THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...
Sunday, October 6, 2024
Is it time to wrap up the Music Salon?
This blog has been going for over thirteen years now and here are the numbers: 3,919 posts, 13,497 comments, 3,225,209 page views. I suspect that a lot of those page views are Russian robots, but the other numbers are authentic. So, I count the blog as a success. But is it worth continuing? In the early days I was eager to post something every day and it seemed I had a lot to say about theory, history, all sorts of things. After a while I started getting quite a few commentators. This went on for a decade and it was very satisfying to me, especially the comments. But lately, my enthusiasm has lagged and I just don't have a lot to say. And neither do my commentators it seems. I almost want to say something about black music just to get the guaranteed response from Ethan Hein!
So I put it to you, my readers, should I continue the blog or has its day passed by?
There's the option to just take breaks and blog when you feel like it. It doesn't have to be keep goin or throw in the towel. I took months and months off from blogging since 2006. Sometimes I went back and organized pages with tags and indexed posts to archive material by theme. I had readers ask me to do that online and IRL because of the sheer mass of material. Maybe you could do something similar? Pages for "Composers" with indexes of your Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Haydn and Gubaidulina posts, for instance?
I think the long standing socio-cultural trends exacerbated by the pandemic have made a general classical music blog mostly anachronistic. So the dwindling interest is not a reflection on your blog per se. The Hatchet has a much more focused blog and that is an option
Sometimes it is useful to think of a situation in business terms. Who is the customer for your blog and who are your competitors? Who seems to be successful and who not with music blogs and Forums?
Also to reference Bowie, sometimes a new career in a new town is advisable. Have you considered relocating to Europe? I assume you can speak conversational Spanish and maybe get by in French or German? Or perhaps write a book or musical magnum opus?
Whatever you decide good luck and enjoyment with it.
I think I will do a post on a retrospective of the Music Salon and see what that tells me. Relocating to Europe was probably what I should have done in my 20s, but now is a bit late!
I think only you can decide, Bryan. What were/are your goals and are they or are they not being met? I agree that maybe fewer (once a month) might be an option. In any event, I've enjoyed reading the blog and the videos you select are always top rate.
Actually, the reason I put up the post and asked for comments is that the motivation of the blog from the beginning was simply to provide something interesting, informative and enjoyable to classical music lovers. So what my readers say is very important.
If you are still motivated to have a music blog of some kind, I would suggest making it much more focused but addressing a significant enough area that you can get a dedicated audience. A more focused blog has a big advantage over a general interest blog in that respect.
This is your blog. Anything I really would be interested in would be too recondite to work as a blog. You need to decide what specific topics you can write about week after week without getting tired of it and a readership can count on relevant material. You don't need to make a decision right now. Wait for Halloween and trick or treat us.
(From another anonymous:) Does anyone else get the impression that classical-music news is harder to find nowadays, so that there isn’t as much to blog about? In the past other blogs and classical music fora were very active, so one was always aware of developments and had something to blog about. Now most of those bloggers have long since retired, and the classical fora I follow have dwindled to a few people who aren’t particularly informative. Even Lebrecht over at Slipped Disc has been resorting to posting pop-music happenings, as if he is facing a dearth of news, too.
Well, yes, one does have the feeling of being on the downhill slope of an artwork. Europe being the exception. I'm going to talk about this in my retrospective post.
I've followed some superb blogs over the last few years that get (or got) almost no traffic. Vlogs and Instagrams seem to be the way to reach people now. The Music Salon is surely doing extraordinarily well, given trends. I like all the suggestions above and can't think of anything to add... Except that perhaps you could edit some of your posts to form a book-length collection? Am very curious to read the retrospective.
As someone living in a European country where subsidies for classical music remain strong and concert life is still regular, I think you’re mistaken to think of it as so rosy. Even our classical music here seems to get less and less substantial discussion in the media or on the internet (social-media posts that are essentially advertisements and content-free don’t count).
I think that one reason for the decline in classical-music blogging, is that quite a lot of that blogging was polemical: conservatives posting about how Boulez or serialism in general were bad, fans of modernism posting about how once-hardcore modernists were going soft; complaints about how this conductor’s reading of a piece was better than that conductor’s reading, etc. But now that all of us have access to more music we like than we’ll ever manage to listen to, it feels quaint to criticize the music that we don’t like.
Anonymous 3 (Euro) The first paragraph I strongly agree with. The second paragraph though is not supported by the pop music fora where exactly those polemical discussions of styles, categories, albums, masterings etc go on endlessly. And their access to material is far greater than in the classical realm. Maybe it's an unfortunate aspect of human nature but this kind of heated squabbling is more a sign of health than frailty.
Well, I for one would be sad if this blog ended! I only recently found it, a few years ago or so. And have only commented a few times. But I check it everyday to see if anything new has been posted. And often read older posts and even search here to see what you think of specific composers, musicians, recordings, etc. So please stay around!
There's a quote from Montaigne that I often think of as it is very relevant to our world today. And that you are, in your own way, in the musical realm, "lending them a shoulder to raise them higher":
"I see most of the wits of my time using their ingenuity to obscure the glory of the beautiful and noble actions of antiquity, giving them some vile interpretation and conjuring up vain occasions and causes for them. What great subtlety! Give me the most excellent and purest action, and I will plausibly supply fifty vicious motives for it. God knows what a variety of interpretations may be placed on our inward will, for anyone who wants to elaborate them. The same pains that they take to detract from these great names, and the same license, I would willingly take to lend them a shoulder to raise them higher. These great figures, whom the consensus of the wise has selected as examples to the world, I shall not hesitate to restore to their places of honor, as far as my ingenuity allows me to interpret them in a favorable light. But we are forced to believe that our powers of conception are far beneath their merit. It is the duty of good men to portray virtue as being as beautiful as possible; and it would not be unbecoming to us if passion carried us away in favor of such sacred models." - Montaigne
Maury, what pop music fora are you following that are active and have polemical discussions? The only forum I know that is truly active is ILM, but today polemic there is more likely to be around racial or LGBT contexts (from a North American perspective) than the stylistic features of the music itself. Also, participants seem to mainly be participating from mobile phones nowadays, which means that posts are limited to just a couple of lines of text, and posting substantial comment would come across as gauche.
Anonymous, the largest general Music Forum i am aware of in the US is the Steve Hoffman Music Forum. The issues you identify are simply the result of site administrators permitting them. Yes there are people who post from mobile devices but given the fair size of many posts on that Forum they are far better than me at typing on a mobile phone if that is what they are doing.
But the more general point was simply that various bitter squabbles can seem completely nutty when viewed by people not interested in them but the squabbles indicate engagement however ill applied. It is apathy that indicates the decline of a field which is what we are seeing with classical music and even with its practitioners,
per Maury's observations about squabbles as signs of life, the rockist/poptimist battles of the last fifteen years in popular music journalism and scholarship is an example of vitality in the field whether or not fans of classical music take it to be so. Michael Markham's article about a little Poptimism for Tchaikovsky demonstrated that the rockist/poptimist divide in pop music journalism mirrored the comparable fights over Beethoven vs Rossini type battles two centuries ago, if memory serves.
THat ideas get recycled, possibly without authors knowing it, is something I've seen in music writing. That Wesley Morris piece for the 1619 Project leveraged an argument that expressed a hope that black music would have/has roots "too deep to steal" but I noticed that if we substituted "black" with "German" and "white" with Jew then Morris' ideas about black music meaning "freedom" and "everybody" stealing it came across like Richard Wagner's polemic in Jewishness in Music. The whole Beethoven/Rossini set of battles on whether Germans were really more profound than those vapid and shallow Italians seems both vituperative and prone to racial essentializing here in 2024 but that's the kind of stuff that also happens in popular music writing, too. The associationist school that says we associate non-musical and extra-musical things and norms inextricably with music seems to have a point the Hanslickian absolutists can never get around. The association may be rote and via convention and therefore contestable but it's ultimately impossible to evade or avoid.
There's the option to just take breaks and blog when you feel like it. It doesn't have to be keep goin or throw in the towel. I took months and months off from blogging since 2006. Sometimes I went back and organized pages with tags and indexed posts to archive material by theme. I had readers ask me to do that online and IRL because of the sheer mass of material. Maybe you could do something similar? Pages for "Composers" with indexes of your Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Haydn and Gubaidulina posts, for instance?
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting thought, Wenatchee. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteBryan,
ReplyDeleteI think the long standing socio-cultural trends exacerbated by the pandemic have made a general classical music blog mostly anachronistic. So the dwindling interest is not a reflection on your blog per se. The Hatchet has a much more focused blog and that is an option
Sometimes it is useful to think of a situation in business terms. Who is the customer for your blog and who are your competitors? Who seems to be successful and who not with music blogs and Forums?
Also to reference Bowie, sometimes a new career in a new town is advisable. Have you considered relocating to Europe? I assume you can speak conversational Spanish and maybe get by in French or German? Or perhaps write a book or musical magnum opus?
Whatever you decide good luck and enjoyment with it.
I think I will do a post on a retrospective of the Music Salon and see what that tells me. Relocating to Europe was probably what I should have done in my 20s, but now is a bit late!
ReplyDeleteI think only you can decide, Bryan. What were/are your goals and are they or are they not being met? I agree that maybe fewer (once a month) might be an option. In any event, I've enjoyed reading the blog and the videos you select are always top rate.
ReplyDeleteActually, the reason I put up the post and asked for comments is that the motivation of the blog from the beginning was simply to provide something interesting, informative and enjoyable to classical music lovers. So what my readers say is very important.
ReplyDeleteIf you are still motivated to have a music blog of some kind, I would suggest making it much more focused but addressing a significant enough area that you can get a dedicated audience. A more focused blog has a big advantage over a general interest blog in that respect.
ReplyDeleteIf people are motivated to read it, I might be. What specific area would you suggest?
ReplyDeleteThis is your blog. Anything I really would be interested in would be too recondite to work as a blog. You need to decide what specific topics you can write about week after week without getting tired of it and a readership can count on relevant material. You don't need to make a decision right now. Wait for Halloween and trick or treat us.
ReplyDeleteGood advice, Anonymous!
ReplyDelete(From another anonymous:) Does anyone else get the impression that classical-music news is harder to find nowadays, so that there isn’t as much to blog about? In the past other blogs and classical music fora were very active, so one was always aware of developments and had something to blog about. Now most of those bloggers have long since retired, and the classical fora I follow have dwindled to a few people who aren’t particularly informative. Even Lebrecht over at Slipped Disc has been resorting to posting pop-music happenings, as if he is facing a dearth of news, too.
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, one does have the feeling of being on the downhill slope of an artwork. Europe being the exception. I'm going to talk about this in my retrospective post.
ReplyDeleteI've followed some superb blogs over the last few years that get (or got) almost no traffic. Vlogs and Instagrams seem to be the way to reach people now. The Music Salon is surely doing extraordinarily well, given trends. I like all the suggestions above and can't think of anything to add... Except that perhaps you could edit some of your posts to form a book-length collection? Am very curious to read the retrospective.
ReplyDeleteAs someone living in a European country where subsidies for classical music remain strong and concert life is still regular, I think you’re mistaken to think of it as so rosy. Even our classical music here seems to get less and less substantial discussion in the media or on the internet (social-media posts that are essentially advertisements and content-free don’t count).
ReplyDeleteI think that one reason for the decline in classical-music blogging, is that quite a lot of that blogging was polemical: conservatives posting about how Boulez or serialism in general were bad, fans of modernism posting about how once-hardcore modernists were going soft; complaints about how this conductor’s reading of a piece was better than that conductor’s reading, etc. But now that all of us have access to more music we like than we’ll ever manage to listen to, it feels quaint to criticize the music that we don’t like.
Anonymous 3 (Euro)
ReplyDeleteThe first paragraph I strongly agree with. The second paragraph though is not supported by the pop music fora where exactly those polemical discussions of styles, categories, albums, masterings etc go on endlessly. And their access to material is far greater than in the classical realm. Maybe it's an unfortunate aspect of human nature but this kind of heated squabbling is more a sign of health than frailty.
Well, I for one would be sad if this blog ended! I only recently found it, a few years ago or so. And have only commented a few times. But I check it everyday to see if anything new has been posted. And often read older posts and even search here to see what you think of specific composers, musicians, recordings, etc. So please stay around!
ReplyDeleteThere's a quote from Montaigne that I often think of as it is very relevant to our world today. And that you are, in your own way, in the musical realm, "lending them a shoulder to raise them higher":
"I see most of the wits of my time using their ingenuity to obscure the glory of the beautiful and noble actions of antiquity, giving them some vile interpretation and conjuring up vain occasions and causes for them. What great subtlety! Give me the most excellent and purest action, and I will plausibly supply fifty vicious motives for it. God knows what a variety of interpretations may be placed on our inward will, for anyone who wants to elaborate them.
The same pains that they take to detract from these great names, and the same license, I would willingly take to lend them a shoulder to raise them higher. These great figures, whom the consensus of the wise has selected as examples to the world, I shall not hesitate to restore to their places of honor, as far as my ingenuity allows me to interpret them in a favorable light. But we are forced to believe that our powers of conception are far beneath their merit. It is the duty of good men to portray virtue as being as beautiful as possible; and it would not be unbecoming to us if passion carried us away in favor of such sacred models."
- Montaigne
Craig K, the comment I was just now about to post would be superfluous indeed after reading your perfect one.
DeleteMaury, what pop music fora are you following that are active and have polemical discussions? The only forum I know that is truly active is ILM, but today polemic there is more likely to be around racial or LGBT contexts (from a North American perspective) than the stylistic features of the music itself. Also, participants seem to mainly be participating from mobile phones nowadays, which means that posts are limited to just a couple of lines of text, and posting substantial comment would come across as gauche.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, the largest general Music Forum i am aware of in the US is the Steve Hoffman Music Forum. The issues you identify are simply the result of site administrators permitting them. Yes there are people who post from mobile devices but given the fair size of many posts on that Forum they are far better than me at typing on a mobile phone if that is what they are doing.
ReplyDeleteBut the more general point was simply that various bitter squabbles can seem completely nutty when viewed by people not interested in them but the squabbles indicate engagement however ill applied. It is apathy that indicates the decline of a field which is what we are seeing with classical music and even with its practitioners,
per Maury's observations about squabbles as signs of life, the rockist/poptimist battles of the last fifteen years in popular music journalism and scholarship is an example of vitality in the field whether or not fans of classical music take it to be so. Michael Markham's article about a little Poptimism for Tchaikovsky demonstrated that the rockist/poptimist divide in pop music journalism mirrored the comparable fights over Beethoven vs Rossini type battles two centuries ago, if memory serves.
ReplyDeleteTHat ideas get recycled, possibly without authors knowing it, is something I've seen in music writing. That Wesley Morris piece for the 1619 Project leveraged an argument that expressed a hope that black music would have/has roots "too deep to steal" but I noticed that if we substituted "black" with "German" and "white" with Jew then Morris' ideas about black music meaning "freedom" and "everybody" stealing it came across like Richard Wagner's polemic in Jewishness in Music. The whole Beethoven/Rossini set of battles on whether Germans were really more profound than those vapid and shallow Italians seems both vituperative and prone to racial essentializing here in 2024 but that's the kind of stuff that also happens in popular music writing, too. The associationist school that says we associate non-musical and extra-musical things and norms inextricably with music seems to have a point the Hanslickian absolutists can never get around. The association may be rote and via convention and therefore contestable but it's ultimately impossible to evade or avoid.