YouTube plans to create collaborative online orchestra

For every bassoonist or violist who's bemoaned his exclusion from that celebrated form of artistic democracy known as "American Idol," the dark days are over. No, Paula Abdul probably will not be waxing befuddled on the finer points of Mozart concertos. But YouTube has announced plans for something possibly even scarier: the YouTube Symphony, the "world's first collaborative online orchestra."

Want to apply? Go to YouTube's symphony channel and download the sheet music for your instrument for the Internet Symphony No. 1 "Eroica," a new work by Chinese composer Tan Dun. Then make a video of yourself playing your part — and another playing a different composition — and upload them to YouTube. If you need tutoring, there's a clip of the London Symphony Orchestra performing Tan's piece as well as video master classes from individual players.

Semifinalists will be chosen by judges from some of the world's major orchestras. The final picks will be selected by — you guessed it — YouTube viewers. A performance at Carnegie Hall, led by San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, will take place in April.

It's hard to know if the winners of this competition will follow in the tradition of their "American Idol" counterparts and declare their sexual orientation in People magazine or appear on "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew." What's grimly evident, though, is that classical music has been losing its audience for awhile now; not only to that dastardly genre known as pop but, not to put too fine a point on it, to Alzheimer's, heart disease and stroke. As the Los Angeles Times reported in October, the average age of classical music concertgoers in 1982, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, was 40. Twenty years later, it was 49.

Granted, the median age of the general population is rising, so we can't surmise that Disney Hall will eventually transform into a nightclub for octogenarians. But that hasn't stopped the classical music community from making a serious effort to appeal to younger people. In Los Angeles, of course, 27-year-old Gustavo Dudamel, the face of Venezuela's revered youth orchestra program, will succeed L.A. Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen next fall.

No question the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is geared toward the hope that kids can learn to love Brahms just as much as Beyonce. But is it wise to allow an orchestra to be selected by those accustomed to posting about pet tricks? How, after all, can an audience raised on Auto-Tune vocal enhancement and digital sampling be expected to tell one violinist's pizzicato technique from another's? Won't "American Idol" standards prevail, saddling the YouTube Symphony with musicians who have questionable pitch but really awesome hair?