Just read some thoughts from Paul Cantrell’s blog, Comparing Notes. Read the entire post here.

Two things strike me:

1. Concerts probably fall into this same group of what Putnam would call social captial building activities, along with picnics and churches and voting. Playing music in the home as a social activity certainly is. The decline of public interest in classical music, which is live music at its heart, is likely a part of the broad phenomenon Putnam is talking about.
2. Classical music culture in particular has lots of built-in bonding, and is quite good at that, but is not so good at bridging. In spite of the outreach campaigns and attempts at watering down or explaining up the music for “everyone else” — institutional efforts at bridging — there’s very little bridging built into the musical culture itself.

Thoughts?
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