Certain phenomena, little publicized and not very spectacular, are nevertheless revealing of profound transformations at work in our societies. This is the case with the decline of classical music in the United States. Confronted for several years with a constant decrease in its audience, classical music is today accused of being unsuited to the growing ethnic diversity of the country's population, so much so that its long-term survival is questioned. Sociologically, the issue is symbolic: one of the major cultural practices of the country's elite since its foundation is explicitly called to change or to disappear.
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The numbers are worrying: a study by the National Endowment for the Arts reports that the proportion of adults who attended a classical music concert in the previous year had increased from 13% in 1982 to 8.6% in 2017. Between 1982 and 2002, the share of spectators under the age of 30 fell from 27% to 9%. This is accompanied
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