that have not been before or have not been for many years, and state schools only) so the purpose is somewhat self defeating as it does not nurture an audience but is seen as something you only do once in a blue moon- or once in a lifetime.
I do see a lot of parents bringing offspring- especially when there is a soloist who has youthful appeal, such Yuja Wang, Vikingur Olafsson, Alexandre Kantorow, Joshua Bell, Lang Lang, Johan Dalene, Ray Chen, Sheku Kanneh Mason, Nicola Benedetti etc. Recitals by musicians like Alice Sara Ott and Alina Ibragimova at BBC Radio 3 concerts at LSO St Luke’s (you have to pay for tickets but they are affordable and for children, also around £6) who are young and have an approachable, friendly manner are popular- they are interviewed during the concert and Alina kindly posed for photos with children after the concert.
The key may be having performers or programmes that appeal to the young as well as older audiences.
Meant to say Edinburgh, where the author of the article was, rather than Glasgow. And obviously Edinburgh does get a lot of top level musicians visiting all the time, especially in July, August and September(when orchestras visiting London for a Proms performance, might add in an Edinburgh date or two as they have already paid for intetnational transport and visa costs).
I studied at Manhattan School of Music. Every week, the NY Philharmonic provided some free tickets to their concerts. The gossip among the students was that they weren’t a top orchestra, which was partly true, in those days of Mehta. But I heard some fine concerts there. But because there was so little attendance, they stopped providing tickets at all.