Stereotypes might have us believe that the classical audience is typically older, whiter and richer. How true is this?

According to research into the global distribution of classical music listeners conducted by 

 in 2018, 29% of audiences for live classical concerts worldwide were under the age of 35, with 4% aged 16 – 19. So, whilst it’s true that the majority of classical listeners were aged 55 and over, it might be pleasantly surprising to see that nearly a third of the global audience are – at least according to this study – ‘millennials’. A whopping third of the global classical audience were born after the invention of the World Wide Web. These numbers are reflected by several ensembles I’ve spoken with; 29% of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s mainstream concert audience are under 25, and nearly a quarter of attendees of the Manchester Collective’s recent tour, The Oracle, were under 35. Whilst most organisations tell me their core audience is indeed beyond 50 – as these numbers still illustrate – perhaps we should redefine our understanding of just how small a ‘minority’ youth might be within this. 

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic - Photo credit: Gareth Jones

When it comes to overall audience size and growth, the numbers are not necessarily encouraging. Zooming in on the UK, the funding body 

 conducted a thorough survey of adult engagement with music in England in the 2014/15 season. ‘Taking Part’ found that there was a significant fall in attendance of classical concerts; just 8.3% of adults in England attended classical gigs in the 2005/6 season – an already alarmingly-low figure – and this had fallen to 7% by 2014/15. The proportion of English adults who attended an opera fell in the same period from 4.4% to 3.7%. Whilst other ‘specialist’ genres saw a decrease too, it was not as dramatic: jazz attendance dropped from 5.6% in 2005/6 to 5.2% in 2014/15. This suggests that not only is classical concertgoing a minority preference, but that it is in decline.

It’s not for want of trying. Look at English National Opera (ENO). They describe themselves as ‘the opera house for everyone’, and present a compelling range of community projects, youth discounts and broadcasts alongside their English-language stage productions. 156,000 people take part in their learning and participation programmes every year, whilst 2.2 million people saw their work through broadcasts in the 21/22 season. ENO are masters of presenting opera in unexpected ways and places, not simply expecting audiences to come to them. I think of ENO Breathe, where vocal lessons have been used to help 2000 people suffering from long COVID; the opera house now partners with 85 NHS (National Health Service) Trusts across England. I think of ENO’s drive-in productions during the pandemic, where audiences sat in their cars whilst enjoying Puccini. I think of their free tickets to under 21s, with more than 7000 given through the current season so far. This means many more – and many younger – people are trying opera for the first time; as of March 2023, more than 60% of their audiences were booking a ticket for an ENO production for the first time. That is massive: half of an entire audience had never been there before. Although classical audience attendance might be in overall decline, the story at ENO suggests people are more than willing to give opera a go. ENO proves the classical audience, will and invention remain as strong as ever. 

London Coliseum Auditorium - Photo Credit: Karla Gowlett

Is the age question even a problem? In mainland Europe, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra’s Numa Bischof Ullmann is not alarmed by the fact the majority of their audience is over 50: “there are clear reasons for this. Classical music has always been something you need to take time to grow in to. The more you know about it, the higher the degree of appreciation and fascination. Also, retired people have both the time and means. This has always been like that and will remain like that.” Whilst Bischof acknowledges that “the biggest challenge we face is dwindling understanding of classical music, which can be seen in education, politics, the corporate world and the family home”, he remains optimistic, since the fundamental power and importance of an orchestra is unchanged. “A quality orchestra makes everybody happy and proud. An orchestra is a social umbrella; there is space for everyone. Look at our orchestra, which contains more than 20 nationalities. The best of the best.” Orchestras increasingly reflect the multinational and multicultural world we live in, and it could be argued that the very existence of so many ensembles today suggests vibrancy and viability. 

What might keep an audience away from a classical performance? Cost is certainly prohibitive in learning an instrument, but perhaps not in sampling a live concert. 

 reported on classical audiences in England between 2014 and 2016, surveying 113 venues, orchestras and ensembles; they found that the average price paid for a ticket by one-time bookers was £19.41. Compare this to musical theatre: in 2022, 

found that the average lowest-priced ticket to a West End show was £22.56. One of my frustrations is the assumption that classical performances are uniformly expensive, when a.) there are countless discount schemes on offer, and b.) so many of the other cultural activities engaged with can be eye-wateringly pricey. The Stage research found that, by 2022, the price for top-tier tickets to see West End shows had risen by 21% since the pandemic, to an average highest ticket price of £140.85. Some tickets to Cabaret on the West End reached the dizzy heights of £303.80. A balcony seat to see Adele in Las Vegas last year set some people back £650; that was the ‘cheap’ option. Sure, the Royal Opera House has seats for its upcoming production of Aida priced at £230, but tickets start at £11. Every cultural event of any kind has a range of ticket options, and we must remember we are paying to see the best of the best. Whilst aspects of classical music are indeed depressingly pricey – think of the ridiculous £119 charged for an ABRSM Grade 8 exam – the idea that classical music is uniformly more expensive than other genres is not true.  

Royal Opera House - Photo Credits: Sim Canetty-Clarke

This does, however, point to another major challenge: competition. We live in a noisy world with free time that’s increasingly full of options. Indeed, when classical music is not enjoying the mainstream visibility it used to – with newspaper column inches cut and social media algorithms targeting what you already know and love – it’s little wonder audiences might be declining. 

Then there’s the elephant in the room: music education. I attended a state school in South London that, whilst encouraging my own musical interests, simply did not have the resources to develop this more extensively themselves: for a school of nearly 2000 pupils, there were just 2 full-time music teachers. All too often, the onus is on the students themselves to pursue their musical passion and make it into a career, or on wealthy parents who can subsidise their child’s musical studies outside of school hours. 

But all is not lost. My gateway into classical music was a series of free-to-enter initiatives run by British ensembles. My first experience of composing for an orchestra came thanks to the ROH Fanfare project, where ten state school students wrote a fanfare that was recorded by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under Sir Antonio Pappano. My piece was piped through the House to call audience members to their seats throughout the season, and it spurred me on to continue writing for orchestras; within two years I had composed for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Bournemouth Symphony. Encouragement is priceless. It can be seen everywhere; the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra welcomes over 17,000 children and teachers from 250 schools annually as part of the In Harmony programme. Since 2007, New York’s Metropolitan Opera has run its 

, transmitting opera in real time and in high definition to schools across America; it now reaches 66 districts in all 50 states, with their operas seen by 175,000 young Americans.  The will – and the young people – are there.

The Metropolitan Opera - HD Live in Schools

Classical music is, in many ways, booming right now. As those live streams demonstrate, there are plenty of opportunities to come across the genre in unexpected places. This season, the Met will broadcast ten live performances to over 2000 cinemas across more than 70 countries. Elsewhere, California’s Vitamin String Quartet brought the chamber music sound to a mass audience when their recordings were featured in the Netflix hit, Bridgerton; the ensemble have clocked up over one billion streams and 1 million physical unit sales. Likewise, consider the cross-genre collaborations taking place on an-ever-increasing scale: pianist Lang Lang’s latest album sees him reimagine hit songs from Disney films; six-time Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter and film composer Terence Blanchard has made his Met Opera debut, becoming the first black composer to have an opera played there; classical composer Judith Weir, musicals master Andrew Lloyd Webber and film regular Patrick Doyle are all contributing new music to the Coronation of Britain’s King Charles III in May. Minds and doors have arguably never been more open to classical music.

Perhaps we need to redefine ‘classical audience’. After all, we don’t talk about a ‘pop audience’; these genre labels are broad umbrella terms for such a range of music, and nor can we define an audience so easily. Colleagues tell me the bulk of their audiences stick to what they know; those who attend ‘mainstream’ orchestral concerts – a Rachmaninov concerto, say – won’t be found in the contemporary music gig, nor the early music scene. Just as ‘classical’ and ‘pop’ are catch-all terms, so is the word ‘audience’. 

With my radio presenter hat on, the classical audience is broad. In 2019, Bauer Media – a company whose portfolio of radio stations and magazines reaches over 22 million UK adults – launched a brand new national classical music station, Scala Radio. The fact that a major European media organisation willingly ploughed huge resources into launching a new classical station speaks volumes about the predicted audience for classical music. Look at Classic FM, Scala’s commercial competitor; in February 2023, they recorded 5 million weekly UK listeners, consistently enjoying the ninth or tenth highest reach of any UK radio station (pop and rock ones included). 

We shouldn’t be disheartened. From vocal-medical programmes to cinema relays and new radio stations, classical music remains as inventive and relevant as ever. The challenge is and always has been communication, visibility and education; to normalise classical music so that it is a part of everyday life. This is already happening in cinemas, streaming, in community projects and beyond… But how much of this is news even to those who work within the profession? I’m constantly surprised to learn about ticket discount schemes, competitions, digital offerings and charities. This proves the dots are not always joined. Can we ever shout loud enough? 

There is always more to discover, but perhaps that’s the reason why I remain highly optimistic for the future of classical. When something is so vast, so broad, so international, it can only mean opportunity. There’s something for everyone, and there can and will always be more. We have the ultimate treasure trove to share and shout about, but must never be passive; classical music has been created out of ingenuity and tenacity, and that same spirit will inform its future.

Jack Pepper (b.1999) is a British composer, broadcaster and writer. 

Distribution of classical music listeners worldwide as of the 4th quarter of 2018, by age group.

National Classical Music Audiences | An analysis of Audience Finder box office data for classical music events 2014-2016. 

The Stage ticketing survey 2022: top prices surge 20% from pre-pandemic levels.  

Who’s Listening?

Jack Pepper explores the classical music audience of the past, present and future, and how to bring in a new generation…

We are thrilled to announce our newest addition to the Classeek Ambassador family, Miguel da Silva. Franco-Swiss violist and passionate chamber musician, Miguel's international career has led him to  concert halls across the world, as well as the founding of the renowned Ysaÿe Quartet,  with whom he performed for thirty years. 

Miguel's ambassadorship will support the Classeek Ambassador Programme in the capacity of artist coach, performer, and in collaboration with the  Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, Miguel will bring together the musicians of both programmes. 

Announcing new Ambassador

Miguel da Silva joins the team of ambassadors

« Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen; Im Legenden-Ton »

The title of the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Fantasia in C demands it ‘to be played fantastically and passionately; as if recounting a legend’. Therefore, in telling the story of Schumann and his music, we have no choice but to gracefully oblige:

…Once upon a time, back in the 1830s, there lived a law student in Leipzig. He soon realised that studying law was for him both Crime and Punishment, so he turned to song composition and piano performance instead. Yet the desire to analyse and critique was never far off. Hence, this almost-lawyer founded a music journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, where for ten years his perceptive writings represented the most progressive musical thinking of the time.

This student, a young Robert Schumann, promoted the work of prolific past composers like Mozart, Beethoven and Weber, as well as contemporary composers such as Chopin and Berlioz. However, his fervent advocacy of their music was not his only preoccupation. He was also entwined in a passionate love affair and, as is so often the case in legends, faced a formidable villain.

Enter Friedrich Wieck, renowned piano professor and father of Clara Wieck, a piano prodigy. From the beginning, Wieck opposed Clara and Schumann’s romantic entanglement, stating that Schumann could not support his daughter financially and was not of a high enough social standing. He forbade Clara from seeing him, threatening disinheritance. Thus began the couple’s separation in 1836, which led to the composition of Schumann’s Fantasia in C.

Often seen as one of Schumann’s greatest works for piano, and privately considered by Schumann as “…perhaps the most impassioned music [he had] ever written,” his Fantasia in C is a testament to the heart-stopping ecstasy and unresolved longing that being in love with Clara provoked. Contained by a loose sonata structure, Schumann nonetheless broke free from this Classical form to create an emblematic piece of the Romantic period. And like

all great romances, Schumann included a special message to his love. The coda of the first movement begins with a melody from the last song in Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte (‘To the distant beloved’). This melody is from the phrase “Take, then, these songs, beloved, which I have sung for you.”

Like all great legends, we cannot finish without returning to the beginning: our law student in Leipzig. For even though Schumann did not continue his studies, he initiated several lawsuits against Friedrich Wieck. His legal complaints against Wieck eventually led to Schumann and Clara’s court-sanctioned marriage on 12 th September 1840.

Regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, Robert Schumann’s originality pushed emotional and philosophical boundaries. His music often told stories peppered with motifs and literary references.

After listening to his Fantasia in C, consider exploring his song-cycle Dichterliebe (‘A poet’s love’) to delve further into his tumultuous relationship with Clara Schumann.

Schumann, a legendary composer

If you have already approached music composition, you might have realized that most times all you need is something to unleash your creativity and start writing. That initial spark could be as well a natural element, just like the sound of the wind blowing through the trees or a bird singing a melody. 

Long ago, way before tweets on social media, the sound of birds have inspired people: it happened already with Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven but in Messiaen’s music it played a crucial role. It became in fact one of the main features that characterized his works. What started initially as an interest soon became a real obsession, so fascinating that he could have been defined as an experienced ornithologist. 

Encouraged in his early years by his teacher Dukas, he started notating bird songs to include them in his own music and several of his compositions consist of a dedicated analysis and meticulous transcriptions that he wrote through the years. 

As he later revealed, it wasn't an easy process at all: he had to transcribe at a slower tempo and transport the notes an octave or two below, in order to make it playable by the instrument he was writing for at the time. If the interval between the notes sung by the bird was too small to play by an instrument, it had to be replaced with an appropriate semitone that could fit the melody. 

In 1940 the 34 year old composer was captured by the Germans and sent to a prisoner camp, while serving as a medical auxiliary in the french army. There he started writing one of his most popular pieces, Quartet for the End of Time. At this time there were several influences in his writing but the singing of blackbirds and nightingales are clearly present.

Other earlier works that included some bird inspired music are pieces such as Nativitè and Vingt Regards. In 1952 he was asked by the Conservatory of Paris to provide a piece to test flautists and for this occasion he composed La Merle Noir, a tune based on the song of the blackbird. Shortly after that Messiaen wrote Reveil des Oiseaux, a piece based on birdsong that are singing between midnight and noon in the specific area between France and Switzerland.

The whole subject of including bird vocalisation took more and more space in his music and culminated in 1958 when he wrote his major work dedicated to the pianist Yvonne Loriod, who eventually became Messiaen’s wife. His Catalogue d’oiseaux consists of a collection of thirteen tunes for piano, based on his transcription of over 80 european bird species. Often described as Messian’s most abstract work by critics, it was in fact one of the most analytical works of his where each page was littered with names of specific landmarks and related bird types.

In combination with his synaesthesia (a neurological condition of his that led him associating sounds with colour)  Messiaen’s profound dedication to birds has always fascinated and intrigued audiences. His music in fact really tried to connect with the world as a whole, as a universal language: sometimes it is written by humans and other times is spoken by nature.

Can nature inspire a composition?

The answer could be in your backyard

As musicians, we are trying everyday to acquire competences by facing the process of acquiring information and translating them on our instruments. In general when an individual decides to learn a new skill, he needs to face a four phase transition to acquire it. We all know how long, slow and sometimes stressful the process can be but what seems to be a standardised process has been identified during the 70’s in psychology as a ladder scheme of knowledge and understanding that can definitely be applied also to the music field. 

Let’s find out in detail, what the four stages are:

This basic stage is the one where the individual is not aware about a certain aspect and doesn’t know how to proceed to reach the next step. Translated to the music field, this is the real blank page, the starting point of a musical journey on the instrument when the student is not able to recognize what is lacking to improve his ability. Once having acknowledged that some aspects could be useful, the aspiring musician can proceed to the next stage but the length of time spent in this stage depends on the willpower to learn and on the inputs given by the teacher .

The next level refers to a musician who doesn’t understand or know how to play a piece but recognizes the deficit. He accepts the knowledge of an existing gap and, to progress, he must recognize the value of the aspect he/she is trying to learn. This passage may be a little uncomfortable for some but the motivational learning aspect is crucial to know that mistakes are part of the learning process.

The third learning stage is the one where musicians understand and know how to play a piece but it requires a good amount of concentration and discipline. At this level all senses are involved in a conscious way during the performance, with very little room for errors in order to execute a piece in the proper way. It doesn’t come spontaneously then but it’s a work towards skills acquisition where the ‘trial and error’ method is the right way to achieve continuous improvement. 

The last level is the one that all musicians aim for the most. To reach this level much practice is needed to reach something that comes “naturally” when executing it. It still demands a learning process but the musician at this stage has a strong foundation and confidence in his abilities. This level is the only one that allows a potential teacher to transfer his knowledge to others.

With this system being applicable to every field, it can be used during the learning music process to analyse your own stage and be aware of what should be done to reach the next one. It should be especially used when self-doubt takes over during difficult times, reassuring yourself during conscious phases that results will improve in the future through hard work and perseverance.

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