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| Salzburg 1922 |
City Journal has a review of a new book by Philip Ewell: Ewelldämmerung. The book is On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone, by Philip Ewell (University of Michigan Press, 332 pp., $85). As you might guess, it is not a favorable review.
Some arguments are best suited for t-shirts, not books: any attempt to expand on them weakens them. Rarely is this phenomenon displayed more starkly than in Philip Ewell’s idea of “music theory’s white racial frame,” now stretched to book length in his recently published On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone. Over the past few years, Ewell’s verbal, tweeted, and blogged broadsides against the “whiteness” of classical music have captured some hearts and minds with their missionary zeal and father-knows-best penchant for overstatement. But now, spelled out over 275 pages, Ewell’s thesis has been revealed for what it is: a giant sieve, leaking from nearly every evidentiary and logical orifice.
I suggest reading the whole thing, for the details. Regarding Philip Ewell, it has previously been commented here that he deserves to be treated with respect, and so he does, as all scholars should. However, his arguments and assumptions should be treated with the same degree of criticism and review that any scholar's would.
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Violinist Nicola Benedetti is the new director of the Edinburgh International Festival:
Now the great violinist Nicola Benedetti has added her powerful voice to the defence of an imperilled genre. “There has got to be scope for maintaining a central classical music environment, a space for Beethoven, for music like that, which should still be at the core of what people play and hear,” she said this weekend, acknowledging the onset of “the real battle” to get people to accept the greater challenge of listening to more complex sounds.
Born in West Kilbride, Ayrshire, the astonishing Benedetti led the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of eight. A mere eight years later, she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. As an elite, skilled artist, she continues to believe that everyone can be creative, but that hard work is the only route to excellence.
Speaking to the Observer after announcing the programme for her first Edinburgh international festival as director, the Scottish virtuoso said she had to walk a careful line between keeping classical music at the heart of the event while offering variety and accessibility.
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UK LAW CAN STOP YOU PLAYING ANY INSTRUMENT AT HOME
From a desperate online petition by multi-instrumentalist Fiona Fey:
Last week I was served a noise abatement notice by Lewisham Council that forbids me to play any musical instrument in my home at any time.
I am a musician, it is my job to practise.
If I do, Lewisham Council can force entry, confiscate all my instruments and fine me £5000.
This seems a tad excessive. Mind you, in Mexico, it seems not possible to prevent your neighbor from making pretty much any kind of noise...
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Here is a thread about the costs and logistics of Taylor Swift's concert tour.
https://twitter.com/FreightAlley/status/1654860984714944514
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The San Francisco Conservatory has been buying up music businesses:
In October 2020, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) acquired the management company Opus 3 Artists. In May 2022, the conservatory bought the boutique Dutch record label Pentatone. And in December 2022, SFCM added the prestigious London agency Askonas Holt to its portfolio, consolidating Opus 3 under Askonas chief executive Donagh Collins.
These acquisitions were greeted by a mix of curiosity and anxiety. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman wrote that they had “prompted furious head-scratching and a flurry of questions from many observers.” In the San Francisco Classical Voice, Janos Gereben described the purchases as “a mysterious tear of unprecedented business deals.” Some commenters on SlippedDisc saw a dark conspiracy, with talk of Askonas Holt becoming “the puppet of American paymasters.” (In fairness, SlippedDisc commenters see most anything as a sign of conspiracy.)
By purchasing the two artist management companies Opus 3 and Askonas Holt, Stull hopes mainly to give SFCM students better access to the prominent artists on these agencies’ rosters. In 2021, the conservatory completed construction of its $200 million Bowes Center, a “vertical campus” which includes performance spaces, student housing, and luxurious apartments for visiting artists. These concert venues and apartments, along with direct access to artist calendars, mean SFCM can easily slot sought-after performers in for masterclasses while they are on tour in the U.S.
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Let's have a little Nicola Benedetti to start. This is the Shostakovich First Violin Concerto:
I don't think I have ever posted the Romanian Folk Dances by Bartók and I can't think why not:
4 comments:
That is some photo. The pose of each composer is fascinating. Hindemith looks cocky. And Webern frightening. Ethel Smyth rather English, even the slight smile. Kauder's indifferent pose makes me interested to hear his music... which I just did, and it is conservative, lots of counterpoint. Not quite what I imagined.
I wish I had more photos from when I was a student at Salzburg.
“There has got to be scope for maintaining a central classical music environment, a space for Beethoven, for music like that, which should still be at the core of what people play and hear,” she said this weekend, acknowledging the onset of “the real battle” to get people to accept the greater challenge of listening to more complex sounds.
Good luck!
It is a politically and socially difficult position to argue for "what should be at the core of what people play and hear." In a free society, taste is an individual preference. In a market society, democratic society, artists are rewarded in proportion to how they satisfy the monetary and attention demands of some aggregate of those individual preferences. In a democratic (and "socialist") society, publicly-supported artists will, again, reflect the most popular genres.
Before democracy and freedom, when music was better, it was patronized according to the tastes of a relatively educated and culturally-refined aristocracy, and performed in their gracious homes and palaces. Once ticket-buyers and then mass media businesses become the main patrons of art (music, in this discussion), concepts of "should hear" will be as vulgar as the rest of the popular culture.
And so the main problem for classical music, as I see it, is it has grown into large organizations like orchestras and opera companies that could never support themselves by simply selling tickets. Perhaps if music reverted to a largely cultured amateur pursuit, at appropriately chamber and personal scales, the monastic solution would keep the traditions and skills alive for the tiny niche who want it, and the rest of the world could hack on as the post-literate screen-dwellers they seem to want to be. Of this is catastrophic for most professional classical musicians, especially because much of the billionaire class seem to be nouveau riche who are as vulgar as the buyers of their tech gadgets.
Will, you have put your finger on a few difficult issues. Actually, I think all of the things you mention are happening all at once. There are places in Europe where aristocratic or educated taste still has a lot to do with what is funded--Salzburg, for example. And there are many places were small groups of semi-professional musicians present performances for small groups of like-minded listeners. At the same time there are the large professional organizations that in some places are struggling and trying to market their relevance even in an environment where market forces seem to rule. And then there is the juggernaut that is Taylor Swift. Let a hundred flowers bloom someone once said.
As I think I have argued before, a bit of attention to music education would likely deliver good results.
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