It was with great interest that I read Terry Teachout's article titled "Free the Piano Player" (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/Free-the-Piano-Player-11278) where he gives the overall suggestion that concerts in the 19th century were more informal and improvisatory than today. The article begins with the bold statement, "It is now widely acknowledged that classical music in America is in dire, even desperate straits." His historical examination of piano recitals carries with it the recommendation that solo recitals of today include more variety and experimentation with communication and improvisation. Teachout points out that even young classical performers continue to present a very formal concert "consisting of three or four groups of pieces drawn from the standard repertoire and arranged in chronological order, never speaking a word out loud save to announce their encores."
I have also read much of Greg Sandow's articles on classical music, http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ and can sympathize and embrace his concept of developing ways to keep classical music alive. He advocates more creative programming on radio shows and live performances to include an eclectic approach with regard to genres, styles, and overall plan of music concerts. He often points out the value of bridging the gap between cultivated music and what he calls "mainstream" or entertainment music. Sandow says of his students, "And yet here we have my students, and so many other young classical musicians, who inhabit both worlds. They're in the classical music world, as young professionals, and they're also in the mainstream world, sharing the same culture as their friends who don't pay attention to classical music."
In our typical college curriculum, we continue to insist on an "old school" kind of curriculum with the argument that it provides the fundamentals or building blocks from which music is created. And there is no doubt this is true to a point. But perhaps our (our meaning we college professors!) very design of only dealing with our own myopic description of quality music curriculum has in essence widened the gap and polarized audiences rather than narrowing it and bringing about societal musical congruity. Even more frightening is the awareness that maybe we prefer it that way--in an almost elitist indifference to the uneducated ear. A type of refusal to throw your pearls before the swine attitude that results in smaller audiences not bigger.
Somehow I suspect that my students have an innate understanding and desire to bring great music to the people and that I have missed the elements needed for this to happen. In my very training and love of the classics, perhaps I have inadvertently placed an exclusive wall and arrogant barrier between my desire for musical excellence at all levels and the mainstream desire for enjoyment and entertainment. Obviously, I am not speaking of me necessarily for I have actually worked hard to be a part of mainstream music making.
When I am a horn player, I gravitate naturally to Mozart. When conducting, I am concerned with musical precision and beauty of phrase. When teaching music history, I emphasize the classics, the finest music by the best composers, determined primarily by music that has withstood the test of time. When teaching theory, I am drawn to Wagner and Schoenberg; but then I don my other hat and become a gospel pianist with a love of rock and folk music from the 60s and 70s! I then turn another direction and find myself playing jazz piano or directing music theater or arranging marching band music. It all has a place in my musical life.
Music is great fun and maybe it is time for those of us in musical academia to make it fun for the players and the audience also. I do advocate for greater communication, eclecticism in programming, variety of genres and styles and mostly for enjoyment for all. But, and here is where my elitist hat comes back on I'm afraid, I do want to remain committed to excellence in performance, and I hope we keep at least some degree of formality in our product if not consistently, perhaps intermittently.
Whatever we adopt and whatever we practice, it is my dream (a variation of the dream of Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Mahler, Antonin Dvorak, and many others) that sophisticated and cultivated art music be embraced by and even melded with mainstream music for the masses. Whose responsibility is this ideal? No doubt about that, it is everyone's--composers, performers, teachers, and yes, the audience! The goal is for classical music, and really all music, to be alive and well in the world.
1 comment:
After our family had attended a student recital last year, my wife pointed out that your discipline and mine, Music and English, were the only two on campus that were based on a canon. You and I force our students to face a series of “great works,”— works that have stood the test of time, as you say—and we evaluate how well the students respond to those texts. Most other disciplines either have a more contemporary focus—Science or Business, for example, care little for how things used to be done—or rely more on secondary materials—History spends more time studying interpretations of the primary documents than the primary documents themselves. Christian Studies blurs the line, but I think they rely a good deal more on secondary sources than Music or English.
What that tells me is that our fields are not so concerned with what music and literature do (read “relevance” here, and think of Business or Science), nor even so much with what they mean (the goal of History and Christian Studies). Rather, we think these texts are worthy of study in and of themselves. Believe me, it’s hard for an English professor to take interpretation out of the driver’s seat, but it restores a kind of humility to the class if one does so. In a very real sense, Shakespeare and Shelley, and Beethoven and Bach, matter more than what we think of them.
While I’m not advocating an automatic reverence for everything old, and while I very much appreciate your gospel piano skills, I’d hate to see either of our disciplines lose that humility. (And isn’t it odd that what I’m calling humility is so often characterized as arrogance, as you point out in your post. Boy, we lost the war when we let that become the perception.)
--mkimery
Post a Comment