I offer the following article not because I necessarily agree with all of it, but because it might spark a useful debate: Strategic Charitable Giving.
Many years ago, I decided to focus my donations exclusively on classical music, since it is the most important thing in my life and is struggling to survive. My primary criterion for donation is whether an organization programs music outside the stupefyingly repeated canonical repertoire, a repertoire that probably comprises at most 100 works, out of a tantalizing musical universe of hundreds of thousands of unknown gems. I attend only those concerts now that expand my musical knowledge, absent a strong countervailing reason to the contrary. The canonical works are being played to death, and I am not afraid to admit that my 33rd experience of Don Giovanni does not produce in me anything like the astounded ravishment and obsession that followed my first or even tenth exposure to the work.
A couple of posts back I expressed a similar view and mentioned that the place you are going to find interesting opera programming out of the usual canon is in Europe these days.
Contemporary works may draw me to a concert—I will attend a few New York Philharmonic concerts this year to try, inter alia, to figure out the Thomas Adès cult, having been repelled by the literally dog-whistle writing in his Tempest. But the new music I usually seek is either lesser-known works by canonical composers—instead of The Four Seasons, Vivaldi’s operas; instead of the Rhenish Symphony, Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri; instead of Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck’s ballet music Don Juan—or works by lesser-known composers: Christoph Graupner, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Nikolai Medtner, Andrea Zani, to name a few. Program C. P. E. Bach, and you have guaranteed my attendance at your concert (logistics permitting) and put yourself in the running for a donation.
Again, while making different choices (except maybe for C. P. E. Bach), I agree with the general sentiment.
After that initial new-repertoire cut, my giving to classical music organizations is inversely proportional to those organizations’ embrace of racial-justice rhetoric. I am all for racial justice, as it once was defined. But classical music does not at present have a racism problem. It is colorblind in its pursuit of musical excellence, or was until the post-George Floyd meltdown. No black or Hispanic musician is being denied opportunities today because of his skin color. To the contrary. (The same can no longer be said with confidence regarding white male performers.)
Now that paragraph is likely to lead to some vehement disagreement. Certainly if you read the New York Times you will be convinced that classical music is still heavily biased against, for example, black composers and performers. But how true is that? Does anyone have any relevant data? Bear in mind that just citing the percentages of black musicians employed by symphony orchestras is not necessarily probative any more than citing the percentages of white athletes in the NBA indicates a prejudice against white athletes or, for that matter, the relatively few white hip-hop artists. There are overarching cultural forces at work here.
8 comments:
Most of my concert attendance is for early music ensembles, which by definition is outside the standard repertoire. Always I hear music I've never heard before. The other way I hear new-to-me music is by attending New Music New Haven concerts presented by the composition faculty and students at the Yale School of Music. Although I can't say I always immediately "like" that music, I always love the experience of hearing something I've never heard before, deliberately composed by adventurous and musically-educated composers. The new music always challenges me to open my ears and mind and consider new soundscapes. I like being challenged that way, whatever the exact aesthetic experience.
Right on, Will. I find that the keenest listening pleasure is often when you hear a new piece you have never heard before, possibly in an entirely new style. But in order to have that experience, you do have to sit through some pieces that are, uh, less worthwhile.
So the classical music world is making fitful, belated attempts at being less exclusionary of everyone but white men, in hiring and in repertoire. Hardly anybody does opera in blackface anymore! Clearly, the problem is solved so completely that now we have gone too far, it's too inclusive, white men can't get their music played or get hired by orchestras, it's all William Grant Still and Vicente Lusitano on the program. So it makes sense to financially punish organizations that are still making efforts at inclusiveness. That's very logical.
Actually, I think that view is a bit superficial. Of course there were specific efforts made in the past to exclude women and people of color--that ended a few decades ago in most places. Then there was a phase where they were not actually excluded, but they were not sought out. But even that was a couple of decades ago. Now women and black musicians are given priority. That does in fact raise the possibility of white men being excluded. Personally I never really saw the exclusion of black people anywhere I lived. Way back in the 80s in Victoria the conductor of the orchestra was Paul Freeman, a black American. No exclusion there.
The inclusion imperative sometimes leads to abuse. For example, this week there were two reports in Canada of white people passing themselves off as being indigenous in order to get lucrative jobs. This is probably because there is a shortage of actually qualified indigenous people.
In the early 1990s when I was getting a masters degree in history, I had aspirations to become a history professor. After I passed all my courses and the oral exam, the 3 professors on the exam committee invited me to apply for the PhD. program. But not long before then I had expressed those aspirations to another professor who said "you won't get a job, they're looking for anybody not a white male now." Although that was not the only reason I ultimately decided not to try, it definitely was on the scale and I still remember the shocking moment he said it to me, because I had not even thought of that being a factor. Then and ever since I figured he was exaggerating, but also that he was probably right it was a factor against me. Apparently that would also be true in the classical music world too.
I see evidence that there are many instances of these policies in business as well as academia. There is some pushback, but it is still on a fairly small scale. Of course, it is a violation of civil rights in the US to privilege hiring one person over another based on gender or skin color.
One professor saying "you won't get a job, they're looking for anybody not a white male now" vs the fact that white men are getting high-status jobs every day, in every field, all around you, everywhere you look. Sounds like the guy is blowing one or two stories into an imaginary trend?
It is of course true that anecdotal evidence is easy to assemble on both sides of this question, so one longs for more statistical information on broadly based trends. I certainly did not leave academia because I thought I would not get a job as a white male--I was just pretty sure I would find it extremely hard to get a job, period! There always seems to be an oversupply of musicologists.
But there have been a number of programs, scholarships and so forth offered at various institutions that are limited to black, indigenous or female applicants only. These have led to court cases challenging them on civil rights grounds, some successful. And the Supreme Court is about to issue a ruling on the case against Harvard regarding admissions. There is coverage in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/us/supreme-court-harvard-unc-affirmative-action.html
As far as hiring goes, policies in that area are exercised behind closed doors and subtle biases would be hard to identify. But it seems clear that the intention of many places of higher learning is to reduce the number of white male faculty members in favor of what in Canada are called "visible minorities." Whether this is fair or not is a separate question.
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