Posts Tagged ‘bias’

On the immortality of the artwork

Jun 9th, 10 / 0 Comments

A little more with regards to the Wagner quote below.

I renounce all fame, and more especially the insane specter of posthumous fame, because I love humankind far too dearly to condemn them, out of self-love, to the kind of poverty of ideas which alone sustains the fame of dead composers.

The concept of an “immortal” artist is a relatively recent mythology. One that ironically coalesced around the time Wagner wrote so melodramatically about Beethoven. Prior to the advent of a museum culture in the 19th century, concerts did not usually include music from the previous generation. Even Bach had slipped from popular consciousness by 1800 (50 years after his death).

Of course this isn’t to say that a museum culture doesn’t serve a valuable function (and that it has been made possible by fields like musicology, improved research methods, technology, etc.), but museums have to have holdings, and this establishes a canon of “classic” artworks–even if inadverdently. Inevitably, the larger the canon becomes, the more rigid it becomes. New works have a hard time competing with old ones simply because there’s a bias toward the canon (which is, or course, sufficiently inclusive!). There’s nothing inherently better about Wagner’s operas than Alban Berg’s or Ligeti’s. It’s just that Wagner is older.

The canon has become so large and powerful that for over 100 years we’ve built conservatories and universities to train musicians to play only the canon. We’ve built a classical music record industry and subscription-based orchestra system that can only accomodate Bach through Debussy. To escape from boredom we have to rely on new interpretations of old pieces. And then, when there is a new interpretation, old, dusty people argue about how authentic it is. Amazon.com lists 376 mp3s when you search “Beethoven 5th Symphony.” If the human eye can only discern 100 different shades of gray (at least that’s what my high school art teacher told me), how can the ear discern 376 shades of the same Beethoven’s 5th? And how could anyone profit by that kind of monotony?

In about 1477 Johannes Tinctoris summed up the attitude of his day by saying that “only the compositions of the last forty years are worth listening to.” That would be refreshing!

Aesthetics, HIstory

Is Music Grading a Bad Thing?

Feb 16th, 09 / 3 Comments

Here’s a blog post from composer Daniel Wolf regarding the Texas Board of Education’s University Interscholastic League.  This is an organization that controls athletics and music in Texas schools.  For those of us in music education, the UIL governs a lot of what we do.  The North Carolina Bandmasters Association uses some of the UIL structure in its own concert festivals regulations.  Now, it may seem strange to combine scholastic sports with music.  Goodness knows the two seem to be in constant competition with one another.  I think there is something utilitarian and super-efficient about this Texan bureaucracy, and I think that’s part of what has appalled Wolf.  We artists shun the notion of categorization (at least explicitly), and the idea that some group of jocks in Texas might somehow influence music education around the country is intensely offensive.  I’ll leave it to the linked article above to explain the details of the UIL and how this influence is wielded.  I will say, however, that the North Carolina system does not govern marching band festivals, nor is it governed directly by the North Carolina Board of Education.

I think there are obvious benefits to grading music for adjudicated festivals–mainly, it is necessary to divide bands by their levels of proficiency.  Comparing bands of greatly differing abilities isn’t very useful.  Thus, the bands choose their music from a list that arranges a finite number of compositions by difficulty.  My middle school band is playing Grade I, the easiest because we’re a small band with mostly beginners.  It wouldn’t make sense to be compared with larger bands with more experience.

However, where I am most interested in Wolf’s point is the idea that this set-up introduces bias into music education.  I agree wholeheartedly that it does.  The list is finite.  There is a procedure for adding other pieces, but I haven’t looked into it.  The system makes it too easy to buy from the publishers and composers on the list.  I can’t see why the list can’t be evolutionary and infinitely expandable.  Sure, have a panel of conductors to review new music for difficulty, but not for anything else. There’s no reason to exclude any new music; let the individual teachers decide what they want to play.

Not only is there an exclusionary bias inherent in having a list, there is also a bias in the band world against new music, and that doesn’t help our students.  I am rehearsing Terry Riley’s In C this semester in honor of the groundbreaking piece’s 50th anniversary.  The piece has no meter, no key, no phrasing indicated, no dynamics, no parts, and not even any instruments indicated.  A typical adjudicator wouldn’t have anything to judge.  But, the notion that music must have all these elements was discarded decades ago–at least outside the band world.  Inside the band world, these are the foundational elements of music.  I’m not suggesting we stop teaching students these concepts, but let’s keep going.  Let’s show them aleatory music, improvisatory, atonal, music.  That extended techniques and experimental timbres in the music of George Crumb are powerful.  And most importantly, that these new music concepts aren’t novel or weird–that you can phrase Schoenberg just like you would Brahms… or Swearingen.

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