Klarinet Archive - Posting 000886.txt from 1999/07

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] re: Marching band - to be or not to be
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1999 12:51:55 -0400

On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Carl Schexnayder wrote:

> I have no choice but to make marching band mandatory!

I understand this point completely. When I was in high school and
college, and for six years as a music teacher in the public schools, band
was band, and you were either in it or you were not. In the fall, the
band was expected to provide the service of making music at football
games, parades, etc., and then we had "concert season." It's not a bad
idea for young musicians to learn that, like it or not, musicians are
expected to provide services which may not always be the most musically
inspiring. Sometimes it is music at athletic events, at other times it
may be background music for a reception or dinner, and on still other
occasions it may be playing outdoor concerts on patriotic holidays.

But, there is a fundamental difference between the situation as it exists
today and as it was often handled several decades ago. When we did
marching band shows, we played different music every week, and we did a
different show every week. If we had come out week after week and done
the same football show and played the same music, the band director would
have been regarded as either lazy or incompetent, and so would the
students. Naturally, we didn't achieve the degree of near-perfect
precision in marching that bands strive for today, but that didn't seem to
detract from the entertainment value to the audience, nor did it prevent
students from receiving all those extra-musical values which have been
extolled in this thread - teamwork, dedication, discipline, etc., etc.

I was such a old-fashioned band director that when my bands went to band
camp, we spent half of our time on marching band and half on concert band!
Also, during our marching season, if we had a rainy day, we would stay
inside and practive sight-reading music, a skill which is essentially
absent in many school music programs today. Some bands spend five or six
months playing from memory the music for their marching band show, and
then are taught by rote the few pieces they will play for their concert
band contest. Put a piece of music in front of them that they have never
seen before, and you might as well ask them to read Sanskrit. In the
colleges and universities, we observed over a period of years that
students came into the study of music with ever decreasing music reading
skills. (That seems to have gotten a little better in the past five years
or so. I'm not sure why. Can other college teachers confirm that?)

I am not one to say that the marching band can have no value. What I
object to is the "cult of marching band." For some programs, marching
band is expected to be the most important thing in the students' lives.
It comes before academic work, before music, before family obligations,
before other organizations or recreational activities, before everything.
It is almost like a religion.

Like all other fanatic movements, not everyone chooses to "go along with
the program." Some drop out when the requirements and demands become too
excessive, or when the ratio of value received to effort expended becomes
too skewed. That's why more than half of the students that enter colleges
and universities say that they are completely burned out on marching band,
and sometimes on music in general.

I like to remember a bit of useful advice I have always heard and always
tried to live by: "Moderation in all things."

Ed Lacy
el2@-----.edu

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