About the state of classical music
I used to write a lot about classical music’s future. I’m starting again, going slowly, since now it’s not my main concern
We don’t have data!
Classical music, the field knows, is in crisis. But — this should be shocking — there’s hardly any data available to show how bad the crisis is.
Why we don’t have it
It would be hard to gather, I’ll grant, because there are so many kinds of classical music performances, both big and small. But the big institutions do have data, and don’t make it available.
What we can know
I’ve seen enough — even without systematic data — to know that classical music ticket sales have fallen over many years, most likely by a lot.
We know how many readers newspapers have lost
