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There has been some concern in recent years about a decreasing attendance by the younger generation in classical music concerts as well as a decline in classical music record sales, at least in the U.S. This has been attributed to the vastness of the varieties of music available in these times as well as the distinct absence of Classical music education in the school curriculums. Many classical music audiences are even averse to the direction that composition has taken in modern and contemporary music, such as new tonal and atonal languages and rhythmic concepts presented in serialism, polytonality, minimalism, etc. even though Classical music has been developing in that direction for the past century, which shows how out of touch much of the public has become with the genre. This is partly a result of a decline in public sponsorship that has been replaced by institutional sponsorship, namely university sponsorship, connecting Classical music with the circles higher education and academia and alienating those who may not have been exposed to such music through formal education.

“Proper concert etiquette” is another issue that is up for debate. While the current practice is to refrain from clapping between movements, saving applause until the end of an entire piece, many newer audience members who do so anyway because of unfamiliarity with the practice are met with scorn by more experienced audience members. Supporters of the practice consider it disruptive to the concert experience and coherence of a piece to interrupt the silence between movements, while others believe that the rule is too stringent and unnecessarily promotes a haughty, disdainful image of classical music that is unappealing to many potential new audiences. Historically, clapping between movements was not considered bad etiquette, and in many cases it was actually expected. This trend, of course, changed over time due to the dislike by musicians such as Arturo Toscanini and Igor Stravinsky of the unruly behavior of audiences; they worked at ensuring that audiences treated the concert with more reverence.