II.THE MAGNIFICENT MAGGOTBOX

Are the radical contentions of these screeds genuine? Is what I'm saying accurate? Has classical music become a museum of antique pieces? The friendly and familiar music preferred by the senescent and conservative? Does it reek of moth crystals and laundry starch?

As it happens, one needn't travel far to find evidence supporting such a thesis. Just a click away at the Archives' Forum, CEO Pierre Schwob (a great humanitarian and the man who is single-handedly responsible for saving classical music from oblivion) has thoughtfully posted the demographics of Archive subscribers.

It is immediately apparent that this and the AARP are the only websites dominated by those over 50. There's nothing wrong with that, and as I'm somewhat long-in-the-tooth myself, it explains why my truculent opinions are being featured here rather than an appropriate forum like Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang. But the demographics (the very word causes a shudder) of Archives subscribers is misleading—merely the tip of the iceberg—just as the polls were in the 1948 US election which forecast that Dewey Duck would win the presidency. Those polls were discrepant because the canvassers simply used the telephone to get people's opinion, and in 1948, not everyone had a phone.

Similarly, the demographics of the Classical Archives are not truly representative of the classical audience because most old people (the stupid ones, at least) are suspicious of technology and particularly hostile toward computers. (If you are reading this, it means that you have retained your intelligence and are not one of the senile old people. Congratulations.) In reality, the demographics of classical music are skewed far toward the enfeebled and the conservative.

This is a sad fact, but during my tenure as a clerk at the classical music counter I became resigned to it and all the ancillary ways in which senescence and conservatism were dragging classical music down-down-down into the grave. All day long I got to hear old people rhapsodize nostalgically about old recordings and old artists, which ensures that there are fewer and fewer new recordings of classical music being issued, but I also heard complaints about CDs and modern audio technology.

One old fellow saw my artistic wall-display (replete with fractals drawn on my Mac) of what I considered to be the highest-fidelity audiophile-grade recordings, and he then carried on at length about how "a scientist" once told him that none of the modern equipment could compare with his stereo. I still have my old Dynaco amplifiers that I built from kits, and this geezer had aroused my curiosity as to what great old equipment he had—Altec "Voice of the Theater" speakers? Giant Klipschorns? ElectroVoice Patrician 800s? It turns out that he had a Magnavox console just like the one my parents had in 1961.

In my youth I worked for a brief while in a television repair shop (I still have my old RCA Receiving Tube Manual) and there I leaned the argot of the trade. We contemptuously referred to any piece of equipment made by the Magnavox company as a "maggot box," because the components used were of poor quality—selenium rectifiers, ceramic phono cartridges. (Note of disclaimer: like Fisher and Marantz, the trade name Magnavox has been sold, and the products are no longer manufactured in the USA, so none of this should be taken as to disparage these fine brands now made by the finest of oriental craftsmen.) Thus it was that in my conversation with the old geezer, I would repeat everything he said but substitute "maggot box" for whenever he said "Magnavox."

"You say your maggot box had a good bass sound? I'll bet you had the bass control turned all the way up." "No! No! Y'damned fool! Magnavox! MAG-na-vox!"

But this conversation was scarcely unique, and after speaking with many old people about sound reproduction and after a flaming exchange on the topic with some Australian bloke years ago at the CMA Jahoo group, I have reached the conclusion that there is an inverse ratio between the quality of music people prefer and the quality of sound equipment found in their homes. Classical votaries, in general, have terrible sound equipment; if they were still sold, classical music lovers would likely purchase hand-cranked gramophones with a big acoustic horn. Conversely, enter any high-end audio shop, and you will not expect to hear classical music.

The disagreement with my antipode came after a post of mine in which I raved about the sound of an opera on my new Mac's DVD player. Just what was it, I wondered, that made the new DVD so dramatically lifelike? CDs already had virtually unlimited frequency range and lack of distortion, so specifically what was it that made the DVD sound so uncannily vivid? This fellow exemplified the classical mentality perfectly as he maintained that the latest improvements in recorded sound were illusory, that the new expensive audiophile paraphernalia was really the emperor's new gear, and that seeing a cello on the screen had caused me to imagine that the accompanying sound of the cello was more realistic.

This mentality would also explain why it is that there are frequent complaints posted at the nearby Forum about MIDI files in the Archives. The people who are satisfied with the sound of LPs on their 1975 Kenwood speakers are likely, if they own a computer at all, to stubbornly refuse to admit that there's anything inadequate about their 1995 Packard Bell 486 with a £30 sound card. That the MIDI files sound terrible to them is certainly no fault of their own, but rather the hippie MIDI sequencers with spiked orange hair and their Apple computers are to blame. And even if they had prime modern equipment, they still wouldn't like MIDI files, not because they sound bad, but because they don't sound exactly like the music as heard on their old LPs. If, however, it sounded like a 78 rpm disk or a wax cylinder, that would be acceptable, because anything older is good, but anything new is bad.

This is the classical mentality at work, and as stated in a previous editorial ("Totentanz: The Sound of Necrophilia"), it hurts classical music because the major labels are now issuing mostly older recordings of classical music. Why issue a state-of-the-art digital recording if the classical audience has antique equipment? In such a situation, it is no wonder that TELARC, America's premiere producer of fine recordings, now markets more jazz and blues recordings despite their roots as an all-classical label.

The classical-conservative mentality's deleterious effect on music becomes apparent in other ways and a far more basic way at that. It is something to be proud of that music has always been the most advanced of all the arts insofar as technology is concerned. Whereas even the most radical of the first modern painters still used pigments and media similar to that used in prehistoric times, music has always employed the latest in technology as soon as it became available. Once the pianoforte was developed, composers couldn't wait to get their fingers on this superior instrument, and once they did, they all set their clavichords out by the curb for the ragman or chopped them up for firewood and baling wire. Once the new valved saxhorns were manufactured, no composer was interested in scoring for the serpent or ophicleide. Technology wasn't progressing fast enough for Wagner, so he developed his own tubas. The players of woodwind instruments quickly came to adopt the new Böhm system of keys and fingering because of its ease and better intonation, so now a clarinet with the old Albert system is as rare as coffee-without-an-adjective. (The double reeds never made the change to a pure Böhm system but they did benefit from Böhm's ring key.) String players all liked the ease of staying in tune with the new wound-steel strings, and the old gut strings were quickly abandoned. Once Pfund, tympanist for Mendelssohn, invented the mechanical or chromatic tympani, the old hand-tuned kettle drums were given to school orchestras and finally sold as scrap.

Nor did the search for new instruments and timbres end in the nineteenth century. Aram Khachaturian scored for the flexatone (a sort of musical saw) in the second movement of his Piano Concerto (1936), and not many people realize (or care to admit) that the first electronic instruments were used exclusively by classical musicians. As early as 1907 the great Ferruccio Busoni was moved to write his "Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music" which discussed such primitive electrical (not electronic) instruments as the dynamophone and teleharmonium. (Although neither instrument ever became popular—due to their enormous size and price— the principle of the teleharmonium was used in the creation of the Hammond electric organ in the 1930s.) Charles Ives, America's most original composer, scored for what he called "Dr. Theremin's ether organ," and until the paranoid science-fiction movies of the 1950s, the theremin was used exclusively for classical music. (A fine collection of the old recordings by Clara Rockmore, who was trained on the instrument by Leon Theremin himself, can be found on Delos CD 1014. For a sample, go to http://www.delosmus.com/cgi/cart/item/de10/de1014.html

Maurice Martenot, inventor of the Ondes-Martenot, the first electronic instrument to be widely manufactured, was hired by the Paris conservatory to teach his invention, and several French composers scored for the instrument. (A good source of information about these obscure instruments may be had at http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/

But then, after World War II, everything came to a dissonant halt. It has been an unhappy experience in my lifetime to witness classical music slow to a stop then begin to roll back downhill with increasing speed. Not only are new instruments no longer introduced, but classical musicians have literally been raiding the museums for antiquated instruments. Instead of Böhm flutes, flageolets are now preferred; a basset horn rather than an alto clarinet; the viola di gamba instead of a cello. If zinken, psalteries, sackbuts and lyres can be found they'll be employed as well.

A few years ago, I had a piece ("Advice for Producers") printed in the journal of the society dedicated to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams in which I suggested that the wind machine (a drum of silk which rotates over staves to mimic the sound of wind) scored for by Vaughan Williams in his Sinfonia Antartica (Symphony No.7) was obsolete, and that recording producers should instead mix-in digitally-recorded wind sounds. After all, I observed, absolutely no one uses a gramophone and shellac disk to produce the sound of the nightingale called for at the end of Respighi's I pini del Gianicolo. Imagine my consternation then, when about a week after that appeared, someone sent me a message saying that they had attended a performance of the Pines of Rome by the Cleveland Orchestra in which "authenticity" won out, and a wind-up gramophone actually was used. Even worse, recordings have recently been made of the Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz in which a serpent is used rather than a tuba.

I have witnessed the triumph of virulent classical conservatism over good sound, and with classical music now in full retreat, some European orchestras even boast that they play obsolete instruments. A performance of Mozart or Handel is now considered false or ersatz if authentic period instruments are not employed. (The English conductor Roy Goodman even has a period-instrument recording of Gustav Holst's suite The Planets, though I am at a loss to explain just what significant difference there might be with 1916-era instruments.) What may we expect next? Period costumes? Period lighting? A cessation of bathing and period hygiene? It is as if baked goods began appearing with NOW WITH 90% MORE ERGOT FUNGUS! emblazoned on the label or sausage bore the encomium, CONTAINS AUTHENTIC TRICHINA WORMS! Perhaps it's a good thing that classical music is of marginal popularity, because what if medicine followed classical music's lead and physicians began bleeding patients and prescribing mercury compounds for all common ailments? What if motion pictures returned to using a hand-cranked black-and-white camera? What if pharmacies reverted to selling herbal remedies and...

Wait! Can it be that classical music, traditionally at the vanguard of innovation, has presaged, by its retreat into the past, the imminent collapse of Western Civilization? Has modern life become so horrendous and intolerable that the only relief is to be found in the reassuring strains of the "Ode to Joy" repeated over and over? If a concert featured other than familiar and commonplace works, would the entire audience go mad with worry over divorce and credit problems?

Or is it simply that classical music has become the refuge of conservatives and dotards?

(The author wishes to express his sincere thanks to fellow choleric troublemaker Capt. F. George Moresby, author of The Moresby Report—highly recommended—for his kind suggestions and assistance in writing the above screed.)