After reading an article about the problems of academic writing, I began to ponder several of the comments the author made and how this is related to academic music training. Near the end of the article, he mentions that "professors are their own audience" (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/02/why-is-academic-writing-so-academic.html). He also postures that academia is becoming marginalized due to insularity and a shrinking academic target primarily serving itself. While he does not address technological advances as contributing to the issue, I would further contend that academia is being forced to change due to the inherent suspicions of the validity of the intellectual life. While it pains me to say, I fear our culture is losing faith in the wise, highly trained professor of the past.
If the information found on the Internet is superior in most respects to the information gained from sitting in a classroom listening to one person offering astute but also narrow and limited truth, why do we still need the system of academic training? The answer lies, of course, in the personal connection of one human being to another. But as culture marches forward, that desire for connection is morphing from reverence for the brilliance of one person to more of curiosity about people in general. Because vast information is found with the fingertips in a matter of seconds, the level of respect and awe for individuals is being subjugated by admiration and respect for machines.
This is not, as the Luddites would insist, a sign of the slow dehumanization of culture but is rather a shifting away from dependence on individual knowledge. Ironically, I posture that the Internet has actually made all of us more human and aware of each other's frailties and insecurities, as well as strengths. Rather than holding up a scholar as unparalleled in his field, we acknowledge that his or her brilliance is likely matched with her own set of frailties or weaknesses. Such is the case of everyone. Students may sit at the feet of the intellectual imparting information but deep down they realize that more information is available in the tablet sitting on their laps and that the person in front is probably struggling with complicated personal issues that inflict all people in some form or another.
Not that this is a problem at all. Some would see this change as the downfall of education, but I see it as an improvement of the process. Vast and instant information from the machine, human insights from an individual, awareness of weaknesses, and acknowledgement of success and skill. All these and more form the educational process and the opportunities abound unbridled for personal growth using a combination of technology and human interaction.
Returning to the problem in the arts, if we are unable to make this shift in education, the arts will continue to see a remarkable decline in its own value, arrogantly extolling its own worth by supporting itself and becoming its own audience--a diminishing proposition at best. Are we pretending that our art is valuable by simply attending our own programs and making the bold statement that what we do is the "right" kind or "best" kind of music? Is this similar to the problems of academic writing that has little relevance and reaches a very small audience? Is an entirely "classical" music curriculum being inadvertently defenestrated only to reside in academic communities that have lifted themselves onto their self-made pulpits and are trying to preach to the very few who will listen?
It is time for academic music training to embrace an eclectic curriculum that is bathed in both the classics and the popular world. Preparing future students to perform music that has a limited audience is likened to teaching a chef to prepare a dish that only a few other chefs will eat. While it is the right of a chef to prepare what he or she so chooses to prepare, it is also the right of those who indulge to accept or reject it. The study of culinary arts seeks not to insist on food only other chefs prefer but, instead, to provide skills and basic truths that can be applied and extended through innovation and creativity with the aim of pleasing the tastes of the people.
Have we in academia forgotten our audience? Granted that an audience is comprised of a vast and complex mosaic of preferences and desires and virtually any attempt to meet all those needs is likely going to fall into a bottomless pit of mediocrity and failure. But in our efforts to present the finest music in the best way, have we become delusion about our influence and our worth in the world? As we emphasize excellence and quality literature in our curriculum, the world seems to be marching to a different cadence. The more we demand the public to march to our tune, the less the public seems to respond. Our reaction to this problem is not to find people where they are or to seek out their preferences for sound, but, rather to become our own applause for what we offer. We clap loud and we clap long for ourselves while the world walks out the door to find something different.
Much of life as a scholar in academia is spent teaching, researching, and serving institutions and communities, knowing there is little notoriety or public acknowledgment of the practice. While no academic intends to divorce his or her discipline from economic reality nor from public opinion, to ignore such realities is to fall into banality and institutional selfishness. Even worse is to become our own fan club propagating generations into the same banal trappings. How do we correct such action? It will require a substantive evaluation of music curriculum and an acceptance of a changing world. Mostly it will require letting go, at least to some extent, of the art music we hold so dear and allowing the market to guide the direction of musical needs for the future. Can this be done with integrity, with rigor, with respect for the heritage of music? Time to roll up our sleeves and give it a try.
No comments:
Post a Comment