Classical Music is not dead :: New York Times
Carnegie Hall, January 2006.
The New York Times reports today that the rumors of classical music’s demise are dead wrong.
Everyone has heard the requiems sung for classical music or at least the reports of its failing health: that its audience is graying, record sales have shriveled and the cost of live performance is rising as ticket sales decline. Music education has virtually disappeared from public schools. Classical programming has (all but) disappeared from television and radio. And 17 orchestras have closed in the last 20 years.
Has American culture given up on classical music? The numbers tell a very different story: for all the hand-wringing, there is immensely more classical music on offer now, both in concerts and on recordings than there was in what nostalgists think of as the golden era of classics in America.
