I'm starting to think that diversity may not be our strength after all. We tried the E Pluribus Unum thing and DEI turns that on its head. Meanwhile, Finland is once more rated as the world's happiest country. For anyone keeping score, the population is 93% Finns and 6% Swedes, the antithesis of the diversity that allegedly makes us so powerful. Diversity CAN be an asset but not in its current deployment, where it ruins everything it touches, to include classical music with this nonsensical push for "proportional" representation.
Are we going to do that with jazz, too, or country music, blues, rock, and other genres where one demographic has a clear majority? And why would we want to? Diversity is the variety of musical choices that are available. I don't really care about the violinist's race or the guitar player's gender or the singer's sexual orientation. I doubt anyone cares about those things. They care about whether the person is good at his/her craft or not, very much like sports, which for some reason escapes all talk of proportional representation. The worst part is that reconfiguring the numbers typically involves a watering down of standards, which is a horrible message to send to minorities and it does them no favors among peers who hardly see them as equals.
Let people pursue their own interests. It is a concept so simple that no wonder it eludes the equity police. If a black musician likes classical and a white one likes jazz, good for both of them but it needs to be a decision each makes as an individual, not something forced on the rest of us by some outside head-counting group. Some people might recall that our country had a dalliance in which a lot of things were racialized. How'd that work out, and why would anyone want to do that again?
Two words about the African-American tradition and rhythms you can bop your head to: free jazz. Which by the way is still a vital and exciting genre that has been taken up by creative people all over the world.
There's quite a bit of repitition in classical music as well, especially in the earlier eras (take any Telemann Sonata), in part because the composition wasn't being recorded and many of the pieces were disposable.
What makes a canon of this kind - and was unexplored here - is the aspects of withstanding the test of time. Modern compositions - experimental and avant garde, all - are being tested on the audience. It's not surprising that audiences don't like them as much - in the orchestral symphonic space, we have largely distilled 350 years of compositions down to a few hundred pieces that get almost all of the play. Even within that long period, there is a heavy emphasis on the 19th century which corresponds to the Romantic period and also the industrial revolution - when it became possible for music to be written and performed on large scale. But of the thousands and thousands of 19th century compositions, only some many dozens are played with any regularity - time has filtered out the dross.
Modern compositions haven't had that filter and modern compositions also have considerable commercial competition with pop music. Orchestral compositions aren't the route to riches if you are a talented musician, so it isn't clear that modern composers of orchetral works are the best on offer.
What is irritating, of course, is that there is a smarmy smugness by the orchestral administration to pretend that rather than conducting (ahem) an experiment on the audience, that instead they are educating the benighted rubes who are clinging to Brahms and Mahler out of some character defect. No, it's that those audiences have been engaging with the orchestral repetoire, usually for decades and have come to the not unreasonable conclusion that Mahler really is better than Korngold and Weber, and that Mozart really was better than Salieri and that quality is reflected in the frequency of relative performance.
This is not to say that some of the more fringe things shouldn't be performed - Weber's clarinet concerto or Korngold's trumpet concerto are fine works worth hearing every five years or so. But compared to Titan or the Beethoven's Ninth or Mozart's 40/41st or any of his operas, well. But it is to say that most of the music written in any era is going to be dross. That isn't less true of modern compositions, it's probably moreso, because of competition (e.g. why the USNMT in soccer has such a poor history and the USNWT doesn't - male athletes have many more lucrative options than soccer in the US, options that don't exist so much in other countries).
Sometimes it's easier to think about the difference by changing the framing - think in terms of sports. It's not that Rick Rhoden didn't make some solid plays and get some good outs, but in the highlight reels of baseball in the last 25 years of the 20th century, he's going to be overlooked in favor of Jack Morris, the Atlanta Braves pitching staff of the 1990s, Andy Pettitte, the Big Unit and others who just had more stirling output.
The point I think John is making - that a key factor of human experience, indeed the telos of the humanities is a love of excellence. We love watching great sports performances in part for the surprises, but we love highlight reels because they show people performing at levels that are truly extraordinary. John is looking at it from an Aristotelean perspective - excellent at what it is trying to be - and classical music really is that - and because of it's excellence, it requires hard work to understand it, like the difference between pop science and science. But the point is, audiences and the canon have been selected BECAUSE they have proven to be remarkable and excellent. So much of what is avant garde is just trying to be different (because in almost all cases, it cannot be better. Except in the rare cases when it is, and then there can really be a shift).
So, classical music - if it is to remain excellent - will remain quite exclusive and exclusionary. So what? What we do see today tho, I think is the typical Communist "entryism". Start by reserving one piece for some member of a "marginalized" identity group - modern, woman, non-European - and colonize the entire thing. For awhile, audiences will still attend to get to the main act. But as we have seen in other areas of art - movies for example - that can be carried only so far because there really is a limited amount of time to cover the excellent stuff.
Excellent point, underscored by the importance of early childhood learning as well as socialization and peer group cooperation. The Nazis understood this and formed the Nazi youth. Also, the acquisition of a foreign language is very easy if started early in childhood but becomes more difficult after about the age of eight or nine. This may be the same reason that early exposure to classical music will prime our brain and ears and make them more sensitive to musical themes, skills that make hearing more complex music later in life much easier. On a personal note: I began piano lessons at the age of 10 and played at least one hour a day for seventy more years. During this period I noted that I was able to play more difficult works later in life than I was when I was
still taking lessons and could not do difficult works such as Bach and Brahms. I had probably
absorbed over decades of my life what I learned earlier but was not physically able to play.
If they do lower the standards in order to be more inclusive, you might want to install metal detectors and inform the season ticket holders not to wear jewelry or their good watches.
It bothers no one that Blacks are overrepresented as NBA players. No one suggests there is a problem that requires changing the rules of the gwme. We just enjoy watching basketball played at the highest level. Why can't people who like classical music likewise enjoy hearing it played at its highest level regardless of which races are under or overrepresented among the players?
This is all rather strange. The same arguments about how classical music was being dumbed down so it would become more popular could be heard forever, consider the NY Philharmonic's Young People's Concert series, particularly the ones on TV in the 1950s. Consider West Side Story, the music of Gershwin, Copeland, and yes, Anton Dvorzak. Indeed, consider Giuseppe Verdi who was also a ferocious popularizer.
So I'm going to push back a bit on John for noting [paraphrasing here] "that some feel black people don't feel welcome at the symphony hall, and it feels good to say that." I worked for a symphony orchestra for a few years, and I can say with certainty over the last three years, they (as in many of the black artists, patrons, etc.) DO NOT feel welcome. After the George Floyd thing happened, a lot of orchestras scrambled to virtue signal their support of black people. So much to the point that many of the black artists, staff members and patrons I interacted with felt deeply uncomfortable. It, unfortunately, pushed a lot of people away from the concert hall rather than drawing them in.
And about representation of black artists within classical music, there are some things that can be done, but as Glenn and John say, it can't be at the cost of the artistic excellence demanded of its artists. I personally would love to see poor communities (not necessarily black or brown ones) have better access to a classical music education because I think it gives them the tools they need to pull themselves out of poverty. As you can imagine, people bristle at that concept.
Scott Joplin was a huge advocate for music education and spent much of his time mentoring and teaching younger musicians. Many of his musical ideals came together in an opera called "Treemonisha," which I think would have a hard time getting staged today. Despite the music being by a black composer, it has heavy themes about what Joplin felt the black community *should* do in order to progress. The music is lovely, and it has great mystical elements, but unfortunately in this political climate, it would probably not get staged.
My thoughts on Woke classical music. Saw Holst’s The Planets today with the wife. Full house. Show started with two women composers I had never heard of, and I forget their names. Openings was ok, Planets was dope.
Am I a philistine for not knowing Caroline Shaw, and Missy Mazzoli? Probably very respected and I’m just being a jerk.
Also remember that the Mahler symphonies that have a chorus/"Das Knaben Wunderhorn" can reach listeners emotionally without their knowing much of anything technical about classical music even if I suppose you cannot hum them.
"Carmina Burana" and "Bolero" don't owe their immense popularity to rhythm!?
The criticism of the whole classical music enterprise from 20 years ago (Christopher Small, Susan McClary) focused not on melody/harmony/symphonic form vs. rhythm but in the narratives that were told implicitly or explicitly by post-Beethoven classical music and the deliberately aristocratic social environments of going to a concert and playing in an orchestra (the immense skill of an instrumentalist who does not have a lot of concerto music to play very rarely gets any recognition for example). These and lack of music education are problems which will hinder classical music getting any kind of large audience of people under 50. Getting a specifically Black audience could simply involve programming the kind of thing that the already existing Black performers who love this art form (some of whom have said on the record that they would like to not have to fall back on "Porgy and Bess" to make a living) would like to do. Giving a hearing to Black composers who are not Florence Price has indeed not been exhausted and the orchestra might simply need to learn more about how to reach Black consumers in order for them to come to the performances.
I personally don't give a damn about European classical music and self-loathing. My priority is that Blacks become more financially literate (capable of hiring a Mozart). Or building a company which hires and manages intelligent people which improves the growth of the company. Did Bob Johnson, who sold BET to a Jewish family for billions of dollars, care about spending more of his time on mentally masturbating on getting more blacks into classical music. Lol!!!!
John and Glenn, I always enjoy your conversations, they do stimulate the brain waves as you come to these discussions with great nuance and perspective.
But at what point are you willing to discuss the source of the racial movements as they are today and how this is a device tailored to keep society segmented?
Often it feels you two approach these subjects as if they are organic growths out of society in general, but in truth they are carefully crafted and constructed social puzzles to keep the 95% chewing on each other's ears.
There is another level there if you want to peel off some layers....
THANK YOU GLENN AND JOHN FOR THE SHOUT OUT! The experience of talking with you and speaking truth inspired me to start my Substack, The Cornfield. And...as a classically trained actor I have always advocated for learning from the classics as a foundation. Certainly every kind of dancer benefits from ballet training; and musicians who've mastered classical techniques can play anything. See: Wynton Marsalis and countless others...how about Misty Copeland? I doubt she feels that the ballet form she has perfected needs watering down for POC.
Inclusion really means exclusion of unapproved ideas. Equity is marxism rebranded for the 21st century. Diversity means minority mascots.
I'm starting to think that diversity may not be our strength after all. We tried the E Pluribus Unum thing and DEI turns that on its head. Meanwhile, Finland is once more rated as the world's happiest country. For anyone keeping score, the population is 93% Finns and 6% Swedes, the antithesis of the diversity that allegedly makes us so powerful. Diversity CAN be an asset but not in its current deployment, where it ruins everything it touches, to include classical music with this nonsensical push for "proportional" representation.
Are we going to do that with jazz, too, or country music, blues, rock, and other genres where one demographic has a clear majority? And why would we want to? Diversity is the variety of musical choices that are available. I don't really care about the violinist's race or the guitar player's gender or the singer's sexual orientation. I doubt anyone cares about those things. They care about whether the person is good at his/her craft or not, very much like sports, which for some reason escapes all talk of proportional representation. The worst part is that reconfiguring the numbers typically involves a watering down of standards, which is a horrible message to send to minorities and it does them no favors among peers who hardly see them as equals.
Let people pursue their own interests. It is a concept so simple that no wonder it eludes the equity police. If a black musician likes classical and a white one likes jazz, good for both of them but it needs to be a decision each makes as an individual, not something forced on the rest of us by some outside head-counting group. Some people might recall that our country had a dalliance in which a lot of things were racialized. How'd that work out, and why would anyone want to do that again?
Two words about the African-American tradition and rhythms you can bop your head to: free jazz. Which by the way is still a vital and exciting genre that has been taken up by creative people all over the world.
There's quite a bit of repitition in classical music as well, especially in the earlier eras (take any Telemann Sonata), in part because the composition wasn't being recorded and many of the pieces were disposable.
What makes a canon of this kind - and was unexplored here - is the aspects of withstanding the test of time. Modern compositions - experimental and avant garde, all - are being tested on the audience. It's not surprising that audiences don't like them as much - in the orchestral symphonic space, we have largely distilled 350 years of compositions down to a few hundred pieces that get almost all of the play. Even within that long period, there is a heavy emphasis on the 19th century which corresponds to the Romantic period and also the industrial revolution - when it became possible for music to be written and performed on large scale. But of the thousands and thousands of 19th century compositions, only some many dozens are played with any regularity - time has filtered out the dross.
Modern compositions haven't had that filter and modern compositions also have considerable commercial competition with pop music. Orchestral compositions aren't the route to riches if you are a talented musician, so it isn't clear that modern composers of orchetral works are the best on offer.
What is irritating, of course, is that there is a smarmy smugness by the orchestral administration to pretend that rather than conducting (ahem) an experiment on the audience, that instead they are educating the benighted rubes who are clinging to Brahms and Mahler out of some character defect. No, it's that those audiences have been engaging with the orchestral repetoire, usually for decades and have come to the not unreasonable conclusion that Mahler really is better than Korngold and Weber, and that Mozart really was better than Salieri and that quality is reflected in the frequency of relative performance.
This is not to say that some of the more fringe things shouldn't be performed - Weber's clarinet concerto or Korngold's trumpet concerto are fine works worth hearing every five years or so. But compared to Titan or the Beethoven's Ninth or Mozart's 40/41st or any of his operas, well. But it is to say that most of the music written in any era is going to be dross. That isn't less true of modern compositions, it's probably moreso, because of competition (e.g. why the USNMT in soccer has such a poor history and the USNWT doesn't - male athletes have many more lucrative options than soccer in the US, options that don't exist so much in other countries).
Sometimes it's easier to think about the difference by changing the framing - think in terms of sports. It's not that Rick Rhoden didn't make some solid plays and get some good outs, but in the highlight reels of baseball in the last 25 years of the 20th century, he's going to be overlooked in favor of Jack Morris, the Atlanta Braves pitching staff of the 1990s, Andy Pettitte, the Big Unit and others who just had more stirling output.
The point I think John is making - that a key factor of human experience, indeed the telos of the humanities is a love of excellence. We love watching great sports performances in part for the surprises, but we love highlight reels because they show people performing at levels that are truly extraordinary. John is looking at it from an Aristotelean perspective - excellent at what it is trying to be - and classical music really is that - and because of it's excellence, it requires hard work to understand it, like the difference between pop science and science. But the point is, audiences and the canon have been selected BECAUSE they have proven to be remarkable and excellent. So much of what is avant garde is just trying to be different (because in almost all cases, it cannot be better. Except in the rare cases when it is, and then there can really be a shift).
So, classical music - if it is to remain excellent - will remain quite exclusive and exclusionary. So what? What we do see today tho, I think is the typical Communist "entryism". Start by reserving one piece for some member of a "marginalized" identity group - modern, woman, non-European - and colonize the entire thing. For awhile, audiences will still attend to get to the main act. But as we have seen in other areas of art - movies for example - that can be carried only so far because there really is a limited amount of time to cover the excellent stuff.
Excellent point, underscored by the importance of early childhood learning as well as socialization and peer group cooperation. The Nazis understood this and formed the Nazi youth. Also, the acquisition of a foreign language is very easy if started early in childhood but becomes more difficult after about the age of eight or nine. This may be the same reason that early exposure to classical music will prime our brain and ears and make them more sensitive to musical themes, skills that make hearing more complex music later in life much easier. On a personal note: I began piano lessons at the age of 10 and played at least one hour a day for seventy more years. During this period I noted that I was able to play more difficult works later in life than I was when I was
still taking lessons and could not do difficult works such as Bach and Brahms. I had probably
absorbed over decades of my life what I learned earlier but was not physically able to play.
If they do lower the standards in order to be more inclusive, you might want to install metal detectors and inform the season ticket holders not to wear jewelry or their good watches.
It bothers no one that Blacks are overrepresented as NBA players. No one suggests there is a problem that requires changing the rules of the gwme. We just enjoy watching basketball played at the highest level. Why can't people who like classical music likewise enjoy hearing it played at its highest level regardless of which races are under or overrepresented among the players?
This is all rather strange. The same arguments about how classical music was being dumbed down so it would become more popular could be heard forever, consider the NY Philharmonic's Young People's Concert series, particularly the ones on TV in the 1950s. Consider West Side Story, the music of Gershwin, Copeland, and yes, Anton Dvorzak. Indeed, consider Giuseppe Verdi who was also a ferocious popularizer.
So I'm going to push back a bit on John for noting [paraphrasing here] "that some feel black people don't feel welcome at the symphony hall, and it feels good to say that." I worked for a symphony orchestra for a few years, and I can say with certainty over the last three years, they (as in many of the black artists, patrons, etc.) DO NOT feel welcome. After the George Floyd thing happened, a lot of orchestras scrambled to virtue signal their support of black people. So much to the point that many of the black artists, staff members and patrons I interacted with felt deeply uncomfortable. It, unfortunately, pushed a lot of people away from the concert hall rather than drawing them in.
And about representation of black artists within classical music, there are some things that can be done, but as Glenn and John say, it can't be at the cost of the artistic excellence demanded of its artists. I personally would love to see poor communities (not necessarily black or brown ones) have better access to a classical music education because I think it gives them the tools they need to pull themselves out of poverty. As you can imagine, people bristle at that concept.
Scott Joplin was a huge advocate for music education and spent much of his time mentoring and teaching younger musicians. Many of his musical ideals came together in an opera called "Treemonisha," which I think would have a hard time getting staged today. Despite the music being by a black composer, it has heavy themes about what Joplin felt the black community *should* do in order to progress. The music is lovely, and it has great mystical elements, but unfortunately in this political climate, it would probably not get staged.
My thoughts on Woke classical music. Saw Holst’s The Planets today with the wife. Full house. Show started with two women composers I had never heard of, and I forget their names. Openings was ok, Planets was dope.
Am I a philistine for not knowing Caroline Shaw, and Missy Mazzoli? Probably very respected and I’m just being a jerk.
Also remember that the Mahler symphonies that have a chorus/"Das Knaben Wunderhorn" can reach listeners emotionally without their knowing much of anything technical about classical music even if I suppose you cannot hum them.
I remember Glenn Loury mentioning his wife's love for jazz.
"Carmina Burana" and "Bolero" don't owe their immense popularity to rhythm!?
The criticism of the whole classical music enterprise from 20 years ago (Christopher Small, Susan McClary) focused not on melody/harmony/symphonic form vs. rhythm but in the narratives that were told implicitly or explicitly by post-Beethoven classical music and the deliberately aristocratic social environments of going to a concert and playing in an orchestra (the immense skill of an instrumentalist who does not have a lot of concerto music to play very rarely gets any recognition for example). These and lack of music education are problems which will hinder classical music getting any kind of large audience of people under 50. Getting a specifically Black audience could simply involve programming the kind of thing that the already existing Black performers who love this art form (some of whom have said on the record that they would like to not have to fall back on "Porgy and Bess" to make a living) would like to do. Giving a hearing to Black composers who are not Florence Price has indeed not been exhausted and the orchestra might simply need to learn more about how to reach Black consumers in order for them to come to the performances.
I personally don't give a damn about European classical music and self-loathing. My priority is that Blacks become more financially literate (capable of hiring a Mozart). Or building a company which hires and manages intelligent people which improves the growth of the company. Did Bob Johnson, who sold BET to a Jewish family for billions of dollars, care about spending more of his time on mentally masturbating on getting more blacks into classical music. Lol!!!!
John and Glenn, I always enjoy your conversations, they do stimulate the brain waves as you come to these discussions with great nuance and perspective.
But at what point are you willing to discuss the source of the racial movements as they are today and how this is a device tailored to keep society segmented?
Often it feels you two approach these subjects as if they are organic growths out of society in general, but in truth they are carefully crafted and constructed social puzzles to keep the 95% chewing on each other's ears.
There is another level there if you want to peel off some layers....
THANK YOU GLENN AND JOHN FOR THE SHOUT OUT! The experience of talking with you and speaking truth inspired me to start my Substack, The Cornfield. And...as a classically trained actor I have always advocated for learning from the classics as a foundation. Certainly every kind of dancer benefits from ballet training; and musicians who've mastered classical techniques can play anything. See: Wynton Marsalis and countless others...how about Misty Copeland? I doubt she feels that the ballet form she has perfected needs watering down for POC.