Now that the cost of the technology has come down, the CD medium has been embraced very widely. Individuals and Organizations everywhere can supply a permanent record of their achievement without relying on the patronage of major companies. Initially the aim may be to distribute material to the informed local market but the arrival of the Internet has also made it easy to advertise and supply this material worldwide, if the world is curious. The recent collapse of the major classical record market has been selective, hitting the overvalued hardest. The economics of promoting artists internationally seem to be discouraging but once we take away inflated egos and inflated fees, the cottage industry approach makes it possible for individuals and organizations to showcase their work without mediation. Given talented young players and inexpensive digital technology, there is no reason for the product quality to fall far short of the majors. The Internet gives everyone a platform but guarantees nobody an audience so is the market there? Enterprising composers have their own websites almost as a matter of course but the brave new medium does not magically create brave new listeners. Traditionally there have been artists with a strong local or national following whose work has not travelled or been promoted more widely. A world in which artists have to sink or swim without the support of national or regional loyalty could be a globalization many will regret.

Do we buy the product or the package? For the majority, it is the package that counts. A product branded or endorsed by a major corporation is perceived to be worth ten or a hundred times more than the identical unbranded product. Visibility, reinforcement and peer pressure are not forces restricted to a youth market or the uneducated. Exclusivity is a selling point but it depends on the value being acknowledged, otherwise minority interests are merely marginal. Classical music, rapidly disappearing altogether from the awareness of the majority, has lost its exclusive badge and put on the weeds of marginality. The excellence of Mozart has not changed, the rewards of Verdi and Wagner have lost nothing of their power but if society is losing its interest in these known quantities, what hope is there for encouraging new audiences to sample contemporary music?

The availability of the best things is a reason for hope. Good books and great music not only create the appetite for more but feed back into society, informing debate, enriching the range of reference and encouraging shades of meaning and alternative ways to think. We should not sentimentalize or indulge in wishful thinking but there is a subtle power in great art which encourages thought and reinforces the perceptions of the Whole Man. Once we take away this wider culture, people do not rise up to protest but it is as if a trace element has been removed from the diet. The effects are subtle at first then become clearer: people without culture are rendered vulnerable to meretricious journalism, political scares and social insecurities. Remove a wide culture and people are left in the hands of politicians, businesses, advertisers and religious factions. Against these ranks of brute interests, culture may seem to offer a very small catapult. So it is, as a weapon brandished in their face as here. Its real power is something different, a very small magnetic force which pulls on the moral compass. We have to believe that the compass continues to exist, even when it remains unused. And the best tribute to the power of culture is the way it is systematically excluded from the popular media, even as fodder.

 © James Beswick Whitehead, 2001