What a Cannoli Maker Can Teach Us About Classical Music Audiences By Thomas Wolf
The Problem
Well before the pandemic of 2020—indeed for at least the past quarter century—many people have bemoaned the “decline” of classical music audiences.
“Classical music audiences – grey-haired and dying out.”
“We used to sell out. Now our hall is half empty.”
“Our grey-haired audiences are old and dying out. As bad as it is now, it will only be worse ten years from now.”
And more recently: “COVID has put the nail in the coffin of live audiences. They have learned that it is fine to stay home, listening and watching on their devices.”
Explanations abound: shrinking music education; tired or elite repertoire; rising costs; competition from movies, television, and devices. But maybe it’s time to consider the issues more broadly—and to consult other than the usual experts—people who see the ingredients differently.
The Experience of the Cannoli Maker
Let’s make what may seem like a wild substitution: great-tasting cannoli for magnificent classical music.
What can this gentleman tell us about classical music audiences?
Sergio (not his real name) arrived in the United States with his family but little capital. He translated his grandmother’s cannoli recipe to a business out of his kitchen, making just enough cannoli to sell out two days a week. Other than paying for raw materials, all the money he earned was pure profit. Yet even that was not enough to support his small family. So he took a day job as a butcher at an Italian market.
In time, demand increased, with Italian families entering the United States settling in his neighborhood called, quite appropriately, “Little Italy.” With trepidation, Sergio quit his day job, rented a storefront, installed an oven, brought on an apprentice and opened up six mornings a week. Business flourished, word spread, and eventually some local restaurants began ordering.
Sergio opened a second and then a third retail establishment, bringing on apprentices and, for the first time, professional help. This meant hiring and paying members from the local chapter of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International. So apprentices became employees, but in time, some of them opened their own bakeries, using Sergio’s secrets of cannoli-making, but undercutting his prices. At the same time, demand for cannoli slowed as the Little Italy Sergio once knew changed, gentrified, and tastes shifted away from calorie-laden desserts.
A greater variety of cannoli--essential in order to be competitive--raised the cost of production.
Sergio’s headaches only increased: His employees demanded better pay, which he tried to offset with a four-day-a-week schedule and lay-offs after holidays when demand slackened. But employees wanted full-time employment and benefits and when Sergio hesitated, they threatened to join the competition. To keep them on full time, Sergio upped production, but often there was much unsold product at the end of the week. Bookkeeping became so complicated that now a full-time accountant was added to the payroll as well as other staff not engaged in food preparation. To keep up with payroll and distinguish his product, Sergio began to offer new fancier varieties of cannoli – pumpkin and carrot cake in the fall, strawberry in the spring. Was his grandmother wringing her hands in heaven?
Perhaps most fateful of all, supermarkets began carrying mass-produced and frozen cannoli. “How can they stand it?” he complained. “Cannoli have to be eaten fresh or they are no good. What are they thinking? Cannoli popsicles?”
“Well,” came the answer from an old customer, “my kids are just so busy that even though they know in their heart of hearts that the frozen stuff is not as good, it is good enough, you can come home from work, defrost them, and bam, you have dessert.”
Lessons for Classical Music Audiences
So what does our cannoli story have to do with classical music audiences?
Let’s start with demand. From the late 19th century through the mid-20th, European immigration to the United States was extremely high. Cataclysmic events like the Russia Revolution and two world wars brought increased numbers from Russia, Germany, France, Italy and many other European countries. The impact of this wave of foreigners on classical music in this country was profound. Not only were superb musicians coming to the United States in the thousands, but so were music lovers for whom classical music was part of their cultural heritage and bloodstream. The artistic quality of existing musical organizations (like the quality brought on by Sergio’s cannoli) improved dramatically as those with superior training and experience settled in America. With this influx of talent, many new musical institutions were formed alongside much improved existing ones and there were hungry consumers ready to purchase the product.
Audiences for classical music swelled in part because of the addition of these old-world customers who appreciated great music. With economic prosperity, they supported orchestras, opera companies, and other organizations, buying tickets and making financial contributions. It often seemed as though there was simply not enough musical product to fulfill the demand given the number of sold out houses. The legend at the Boston Symphony was that subscribers passed their good seats down to younger generation family members. In Philadelphia, where my immigrant mother insisted that the family maintain a box at the Academy of Music for all Saturday night Philadelphia Orchestra concerts, I would often wander around during intermission overhearing heated conversations about the music in Russian, German, French, and Italian. These people knew and loved their Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Rossini, and Tchaikovsky.
Saturday evening at a Philadelphia Orchestra concert at the Academy of Music in the 1950s and 1960s. My immigrant mother considered herself lucky to have one of the raised boxes shown in this photo as concerts were often sold out.
Orchestras responded to this enhanced interest and support by greatly increasing the number of concerts they offered to the public. In one 25-year period from 1966 to 1991, for example, the average number of concerts offered by orchestras nationwide increased by 110%.[1] Attendance increased as well…but only by 53%.[2] As the century was nearing its end, the increase in seats to sell was outstripping the growth of the audience.
Why increase product availability when there was not sufficient demand? The decision was only partly determined by perceived audience interest. In the 1960s, unionized musicians in the top orchestras demanded and received a 52-week guaranteed contract and soon smaller orchestras followed suit increasing the number of guaranteed services to their players. This led inevitably to offering more concerts to the public independent of whether there was demand for them. The new offerings often cannibalized audiences for previously existing concerts.
At the same time, audience growth was slowing. There were many reasons for this but one was demographics. Immigration patterns were changing as Europeans made up a smaller percentage of new citizens. Added to orchestra woes, there was competition for ticket buyers from newly formed musical organizations. Like the situation facing our cannoli maker, the combination of increased inventory, added competition, and changing demographics was hurting sales.
Ticket prices were also a factor. Increased expenses were putting pressure on the bottom line. Labor costs had increased on the artistic side but that was only part of the story. Selling so many more tickets required greatly increasing the marketing budget and staff. Professionalized fund raising was required to cover growing shortfalls. In just one 20-year period, from 1971 to 1991, the annual industry deficit for orchestras increased from $2.8 million to $23.2 million. Adjusted for inflation this represented a 150% increase.[3] There was pressure to raise ticket prices to partially cover these deficits at just the time when demand for tickets was abating.
Opening concert of Bay Chamber Concerts (July 13, 1961). During the first summer season there were 1575 seats to fill. Thirty years later, the group was offering 25 concerts and needing to fill 10,600 seats.
So much for orchestras. We can see the situation mirrored among other musical organizations—some large, others small. In 1961, my brother, Andrew Wolf, and I were teen-age musicians who started a summer chamber music festival in Maine. We offered 7 concerts in a hall of 225 seats – a total of 1,575 seats to sell over the course of the summer. There was virtually no competition (of the three other chamber music festivals in the state, the closest was two hours away). Audience demand was keen and to ensure that there would be available seats, more than three quarters of our audience purchased subscriptions for the entire seven concerts. As tourism grew and more music lovers bought summer homes, such was the demand for tickets that in 1974 we decided to move our concerts to a 400-seat hall and we added a couple of concerts—now there were 3,600 seats to fill (an increase of 130%).
Fast forward 30 years and our organization was now offering 25 concerts, two of which took place in an 800-seat auditorium. We now had 10,800 seats to fill—almost six times as many as when we began in 1961. Worse, instead of three competing musical organizations, the state of Maine now boasted an astonishing 25! How could this be? Much of this extraordinary increase was due to the herculean efforts of the state arts council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and numerous private funders who for decades believed that if they invested in the creation of more musical organizations, new audiences would materialize.[4] But they did not count on the realities of supply and demand—the number of seats to fill was simply too great.
Meanwhile the cost structures of music organizations was changing. All the new competition required investment in marketing, fund raising, and other management expenses. Musicians too demanded more money. Musicians who at our organization had been paid $25/concert in 1961 ($140 in year 2000 adjusted dollars) were now paid $1,250 per concert plus housing costs. Having to fill so many seats also required advertising and marketing staff. Ticket prices increased from $2.50 in 1961 ($14 in year 2000 adjusted dollars) to an average of $30 by the end of the century (a more than doubling of price). To the extent that audiences were sensitive to price, this was a further disincentive to purchase, especially for young people with families.
Tenor Lawrence Brownlee in a 2014 live stream production of the Barber of Seville from the Metropolitan Opera.
As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, one other factor contributed to the slackening demand for tickets—the burgeoning availability of virtual performances. The internet was to classical music what the frozen food section of the supermarket was to fresh cannoli. While many acknowledged that nothing could replace the live musical experience, it was hard to resist the convenience of an almost limitless supply of free or low-cost content—almost any composition one could imagine performed by top-flight performers. Much of this content was available both in audio and video formats including live performances not only of classical music concerts but of opera.
So why leave home? Other than the social aspects of concert attendance, the experience of sitting in a concert hall, the slightly better audio experience (for those who noticed), and the excitement of being in the same space with performers, for lots of people there was no reason at all.
So What is to Be Done?
No magic bullet exists for fixing the audience challenges in the world of classical music. The problems have built up over at least the last half century and they cannot be solved overnight. But there are a host of strategies—many already being implemented successfully by some of the more forward-looking organizations.
1. Provide musical content that is of interest to audiences who may not currently be ticket buyers. Three quarters of a century ago, as European musicians were bringing their music to America, many (including some of the most famous) understood that not everyone was ready for a couple of hours of hard core repertoire. Often their programs were shorter than what is commonplace today and sprinkled among the masterworks were transcriptions of popular and familiar music as well as other easily accessible shorter pieces. The programs even included single movements of longer works. These sorts of programs eventually were relegated to Pops concerts so that regular concert programming could remain “pure.” It is heartening today to see a return to the trend for lighter fare being included in regular series programming. Shorter programs are common too including those without intermission, a great convenience to young parents paying for babysitters (among others). Collaborations with Pop artists, excerpts from film music, the music of video games, transcriptions of famous popular songs and operatic arias, and exciting encore pieces are regularly featured. There will always be a place for serious programs and an audience for them. But musical cognoscenti, musicians, and critics should not denigrate concerts that provide a lighter menu.
2. Provide a mix of in-person and outstanding virtual presentations—the latter with a paywall. COVID made virtual programming essential as attendance at live performances was forbidden during the pandemic. But like recordings a century ago, even in a post-pandemic environment, virtual programming appears here to stay as an important component of offerings by musical organizations. That said, much of the virtual product for classical music has not been very compelling and its quality must improve. A 90-minute classical concert with two or three camera angles and nothing but uninterrupted music can be deadly and few except the most dedicated will pay for it. There are promising trends for improved virtual programming and new ideas are being put forward.[5] When such programming is enthralling, it can produce audiences and revenue.
3. Enhance the concert experience. Much research has been carried out on the importance of audience engagement[6] and augmentation of arts experiences.[7] For classical music attendees this can range widely from enhancements to the concert itself to ancillary educational opportunities to specially-designed social events to culinary and other opportunities. The overriding idea is that people will derive greater pleasure (and are more likely to return) if the concert experience is accompanied by other opportunities. The projection of video images, real-time embedded interpretive assistance (including on cell phones), and theatrically staged concerts using professional actors all have popularized programming in recent years. Ancillary educational opportunities are also becoming an important audience development tool. The Boston Symphony’s launch of the Tanglewood Learning Institute has brought many new patrons to its orchestra concerts. The Institute offers open rehearsals, master classes led by world-renowned artists that are open to the public, weekends dedicated to film, discussions with noted biographers, civic leaders, and playwrights, and informal performances including some by its student fellows and others by orchestra players. Pre-concert receptions for young professionals to meet and network, post-concert receptions to meet the artists, and special enhancements for groups to attend together are also effective. Some organizations invite bloggers to critique their concerts and other to provide feedback to works in progress.
A floating “Classical Music on the Sea” concert during the summer of 2020 curated by the Hillside Beach Club in Fethiye, Turkey.
4. Take the product to new settings. Many organizations are having success in increasing their audiences by taking their concerts out of their principal concert venue to different and often unconventional settings. Outdoor programs have become more frequent during the pandemic and their popularity may well lead to still more, including some unusual ones on the ocean and on other bodies of water.
In addition to outdoor programs, concerts offered in different neighborhoods and suburban venues have been a successful strategy for, among others, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, which many years ago started experimenting with concerts away from the Ordway, the group’s main performance space. Not only can these programs provide convenience for audience members, but they also can mitigate certain people’s reluctance to brave the formality of a downtown concert hall.
5. Build musical organizations that look like the people you want to reach. The urgency of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion among musical organizations steeped in the traditions of European music has accelerated dramatically in the last couple of years. And it is increasingly clear that such efforts must extend not only to boards and staff members but to the musicians on stage as well as the compositions those musicians play. The presence of Black and Latino performers and composers is more than an important step in promoting equity. It is an effective way to diversify (and thereby increase) audiences. To the extent that the largest growing segments of the US population are non-White, audience development must prioritize Black and Brown people in every segment of the classical music organization, including the product it offers.
6. Foster activities that engage youth and families in ways that build long-term loyalty and interest. Classical music organizations have offered educational concerts for young people and their families for decades. Famously, Leonard Bernstein led such concerts with the New York Philharmonic beginning in 1958 and extending over a 14 year period. Since that time, programs for youth and families have become far more varied. They range from opera for babies and the creation of lullabies by expectant and new parents (offered by the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall) to pre-professional training through the Chicago Symphony’s Percussion Scholarship Program (which requires the active involvement of parents) and its Civic Orchestra for young adults. Successful programs have increasingly tended toward more active participation by young people as research has demonstrated that such participation has a longer lasting effect on later attendance and ticket buying than passive viewing.[8] Some of the most successful programs, such as Philadelphia’s Play on Philly, offer intensive (daily) immersion and instrumental training for K-12 students that are less about creating professional musicians and more about developing life skills and increased interest in music. It is true that these programs take a great deal of planning, investment, and careful assessment. For smaller organizations that may not have the resources to design every aspect of a successful program, partnering with organizations that specialize in this work is sometimes the most effective strategy.
Most of these strategies are not new. Some even go back decades.[9] But today they have a new urgency. Great music, like great cannoli, is worth being preserved!
[1] The Wolf Organization, Inc, “The Financial Condition of Symphony Orchestras,” American Symphony Orchestra League, 1992, volume 1, p. 19.
[2] Ibid. p. 2.
[3] Ibid, page iii
[4] In 1977, I was commissioned to write a book to encourage the growth of new performing arts presenting organizations. It was called Presenting Performances: A Handbook for Sponsors. The book, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the six New England state arts agencies, went through five editions totaling 35,000 copies. Thirty state arts councils hired me to provide workshops for those wanting to learn more about creating and managing such organizations. The number of such organizations over that period increased several fold as evidenced by the growth from 4 to 25 summer music festivals in Maine between 1960 and 2000.
[5] See a couple of my other blog posts: https://www.nightingalessonata.com/blog/2021/1/19/lubozhutz-amp-nemenoff-tabuteau-and-the-future-of-classical-music-video-by-thomas-wolf and https://www.nightingalessonata.com/blog/2021/2/24/technology-and-musicnew-ways-to-listen-and-learn-by-thomas-wolf.
[6] See Alan Brown and Rebecca Ratzkin, “Making Sense of Audience Engagement,” The San Francisco Foundation, 2011.
[7] See Alan Brown, “Smart Concerts: Smart Concerts in the Age of Edutainment,” John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 2004.
[8] “Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study: How Consumers Relate to Classical Music and Their Local Orchestras,” Audience Insight LLC, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 2002
[9] See for example, Americanizing the American Orchestra: Report of the National Task Force for the American Orchestra, an Inititive for Change, American Symphony Orchestra League, 1993 that discussed some of these approaches.