 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2009-04-18 15:02
Truly sad news indeed but expect more like releases from around the country as the US economy tries to find a bottom and recover from the excesses of the past 20 years.
Unfortunately the arts will be low on the radar as manufacturing, energy, and health care become the primary topics in the years ahead.
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Author: Neal Raskin
Date: 2009-04-20 00:00
It all starts with our music educators. The US seems to lack when it comes to educating people in music compared to Europe and other parts of the world. Since all children and students eventually become taxpayers and concert goers, they need to have a love for music when they leave school.
It is my duty as a musician to educate as well as perform, compose and study.
Neal Raskin
How I want to be remembered:
"An advocate for humanity through music."
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Author: Steve Hartman
Date: 2009-04-20 00:48
The most telling quote from the article is "The orchestra’s full-time staff has been cut to 7 from 23 a year ago." What does an orchestra that plays 3 or 4 concerts per season need with a staff of 23?
-Steve Hartman
Principal Clarinet, Brooklyn Philharmonic
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Author: William
Date: 2009-04-20 13:59
Our Beloit/Janesville Orchestra (WI) recently cancelled its last season subscription concert--Verdi's Requiem--and its quite popular July 4th series of free public concerts in the two communitees. The reason given to us was that the usual donations have not come in this year and ticket sales are down, partially a result of General Motors permanent closure of its main assembly plant in Janesville resulting locally in the loss of 1200 jobs last Dec and the remaining layoffs (100+) scheduled for this week as the plant is finally closed for good. Our orchestras future is marginal--next seasons concerts are being planned, but with a chamber orchestra format rather than our usual full instrumentation. We orchestra players who can afford too, have been asked to volunteer our services (travel expenses only or play for free) for as many concerts next year as we can to cut orchestral expenses and help insure its future, but the main issue is most likely the recovery of our national (& local) economies. Without that, the necessary donations will likely never resume, ticket sales will continue to fall and our BJSO may face a similar fate as others in the Arts communitee. Most BJSO musicians are holding on to their day jobs--if even that--and hope that the economic stimuli starting stimulating soon.............
I am retired, lucky to be on a secure pension and have volunteered to play second clarinet for free next season to help save our group. I would rather play for free than not at all--especially in our wonderful, regional BJSO.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-20 15:55
Neal wrote:
<<The US seems to lack when it comes to educating people in music compared to Europe and other parts of the world.>>
Is this really true? If so, what is the rest of the world doing that we don't?
(I'm not trying to be argumentative. I've just never seen anybody make this claim with respect to music education--science, math, and foreign languages, yes, but not music. Also, since I was lucky enough to have participated in a band program that, at the time, was recognized as being one of the very best in the country, my perception of American music ed. may be a little skewed--I think we had a really good music program, but I recognize that may not be the case everywhere.)
Post Edited (2009-04-20 16:01)
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Author: Neal Raskin
Date: 2009-04-20 16:13
mrn,
In my opinion, and in the opinion of several other professors and music educators, the US often lacks in a complete music education. It seems, for the most part, that our music programs are geared toward performance. I know this isn't the case in all schools.
I think what is forgotten in US music programs, is the importance of teaching all aspects of music, and not just performance. The study of music in schools should include theory, history, composition etc. Just like the National Standards for the Arts outline.
The problem is, teaching kids to play instruments is great, but frankly, you can train monkeys to play instruments. So, the focus of music in schools should not be solely based on performance. It should be focused on all aspects of music.
For students, who will become taxpayers and concertgoers, getting 1st in contest is a great accomplishment, but is it really going to make kids love music? Once they leave high school, will they even listen to or go to professional concerts? My belief is that students who leave school with a well rounded understanding of music and its facets, will be more likely to 1) stay involved in music in some form and 2) support music through donations/ attending concerts.
I hope this doesn't come off as aggressive or snoody or anything like that. I am very passionate about education, and how I can instill a lifelong love of music in students.
Neal Raskin
www.youtube.com/nmraskin
www.musicedforall.com
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Author: sinkdraiN
Date: 2009-04-20 16:14
"The US seems to lack when it comes to educating people in music compared to Europe and other parts of the world."
This is a very bold statement... How is it that you came to this idea, Neal.
America has an excellent culture of music from a variety of styles. America provides public schools to every child regardless of economic or intellectual standing all the way through 12th grade! In these public schools every child will have music classes and opprtunities in the Arts. If you want training beyond that a student may seek out private schools and teachers that specialize in a specific musical setting.
Please elaborate on your opinion that America lacks in educating music.
Post Edited (2009-04-20 16:18)
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Author: sinkdraiN
Date: 2009-04-20 16:32
As far as Performance being a part of music education.
Certainly, a student who has experienced goosebumbs while playing music in school will line up to buy a concert ticket before the student who was talked to about it.
When classical music was in it's prime and booming, going to see the local orchestra was commonplace...do you believe the audience knew the first thing about music theory!?
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-20 18:04
Neal wrote:
<<I think what is forgotten in US music programs, is the importance of teaching all aspects of music, and not just performance. The study of music in schools should include theory, history, composition etc. Just like the National Standards for the Arts outline.>>
OK. See, we had courses in Music Theory and Music History at my high school. Like Band and Choir, they were electives, of course, but we at least had them.
In fact, Music History was a very popular class--there were at least two sections of it when I was in high school. Of course, one of the reasons that it was popular was that it was one of the few fine arts electives that was offered at the honors level. Kids who were trying to graduate with the highest class rank possible would take it because they could take it (and get the fine arts elective credit required for an honors- or advanced-level diploma) without it damaging their sky-high GPA (at least in those days, you got more grade-points for taking an honors-level class than other levels). However, many of us (myself included, since I had fine arts hours in abundance) took the class because of the love of music we had, much of which was instilled through our experiences in performance.
Not as many people took Theory (for whatever reason, it was not offered at the honors level, so only people who were truly interested in learning about music took the course), but several of my fellow band members did. There is apparently an AP test in music theory--I'm not sure if the course would have prepared you for it, though. Seems like they should have made it honors-level if that were the case.
Trying to get the school board to establish honors-level fine arts classes was like pulling teeth, though. At the time, there was a big campaign to try to make our top band honors-level (pretty much everything we played was college-level repertoire, so it should have been treated like every other college-level class offered at the high school, with honors credit assigned--at least, that was the logic behind it)--the movement was unsuccessful during my time there, and AFAIK the school board was never convinced to make the change. Too bad, too, because if you consider the level of what the band did (playing repertoire that upperclassmen would be playing in a university band) to what other classes were doing (AP Biology being strictly an intro-level college course, for instance), Symphonic Band could have been considered the most advanced course in the school! (within its field, that is) In fact, it would irritate many of us die-hard music students that these kids taking Music History for their GPA's sake would get "easy" honors credit, while we were sweating away in band and receiving less credit for it. Of course, we got our revenge in that 3 out of the 4 valedictorians when I was there were band kids!
I took the honors Music History course (as did many of my friends), but I didn't take Theory--not so much because of the GPA thing, but because I had already taken lessons in composition with a private teacher, so the Theory class was largely going to be a repeat of stuff I already knew.
For a year or so there the first four chairs in the clarinet section were also enrolled in Choir (the choir director needed male voices, and we all liked to sing), so I guess you could say we had a little elementary ear training (or at least solfege and sight-singing) that way as well. I want to say that the music theory class did some ear-training, too. Our band director was really good about allowing us some scheduling leeway so that we could do both.
So, to make a long story short, you could get a pretty good musical education at my high school if you wanted to. I don't know what other schools offer in this regard, but I'm positive we were not the only school around that offered classes like these.
But as far as overseas music education goes, I have always been under the impression that much more of it was done outside of school than in the U.S. If that's the case, is it really fair to compare "us to them" in this way? Seems like we're comparing apples to oranges--like comparing the band/orchestra/choir as a whole to only the band kids who take private lessons.
Post Edited (2009-04-20 18:20)
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Author: Neal Raskin
Date: 2009-04-20 18:10
I completely agree that performance is an important and crucial part of music education. What I am advocating, is teaching a more diverse set of skills and knowledge related to music as a whole.
How many professional orchestra's does Europe have? Anyone have a figure? I want to say that it is probably much more than America. Are Europe's orchestra's going belly-up left and right like America's? (I don't want to open another can of worms with this comment, I am trying to support my opinion, though I don't have any specific statistics on this matter...) If my presumptions are even somewhat legitimate, then this is how I know that music needs to be enhanced in the schools.
I am trying to promote classical music as music for every person and every community. So I am simply trying to suggest that we, as musicians, enhance and diversify music education so as to promote a new era of music. The things I am suggesting, to me, start at the root of the problem; and that is the lack of classical music as part of American culture for the mainstream. By giving youth a well-rounded musical experience, hopefully when they become parents, and tax payers, they appreciate music's value.
I understand that a good portion of music education is conducted outside of the school day. But there must be a reason as to why mainstream American's don't attend symphony concerts and why there is so much bankruptcy in the professional orchestras. And I am aiming to contribute from the bottom up to help change and bolster classical music in American society.
www.youtube.com/nmraskin
www.musicedforall.com
Post Edited (2009-04-20 18:15)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-20 19:16
Neal wrote:
<<But there must be a reason as to why mainstream American's don't attend symphony concerts and why there is so much bankruptcy in the professional orchestras.>>
I think the bankruptcy issue has to do with the fact that American orchestras pretty much have to do all their own fundraising, whereas European orchestras often have significant government support.
It would also not surprise me if this would also have an effect on ticket sales. Greater government support not only reduces the need for private donations, but also reduces the need for the "revenue security" provided by subscription ticket sales. Tickets might be cheaper (and less tied to season subscriptions) and ticket sales might actually go up as a result. I have no data to back this up, but it seems plausible (and you could probably find corroborating data [or contradictory data, as the case may be] if you wanted to).
Also, although music education is undoubtedly essential to the future of classical music, there is a sense in which music education can actually have somewhat of a negative impact on classical music as an industry. At least in my case, because of the musical training I received, I get more enjoyment from studying and performing music than I do from attending concerts. So I am actually probably less likely to buy concert tickets than I would be if I were someone who simply enjoys classical music but has not had any formal training in it. In most cases, I'd rather play in my orchestra than listen to someone else's, even if they play better than we do, because I like to be more actively involved in the music. I suspect a lot of other folks on this BBoard are the same way.
Post Edited (2009-04-20 19:18)
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Author: sinkdraiN
Date: 2009-04-20 21:45
"The things I am suggesting, to me, start at the root of the problem; and that is the lack of classical music as part of American culture for the mainstream. By giving youth a well-rounded musical experience, hopefully when they become parents, and tax payers, they appreciate music's value."
This is where music education may be keeping classical from the mainstream. Somewhere along the way classical music became less of an art form and more of a "copy machine" of sorts. We perform compositions from eras long gone in the exact manner the composer intended it to be played. When you pay money to see an orchestra you hear Brahms and Chopin and .... The classical audience is extremely critical when it comes to new material...concepts or compositions.
Music education aims to teach the history in hopes of a new generation taking the current sound to the next evolution. That may lead some away from classical music. I believe the jazz industry is booming because they embrace new and different...even wrong. But I do believe somewhere along the way the classical community, in an effort to preserve the past...dwindled our future.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-20 22:04
sinkdraiN wrote:
> I believe the jazz
> industry is booming because they embrace new and
> different...even wrong.
Is it really? I didn't think it was.
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2009-04-20 22:19
MRN,
Forgive me but I have to take issue with your most recent post.
An educated general public makes for a more robust audience.
Do you truly believe that if youngsters did not play baseball, they would still enjoy going to baseball games as a form of entertainment?
The sad truth of our present American culture is that refined art - the kind of expression that takes thought, feeling, and education - is sorely lacking in our general culture.
This is true of every genre - film, music, dance, visual art.
The American system has let our society down and we now pay a heavy price.
The only saving grace is that, similar to the WPA and the Great Society of the 30's, the reduction of wealth will create a need for people to return to the basic values that make for a fulfilling life. In all areas.
And similar to the wonderful art that was created in America during the 30's and 40's, perhaps we will experience a new Renaissance with people actually making music at home, going to their local concert hall, and having economic stimulus money being directed to the arts as well as other areas of the economy.
One can only hope.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2009-04-20 22:21
Sinkdrain,
Jazz industry booming? That's news.
Jazz is a relatively new art-form, but it too is largely focused on the past. How many jazz musicians have moved beyond the scope of Coltrane? Maybe Michael Brecker.
Mrn,
I think things may have changed since you were in school. I went to highschool in TX fairly recently, and although bands were generally very strong, only a few schools had orchestras or music classes. Things here in NYC are much worse; very few highschool students have any opportunity to study music.
I attended a lecture in which an arts administrator pointed out the aging of concert-goers in NYC being related to the end of skill-based arts education in public schools. I don't if this relationship is true, but it would make an interesting study.
Post Edited (2009-04-20 22:31)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-04-20 23:18
Begin rant.
Professional orchestras simply aren't financially feasible on their own. Even to sold-out houses, they require a significant base of patrons and donors to keep them going. In effect, they survive on the generosity of rich old people. When there is an abundance of rich old people, there is an abundance of financially solvent orchestras. When the investments of rich old people go sour, so go sour the finances of large orchestras.
Some posts in this thread seem to suggest that it is vital to educate people about music so that they may become patrons and consumers of music and thus ensure our livelihood. I think that misses the point entirely, and if our entire aim in promoting music is to continue to prop up a failed financial model because some of us have declared that it is a culturally important thing to do, I wonder why we would even bother.
There's this "unwashed masses" mentality that seeps into discussions of classical music, and it makes me sick. We've created this bizarre cultural obligation, where people say they "should" go to a concert to "experience culture," rather than "want to" go to a concert to "listen." Somehow we have to educate them, and if we don't educate them we will fall off and die because they are fools who prefer other things. Heaven forbid they find music on their own without our expert guidance! I don't think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that this is as prevalent in other kinds of music, or other kinds of art. Do you find poets lamenting that people are poorly educated about poetry and therefore don't go to their readings? Sculptors lamenting that people don't appreciate sculpture and it should be taught in schools so that they'll have customers? Are ska musicians complaining in droves that their music is no longer en vogue? I tend to think they're all too busy making their art.
The sad possibility that I think sinkdraiN touched upon is that classical music is almost entirely an art of mimicry. We take what is old, and we reproduce it, perhaps with a slightly different opinion or angle. Dance and theatre may have our problem to a lesser degree, but they also are more prone to innovate and to be part of new and more culturally relevant endeavors. However, it seems to me that genres such as ballet may be more accepting of their place in the world. We, on the other hand, offer very little that is new and unusual, and yet we demand that it is vital to "educate" the world about our art from on high. If people don't connect to our system of very expensive, elaborate "cover bands" (which is essentially what orchestras are), oh woe is the failure of our educational system.
If anything, the failure is that of the classical music world in declaring how things should and shouldn't be done, perhaps with a bit of Sousa's foreshadowing of recorded music destroying live music, and constantly insisting that we are some high art that takes significant training to appreciate. There is such an incredible amount of baggage put upon the unsuspecting concertgoer that we turn them away ourselves.
We also have two other things going against us: decades of extreme resistance to change which have essentially almost entirely ejected new and culturally relevant "classical" music from the realm of possibilities, and an artist base that does not create anything on their own, but ONLY knows how to act as sinkdraiN's copy machines. Try finding a painter who only knows how to reproduce the work of others (and doesn't work for Kinkade).
I think we should accept the orchestra as what it is... a huge, unwieldy organization that is financially unfeasible, but that we keep around out of sheer stubbornness by throwing random money at it, simply because the people throwing money at it think it's a really cool thing to have, which I agree it is. A luxury item on a grand scale, to two of which I currently hold season tickets.
If we were able to shed some of our institutional memory, I think it would do us well. For decades, the situation has been: Concert halls are where you go to dress up and sit down and shut up and listen to heavily subsidized orchestras play old music that we are expected to appreciate on an intellectual level and try really hard not to doze off during the slower bits. Newer music is thorny and unlistenable. Commoners will only appreciate John Williams and showtunes. There are receptions for large donors, who sit in the first-class section. $15 gets you obstructed view. Anyone who writes something inspired by contemporary culture has sold out and is therefore dismissed. If people don't like our concerts, it's their fault. Seats are close together and uncomfortable, but let's program Bruckner 6 anyways. Letting the orchestra know you appreciate them in any way is strictly prohibited until the prescribed time.
If we could start from scratch, "hey, here's a cool style of music with centuries of history and development, let's see what we can do with it!" I think we might have more luck in our quest to be culturally relevant, which, really, I think is a rather poor goal for something that claims to be art to have. Not that a quest to be culturally irrelevant is particularly productive either.
As for education, I think we overcomplicate the discussion (my loooong post isn't helping). We're always advocating some sort of "high culture" literacy, or "improving brain function" through this effect or that, making people "well-rounded," making people better at math, teaching people discipline, or whatever. It's never simply "because that's something to learn," like history or math or science or literature.
Learning, imho, should be done on a "because this is something fascinating to learn" basis, not "because it improves your I've-learned-this-ness." It's like we're putting our kids through some sadistic real-world role-playing game where someone is deciding whether to acquire a +1 Clarinet of Agility. As long as we're looking for some concrete quantifiable result to learning music, it's an uphill battle against subjects that some arbitrary panel has deemed the "important" ones (and music is by no means alone in getting the shaft). Unfortunately, this requires reform of our hopelessly broken school system (which was invented to produce good assembly-line workers), which is an even bigger uphill battle, so I guess one needs to choose one's hills to climb.
End rant.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-20 23:25
Dileep wrote:
<<Do you truly believe that if youngsters did not play baseball, they would still enjoy going to baseball games as a form of entertainment?>>
No, and as I said, I think music education is essential to the future of classical music. But I also don't think you can hope to fill concert hall audiences with just instrumentalists, either. (any more than you can expect the audience at sporting events to be composed solely of athletes)
One of the problems with American arts education--as I see it--is that we don't do enough to expose the general population to classical music as something they can appreciate and understand. This is sort of what Neal was getting at, I think. English teachers, for example, spend lots of time teaching students how to understand and appreciate literature--and everyone takes English class. The fine arts and other humanities, on the other hand, are given short shrift in the general curriculum. Why has the education system in this country adopted the viewpoint that the general student population need be taught only to appreciate one art-form on a halfway-mature level (namely literature)? That a high school student should be required to learn about such concepts as feminine rhymes and blank verse, but not leitmotifs and sonata form makes no sense to me.
So while I think we probably do a pretty decent job at teaching the kids who want to learn to sing and play instruments how to sing and play (or at least we used to), where I think we are lacking is in teaching *everyone* (including folks who don't play or sing) the basics of classical music appreciation (and visual arts, etc.). IMHO, that's what you have to do to keep the concert halls and art galleries full.
Post Edited (2009-04-20 23:28)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-04-21 00:03
Dileep, then mrn, wrote:
<<
<<Do you truly believe that if youngsters did not play baseball, they would still enjoy going to baseball games as a form of entertainment?>>
No, and as I said, I think music education is essential to the future of classical music. But I also don't think you can hope to fill concert hall audiences with just instrumentalists, either. (any more than you can expect the audience at sporting events to be composed solely of athletes)
>>
This brings up an interesting angle. You suggest that music education is essential to the future of classical music, but I hardly think baseball would go away due solely to a lack of baseball in schools.
I think a particular problem in the U.S. in regards to classical music is that it is, unlike baseball, an import. We didn't invent the thing, and you can count the well-known (by the masses) American composers on one hand, with enough fingers left over to use a mouse. It's a European invention that many of us have taken a liking to. Granted, many of us are descended from Europe, but we didn't necessarily bring our classical music roots along, especially considering how many of us were huddled masses. As a whole, we are much more closely connected to rock music, with regional connections to various other popular genres.
Perhaps we have to fight so hard to keep it alive here because it's not really "from here", and doesn't have the centuries of support and legacy and cultural backdrop. Until we colonize other planets and we consider it to be by-and-large a product of earth as a whole, some measure of that may remain.
As a side note, I can't help but wonder if I would appreciate baseball more today if I'd had more guidance than "ok, now hit the ball."
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-04-21 00:13
I also think we might get more concertgoers if you could have a beer, hot dog, and chocolate malt during the performance, all without leaving your seat. Wearing a "No Fat Chicks" shirt for good measure. :P
Or, to take it further than it really should be taken, what could be more awesome than a performance of Beethoven 5 with the entire audience doing the wave, hitting beach balls, floating napkin-flying-saucers off the upper balcony, and making people kiss on the Jumbo-tron? All the while, you can be appraised on how many missed notes Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have had in their evening's performances, and if you sit behind the orchestra, if you're really lucky, perhaps one of the timpanist's mallets will be flung up into your section for people to fall over each other trying to catch. For good measure, between the last two movements, everyone stands up and sings.
Awesome, that's what that would be! I'd like to see it, just once.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2009-04-21 02:10
from mrn's post-
Neal wrote:
<<The US seems to lack when it comes to educating people in music compared to Europe and other parts of the world.>>
Is this really true? If so, what is the rest of the world doing that we don't?
----
Since I am here...
In Japan, the Junior High School curriculum requires that all students have at least 3 class hours every four weeks of a Music Appreciation class throughout their 3 years of JHS. Through these three years, they learn the major instruments of the orchestra, a few major composers, they broadly learn about major compositional forms (sonata, leit, rondo, etc.) they sing a lot, they learn about important Japanese composers of the past 100 years or so, they all must have the experience of playing a traditional Japanese instrument at least once and a Western instrument at least once.
In comparison to what one does in an American band class, the work is very limited, musically; most of the work is lecture and via the text book, not performance.
However, the one really important thing to note is that the American music curriculum is (almost always) an ELECTIVE system (especially after elementary school), so the kids that have no interest in music can go through school having taken no music classes at all. The program here is requisite, and all students must take the class as part of their general education, just the same as math. It is also implemented in Junior High School which is a lot more significant since kids at elementary age generally forget a lot of their experiences during that age.
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Author: J. J.
Date: 2009-04-21 02:12
Can a European please chime in here to verify or refute this business about music education?
Music education is far more prevalent here in the United States. The main difference is that classical music is a deep-rooted part of European culture, so much so that the average person knows opera or the Germanic symphonic giants. It has nothing to do with "music education."
Furthermore, European orchestras are largely supported by their respective states. They are deemed to be that important in Europe. Here in the US, we have always had a more commercial system, one that is bound to lose steam in a bad commercial environment.
The differences in culture and in the financial backing are the most important aspects here.
One book that illustrates this brilliantly is "Classical Music in America: a History of Its Rise and Fall," by Joseph Horowitz, should you be interested in a more detailed perspective.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2009-04-21 02:41
J. J. wrote:
> Furthermore, European orchestras are largely supported by their
> respective states. They are deemed to be that important in
> Europe. Here in the US, we have always had a more commercial
> system, one that is bound to lose steam in a bad commercial
> environment.
>
> The differences in culture and in the financial backing are the
> most important aspects here.
Orchestras- and many arts organizations- will be losing even more steam if the current administration continues to pursue cutting the rate for charitable tax deductions for the wealthy.
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Author: 3dogmom
Date: 2009-04-21 18:29
I feel compelled to weigh in as a public school music educator. I teach to the standards and am in fact expected to by administration. There are state as well as MENC standards and anybody teaching in public schools who is not addressing these is not doing their job. For those who may be unaware, check them out at http://www.menc.org/resources/view/national-standards-for-music-education.
My students are given general music class once per week. I teach grades 1-5. Performance options (band and chorus) aren't present until grade 4, although the entire third grade plays recorder and gives a concert. Students are hungry for music and it is we, the public, who are at fault for allowing school systems to drop the study of music after elementary school. Folks wouldn't know any math, either, if the study of it stopped after fifth grade.
We all know the benefits to the brain and psyche which come from studying music. We all know that students who study music longest do better on SATs. Shouldn't that be enough to ensure that all students participate in music classes until they graduate from high school? I have never had a student say, at the end of their time in my school, that they were glad that music was over for them. I have, however, had students be very, very sad that all they had open to them was band. We as a society are making a very big mistake. NCLB is leading to uneducated children with its emphasis on math and ELA and financial punishment for towns who don't get their scores high enough. We are responsible for educating the whole child. As parents and educators, we owe it to ourselves to make this happen.
In your concert programs, put quotes from state and national standards. List which ones have been addressed in your concert performance. Offer little blurbs about how study of music helps the brain. In our state (MA) music was voted a core subject - we put that in our programs. Not sure it always has the desired effect, but if we are strident enough about this and refuse to let it go, at some point maybe we can turn the tide back toward educating the whole child. Not just the ELA and MATH child.
And those will be your concertgoers. My students love classical concerts. They love to perform. They love to listen. They love to sing. Not because they are my students - but because they have been taught.
End of speech.
Sue
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-21 23:06
I don't see anything strange about the fact that it should take some instruction in music appreciation to acquire a taste for classical music. I think that's the same in most arts, whether it be the visual arts, poetry, dance, or what have you. You have to have some kind of cultural context to "get it." And that's OK.
Even artists who consciously try to free themselves from cultural contexts still require some kind of context for their works to have meaning. The American poet William Carlos Williams was one of these artists. When he wrote poems like "The Red Wheelbarrow" (Google it--it's very short), he was trying to break out of the traditional European mold that other poets, such as T.S. Eliot, embraced. You can't understand T.S. Eliot without reference to practically everyone else in the western canon.
On the other hand, you can't really appreciate Williams without some background in the aesthetics of good poetry. When I read "The Red Wheelbarrow" as a teenager, because I didn't know much about poetry, I didn't understand what was so great about it. "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens." Big deal. T.S. Eliot was a lot more interesting.
You even see this in popular culture. Part of the appeal of Quentin Tarrantino's movies, for example, is that he pulls in old familiar references from popular culture and juxtaposes them in interesting ways. If you aren't familiar with the things he references, the movies make less artistic sense.
Music education gives us the context to understand the great works of the past. (And also to appreciate more readily what's good or not so good about new works.)
Getting back to sports, according to some observers baseball is dying in this country, too. Soccer is increasingly what the youngsters these days are playing--my kids are no exception. They have little interest in baseball. On the other hand, in the town I live in practically the whole town is at the soccer fields every Saturday with their kids.
I would try to pull this together into something more than a collection of random observations, but I have a rehearsal to get to......Gotta go! 
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-04-22 01:42
I agree that education about the music, as with any art, can greatly enhance the depth of one's appreciation of it. I'm not at all advocating that we intentionally not educate people of it, and I think music education is of immense value.
What I do see a lot in the classical world, though, is that low attendance at our concerts somehow becomes the fault of the audience, and we somehow ascribe that to some tragic downfall of culture in general.
I also find great value in the opinions of outsiders, of people who are not intensely educated in the art or its context. Sometimes they will have the most curious and unexpected insight, as their perspective is not clouded by all the baggage of people who are constantly immersed in it. I've made connections myself between completely unrelated pieces, connections that were impossible to make when the respective pieces were created, and I find that fascinating.
I especially delight in revisiting something with a much greater understanding for the context. I believe that a piece of art can be appreciated in multiple contexts, one of which is with a complete naivete to the subject matter. Approaching a piece today that I've never heard, compared to approaching one that I heard years ago and had an "uneducated" opinion about, are completely different experiences, and I much appreciate the latter because it offers a comparison, a multitude of experiences, that is impossible to replicate with a first listen after an education.
I guess what I'm getting at, in a very roundabout way, is that there can be enormous value to an "uneducated" person hearing music that they're not "prepared" for, and that their appreciation or dismissal of the piece can say as much about us as it does about them. Our dismissal of them, though, I find inexcusable. If they don't care about the music, it might be that they don't understand the music. It might be that they just don't like it. It may be that they don't have the proper context or education (which I'm still trying to find for Pierrot Lunaire). OR (and these are the possibilities that we're very reluctant to consider, but I think are very often the case), it could be that we didn't present it effectively, we didn't perform it well, or it just isn't that good a piece of music.
Heaven forbid that we consider admitting the possibility that we've put on some, *gasp*, bad concerts. I've been to them. I've been in them. But we seem reluctant to admit to our unwashed-masses audiences that all our concerts may not be supreme high art.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-22 21:19
EEBaum wrote:
> I guess what I'm getting at, in a very roundabout way, is that
> there can be enormous value to an "uneducated" person hearing
> music that they're not "prepared" for, and that their
> appreciation or dismissal of the piece can say as much about us
> as it does about them. Our dismissal of them, though, I find
> inexcusable.
Me, too. In fact that's what I think is wrong with a lot of "modern music." A lot of it (especially the ueber-serialist stuff) seems to be missing the universal, human element. I mean, Bach's music was mechanical and mathematical, but it still sounded human.
Minimalism was supposed to bring the humanity back into music, but the problem with minimalist music is that, by its very nature, it gets old really fast. At least with a composer like Vivaldi you have to listen to a few of his pieces before they start to all sound the same, whereas with minimalist music, it only takes a few seconds before you realize you're hearing the same musical ideas over and over again.  (Don't get me wrong, some minimalist music I really like--I just have a limited tolerance for seemingly endless repetition.)
> If they don't care about the music, it might be
> that they don't understand the music. It might be that they
> just don't like it. It may be that they don't have the proper
> context or education (which I'm still trying to find for
> Pierrot Lunaire).
I actually rather like Pierrot. It's weird, but it's weirdness with some emotional meaning and direction to it. It doesn't hurt that it has intelligible words, either.
The stuff I can't wrap my head around is music that sounds like it was written using a random number generator. Just how many different portrayals of randomness do we need?
On the other hand, some of the weird electronic stuff that came out of the 1950s-70s I've started to acquire a taste for. It sounds primitive and (dare I say it?) almost campy by today's standards--not quite as avant garde as it did when it was written. So it's actually acquired a *new* context as time has gone by. (I suppose I'm really a postmodernist at heart.)
Here's one of my favorites for clarinet and tape by a composer from my original hometown of Houston (scroll down to where it says "Philip Rehfeldt performs Antiphon II...by Michael Horvit"--it's the first piece played). While other works paint pastoral (Beethoven 6) or maritime images (Debussy's La Mer), this one definitely conjures up images of Daleks and Cybermen for me...
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/12/dj_rix_best_of_.html
Post Edited (2009-04-22 21:20)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2009-04-22 21:39
Since the discussion is moving in this direction...
The other day I was reading the essay, "The Task of the Translator," by the great Walter Benjamin and came across this passage:
"Art posits man's physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his response. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, and no symphony for the listener."
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-04-22 22:08
brycon:
Perhaps someone should send that quote to Mr. Currier...
I more or less agree. I do write for one listener, and that listener is me. Other people liking it is a bonus. Other people disliking it, I attribute to their tastes differing from mine, coupled with some possibility of the piece not being good. Then again, I'm hypercritical of my own music, and am very careful to not fall into the trap of "I wrote it, now they're playing it like I wrote it, therefore it's great music" that I think many composers do.
mrn:
I agree with you, except for your take on minimalism. Suppose our tastes just differ. I enjoy listening to minimalism as it brings the typically buried inner parts to the forefront, letting me listen to an evolving (or non-evolving) state without so much focus on "here's where the melody goes now." Sort of a landscape that I can wander around and choose what to listen to, if the group playing it is actually engaged in the piece. I guess enough time on 3rd and bass clarinet, and in rehearsals for concertos without the soloist present, probably helped get me into that. IMHO, though, some groups don't do minimalism properly, and will take a string of 50 of the same notes and play them all exactly the same.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-22 23:50
EEBaum wrote:
> I agree with you, except for your take on minimalism. Suppose
> our tastes just differ.
Probably so. I don't truly hate minimalism, though--my opinion of it is probably higher than my propensity to poke fun at it suggests. I really like the rhythmic drive, clear textures, and imaginative orchestration in much of Steve Reich's music, for instance. I also like a lot of what John Adams writes (although he's probably more of a "post-minimalist"). Arvo Part's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten" I like as well--as you describe, you can listen around "three-dimensionally" through that piece and find different things to listen to (it's also not too long, so I don't mind the repetition so much).
Philip Glass's music I find less interesting (and less original, to be brutally honest about it). A lot of his pieces sound like piano exercises to me--play a major or minor arpeggio over and over again, move the root of the chord a major 2nd or a tritone away (to "break out of" the cycle of 5ths), and then come back. I'll admit even Glass has his moments, though.
So there's a lot of good stuff in minimalist music. My main beef with the minimalists is that a lot of their music sounds incomplete to me, like they started with a good idea but didn't carry it through to completion. And that bugs me. I wait and wait in anticipation for something more to happen and it never does. Now, this is not true of all minimalist pieces, and as you say, the quality of the performance makes a huge difference. Still, the minimalists often leave me feeling like I got stood up on a date or something.
Post Edited (2009-04-22 23:58)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-23 00:28
brycon quoted:
<<"Art posits man's physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his response. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, and no symphony for the listener.">>
Or as Milton Babbitt put it, who cares if you listen?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-04-24 23:20
I've heard lots of references to that Babbitt article (more often, lots of references to the title), but this is the first time I actually read it. Makes some good points.
I think the layman is perfectly justified in considering himself AN expert in the arts, simply because it is so subjective (and because I'm a postmodernist), though only an expert on a particular angle of the arts, the angle of someone who knows very little about them, which, unlike a layman's opinions on quantum physics, can actually be relevant to such a subjective pursuit as art.
If one is only concerned with art as a pursuit in and of itself, then, indeed, they should not be concerned about whether people listen. However, I consider music to be an evolving, interactive pursuit, reflective of the zeitgeist, and therefore should be exposed to said zeitgeist as much as possible, even if that exposure is simply to say "I have nothing to do with you."
I also think there are many aspects to whether something is written for the listener, such as...
- Whether something is written to be listened to or to exist as itself
- Whether something is written in order to be liked by the listener, or simply to be heard
- Whether something is written for a particular type of listener (e.g. highly educated), or any old listener in general
- Whether something is written with any concern about what it will sound like
- Whether something is written with the primary goal of it being enjoyable to the listener
I think a lot of people tend to lump all these aspects together, whereas they all have very different impacts on a piece's intention and reception. Without making these distinctions, a composer can easily end up torn between "dumbing it down for the audience" and "making my art without compromise," as if listenable music is automatically somehow lesser.
I tend to write very much for the listener, trying to incorporate aspects that address as large a base of listeners as possible, not so much because I want the piece to be popular, but because I find that each type of listener is concerned with a different aspect of music, many of which are aspects that I myself consider to be hallmarks of good music (and even some that I consider hallmarks of bad music). Having people listen gives me invaluable feedback, which I can then choose to address or not address for future works according to my own opinions on the matter. In any case, though, they keep me honest. I may think my piece has high concept, but if the high-concept-loving audience thinks differently, I'll revisit it. I may think it's delightfully listenable, but if the "unwashed masses" don't like it, I can re-address my concept of listenable for future pieces. If a fan of Yanni and Enya likes my music, I might consider making my next piece *less* listenable. :P
So I care very much if they listen, as much out of curiosity as anything else. It may sound contradictory, but while I try to write music that I think people will like, I don't write with the goal of people liking it. When I sit down to write something, it's because I have a sound or concept in mind that I think should be heard and nobody has written yet (if everyone was writing stuff like mine, I'd likely stop composing). If it's universally panned, but I'm still giggling madly to myself at 3 in the morning in a cold corner of my 1-bedroom apartment about a deliciously horrid chord progression, it's good enough for me.
I certainly wouldn't go about suing anyone over it, but then, I don't write music with the goal of promoting myself. If that's my primary concern, who cares if they listen?
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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The Clarinet Pages
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