When it comes to classical music and American culture, the fat lady hasn t just su ng. Brnnhilde has packed her bags and moved to Boca Raton. Classical music has been circling the drain for years, of course. There s little d oubt as to the causes: the fingernail grip of old music in a culture that venera tes the new; new classical music that, in the words of Kingsley Amis, has about as much chance of public acceptance as pedophilia; formats like opera that are e xtraordinarily expensive to stage; and an audience that remains overwhelmingly o ld and white in an America that s increasingly neither. Don t forget the attacks on arts education, the Internet-driven democratization of cultural opinion, and the classical trappings fancy clothes, incomprehensible program notes, an omerta-cali ber code of audience silence that never sit quite right in the homeland of popular culture. Even if every seat were filled, the vast majority of U.S. symphony orchestras st ill would face significant performance deficits. The holiday season typically provides a much-needed transfusion. But the most re cent holidays came after an autumn that The New Yorker called the art form s most s ignificant crisis since the Great Recession. Looking at the trend lines, it s hard to hear anything other than a Requiem. Let s start by following the money. In 2013, total classical album sales actually rose by 5 percent, according to Nielsen. But that's hardly a robust recovery fro m the 21 percent decline the previous year. And consider the relative standing o f classical music. Just 2.8 percent of albums sold in 2013 were categorized as c lassical. By comparison, rock took 35 percent; R&B 18 percent; soundtracks 4 per cent. Only jazz, at 2.3 percent, is more incidental to the business of American music. What about the airwaves? There are only a handful of commercial classical music stations left in America. One of the last, KDB in Santa Barbara, Calif., was put up for sale in October after years of six-figure losses. Even public classical ra dio is in trouble. The number of noncommercial classical radio stations on the air and online has risen. But much of that growth is due to commercial stations switc hing to a public format. Actual listenership continues to decline. And some public classical stations have ditched the music. One such station, WUI S in Illinois, added an online classical channel after switching the main statio n to talk and news. As the station s manager put it, [C]lassical radio is one of th ose things that's slowly going away. Sirius XM, the satellite and online radio pr ovider, has nine jazz channels, 20 Latino channels, and eight Canada-themed chan nels but only two traditionally classical stations. One, called Symphony Hall, has 3,500 Facebook likes. Sirius all Pearl Jam channel has 11,000; their D.J. Tiesto-c urated channel has 89,000. Now let s look at classical concerts. Live classical music is less commercially vi able than ever. Attendance per concert has fallen, according to Robert Flanagan, an emeritus professor at Stanford. But even if every seat were filled, the vast majority of U.S. symphony orchestras still would face significant performance de ficits. Live orchestral music is essentially a charity case. A Bloomberg story on the recent wave of orchestra bankruptcies (an unheard-of phenomenon outside of the U.S., says Flanagan) notes that by 2005, orchestras got more money from dona tions than from ticket sales. The New York City Opera, once hailed as the people s opera, filed for bankruptcy in October. If the people want opera, they ve got a funny way of showing it. In 1937, the median age at orchestra concerts in Los Angeles was 28. Think of th at!Non-orchestral performances are harder to track. But Greg Sandow, a musician and writer, reports anecdotal evidence for a decline in chamber music. There s also g rim data from the NEA that shows the percentage of adults who attended a classic al concert (even one per year) declined from 13 percent in 1982 to 11.6 percent in 2002, and 9.3 percent in 2008. A further decline to 8.8 percent in 2012 was n ot considered statistically significant, though significant declines in those ye ars occurred in the 35 44 and 45 54 age bands. Which brings us to demographics. Sandow notes that back in 1937, the median age at orchestra concerts in Los Angeles was 28. Think of that! That was the year, b y the way, that Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony s summer festival, was founded. I grew up near Tanglewood and had various summer jobs there in the 1990s. When I w orked at the beer and wine stand, I almost never carded anyone. Sandow and NEA data largely back up what I saw on Tanglewood s fabled lawns two de cades ago. Between 1982 and 2002, the portion of concertgoers under 30 fell from 27 percent to 9 percent; the share over age 60 rose from 16 percent to 30 perce nt. In 1982 the median age of a classical concertgoer was 40; by 2008 it was 49. If classical music was merely becoming the realm of the old an art form that many of us might grow into appreciating that might be manageable. But Sandow s data on th e demographics of classical audiences suggest something worse. Younger fans are not converting to classical music as they age. The last generation to broadly lo ve classical music may simply be aging, like World War I veterans, out of existe nce. What about making music? In 1992, 4.2 percent of American adults reported perfor ming or practicing classical music at least once in the previous year. By 2012, the number had dropped to 2 percent (compared with, say, the 5 percent of Americans who reported they created pottery, ceramics or jewelry. ) What about music education? The story of how the ax of school funding cuts falls first on arts education, especially in poorer school districts, is an old one n ow. Yet despite all the studies that show the broad benefits of music education, many school systems will now have no music specialists serving elementary school s, notes James Catterall, a professor at UCLA. As for adult education, when the L ongy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., decided to shutter its amateur educati on program, an outraged citizenry compared its importance to that of a hospital emergency room. But even the picketing, petition-signing populace of the People s Republic couldn t stop the program from closing. Finally let s look at the general cultural positioning of classical music. This is harder to quantify, but there s some useful data. Many publications no longer ret ain full-time classical music critics. Yvonne Frindle, a music blogger, notes th at Time has featured 64 classical figures on its cover but the vast majority befor e 1956 (though Bach made the cover in 1968). The last, featuring Vladimir Horowi tz, came in 1986. Today the notion that a pianist could culturally sideline a st ory about aircraft carriers sounds nothing short of quaint. Classical music does retains overtones of, well, classiness. But in contemporary America, that s arguably its biggest problem. Take the popular sitcom Modern Fami ly. In one episode, Phil and Claire are mortified at the thought of attending a cello performance by Alex, their nerdy daughter. They panic and invent dinner pl ans with fictitious friends, the Flendersons. It turns out Alex is in fact playing cello for a rock band. Her mom and sister are pleasantly surprised. Or take Manny the show s old-beyond-his-years kid who composes poetry and writes nov els. Naturally, he loves classical music. It s the perfect American shorthand for peer alienation. And note the joke. Classical music isn t like broccoli something Manny s too young to love. He s listening to something even regular adults don t like. Oh, crap! says Jay, Manny s stepdad, when he finds out a concert is Vivaldi s Four Season s (one of classical s rare actual hits) not Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Th en he walks like a man to the nearest bar. Jay, and America, are unlikely to back proposals to tax the NFL in order to fund symphonies. But are there any bright spots at all? Despite the worries over mus ic education, instrument purchases for schools have remained fairly constant at just under one instrument for every 50 kids, each year. That s not a lot, and inst ruction time and quality is another question. But at least instruments are physi cally in the classrooms.