This is a symphony composed in the Soviet Union in 1924-25 when the composer was only nineteen, performed by an orchestra of Russian, not Soviet!, musicians under a Russian conductor, shot in Paris by a French crew. Is that diverse enough?
I'm not sure what the New York Times would require of a Russian orchestra in terms of skin color, but no, there are no black musicians in the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra. Perhaps there are just very few black residents in Moscow. There are certainly many women musicians and I imagine there is a variety of representatives of the ethnic minorities in Russia.
What this kind of identity politics misses when it looks at an orchestra is the incredibly diverse achievement it already is. The instruments of the orchestra have an amazingly wide variety of origins. The bowed string instruments originate somewhere in Central Asia, no-one knows exactly where or when. The double reed instruments like the oboe were brought back to Europe in the Middle Ages by the crusaders. The cymbals are Turkish in origin. The glockenspiel and marimba percussion instruments come from Indonesia.
The orchestra is a kind of synecdoche of Western Civilization; in many ways it is a model of a successful society. It is characterized by the fusion of an astonishingly broad range of skills and artistry from the design and construction of the instruments (the violin design is from the workshops of Cremona, Italy in the late 17th century) to the technical skills of the performers who train for decades to achieve this level of precision. Oboe players have to spend a significant amount of time making their reeds with special machines because professional level players can only use custom reeds. Some flute players even cut their own sound holes. There is a particular street in Paris where the best people to do bow re-hairing work. The symphony orchestra is a remarkable achievement in so very many ways even before the first note is played.
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of all is that this group of very different individuals, in terms of their different instruments, geographic origins, course of studies, personality, age groups and so on, this very diverse group of individuals, is able to be pulled together into an ensemble with perfect coordination.
What bothers me about articles like the one in the Times with passages like these:
But orchestras must be a part of changing the landscape, too, by getting rid of blind auditions.Change can be unnerving. Might the gains female players have made be reversed if the screen comes down? Might old habits of favoring the students of veteran players return? Orchestras will need to be transparent about their goals and procedures if they are to move forward with a new approach to auditions — one that takes race and gender into account, along with the full spectrum of a musician’s experience.
Change, change, change! Observe the underlying and hidden assumptions here: things as they are, are untenable, we must change. The present situation is very bad and violates fundamental human rights. Diversity must be imposed at any cost. What is missing in this is how long it has taken to develop the practices and traditions of the orchestra and how fragile they are--like civilization itself. Orchestras are standing on the brink right now and the New York Times is concerned about racial quotas.
The orchestra, as an institution is fundamentally good. It is the product of hundreds of years of development in terms of the instruments, the techniques to play them, the repertoire contributed by composers, the subtleties of orchestration, the financial support and construction of suitable performance spaces and on and on. Unless we appreciate all that, we should not be demanding fundamental change.
The worst opinion pieces always start with some supposedly unchallengeable assumption that is always, always wrong. The Times subhead says:
If ensembles are to reflect the communities they serve, the audition process should take into account race, gender and other factors.
Why should ensembles reflect the communities they serve? What community does the Emerson Quartet reflect? What about individual artists? What changes when you move up to an orchestra? The only thing that I can see is that an orchestra is a better political target than, say, Yuja Wang. The assumptions underlying the statement that "the audition process should take into account race, gender and other factors" are multitudinous and treacherous.
The New Fairness requires the Old Tyranny.Women are the New Patriarchy so don't count towards any community that deserves to be called a community.
ReplyDeleteAs for the orchestra it is very much a hodgepodge or if you prefer a gallimaufry of instruments. It is such a hodgepodge that conductors in between counting the beats have to constantly try to balance the sections out. In fortes the battle is soon over and the trumpets and trombones crush the ragtag mob surrounding them. Amplified bands have it easier as their conductor is called the mixing engineer who controls all the mic feeds.
And yet, somehow, at the end of the day, they make these beautiful sounds.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it ... why would we want to do away with blind auditions ...? Excellence is the standard ... in any sphere, no? The major league ball teams would not want to do without excellence ... they don't really care about diversity ... they just want the best ... black players predominate because they are good not because they are black. Most pro black football players start training when they are 5 or 6 years old. If they stay with it they will receive encouragement from coaches and athletic directors all along the line. As they move past college ball the winnowing process becomes unbelievably strict ... they move into the spear point realm where competition turns ruthlessly fine ... this process should sound quite familiar to classical musicians ... excellence is real; diversity is unreal, an empty concept enshrined by dullards ...
ReplyDeleteI don't think it is about racism or diversity. --But it is about a battle for control of the culture and it is starting to get ugly.
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